Boethius, awaiting execution on false charges, writes a dialogue with Lady Philosophy, who consoles him with arguments about fortune, free will, and the highest good. He was a Roman senator, perhaps the last great thinker of antiquity, and he wrote this in prison, without books, from memory. The work alternates prose and verse, moving from despair toward something like peace. It was one of the most widely read books in the medieval world. Dante, Chaucer, and countless others drew on it. Boethius was executed. The consolation survived. Philosophy can be practiced even in a cell.