The Consolation of Philosophy
by Boethius(524)
PhilosophyLatin
“Nothing is miserable unless you think it so.”
The Consolation of Philosophy
Boethius(524)
A man sits in a prison cell awaiting execution, and a woman appears to him: Lady Philosophy, her robes torn by the hands of lesser schools of thought, come to remind him of everything he once knew and has forgotten. Boethius, a Roman senator condemned by the Gothic king Theodoric in 524, composed this dialogue between despair and reason in alternating prose and verse, building an argument that fortune's wheel is not cruel but irrelevant, that true happiness lies beyond anything the world can give or take. The book was copied, translated, and cherished for a thousand years, a bridge between the classical world and the medieval. It is the last great work of Roman philosophy, written in chains, radiant with the freedom it describes.
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