[Sidenote: Boëthius.] The last writer who seems to belong to the old civilization is Boëthius. Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus Boëthius was a Roman of noble birth and exalted station. He was born about 480 A. D., and after his father’s death was adopted by the patrician Symmachus, whose daughter he afterwards married. In 500 A. D. he delivered in the senate a speech in honor of Theodoric, who made frequent use of his learning and literary skill. He held important offices at Rome, received the title of patrician and in 510 A. D. became consul without a colleague. In 522 A. D. his two sons were made consuls, and the joyful father delivered an oration in praise of the Gothic king to whose favor they owed their elevation. But that favor was destined soon to pass from Boëthius. The emperor of the East, Justin, tried to stir up the Catholic Italians to revolt against the Arian Theodoric. Boëthius was suspected, arrested, and put to death with tortures in 524 A. D. The servile senate decreed his death without even the formality of a trial. [Sidenote: The Consolation of Philosophy.] Boëthius was a prolific writer. He translated from the Greek various philosophical and mathematical treatises, to some of which he added commentaries, and the importance of the Aristotelian logic during the Middle Ages is in great measure due to him; he also wrote a bucolic poem, which is lost, and several treatises on points of Christian doctrine; but the work by which he is now best known, and to which he owes his reputation as the last Roman author, is the treatise _On the Consolation of Philosophy_ (_De Consolatione Philosophiæ)_, which he wrote in prison while waiting for his condemnation. This work consists of five books, and has the literary form of a _satura_—that is, the prose is interrupted and varied by the insertion of passages in verse. These metrical passages, although their rhythms and diction are excellent, do not show the same depth of thought as the prose portions. This is explained by the fact that the prose portions of the treatise are derived in great measure from the _Protrepticus_ of Aristotle, while the verses are more entirely the work of Boëthius himself. It is not likely that Boëthius employed the _Protrepticus_ directly, but he probably had before him some work in which Aristotle’s teachings had been modified by the eclecticism of the later Platonists. Everywhere noble sentiments are expressed, but without the slightest indication of Christianity, or of any specific religion. The names of the pagan deities are used, but Boëthius believes in them no more than did Milton or the numerous writers of the eighteenth century in whose works their names occur. The attitude of Boëthius is throughout that of a cultivated and intellectual man who seeks for consolation when in trouble not in faith, but in reason. In the beginning of the work he laments his hard fate, when Philosophy appears before him in the form of a woman, and a