Boethius

(c. 480 - c. 524)

Appointed head of all the government and court services in 520 by the Ostrogothic king Theodoric, Boethius was accused of treason and incarcerated two years later. While awaiting execution, he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, a personal and philosophical meditation, which Edward Gibbon called “not unworthy of the leisure of Plato.” Boethius wrote in the opening lines, “Poems, once the glory of my green youth, / console me now in old age’s gloom.” The work later served as an important source of Greek thought in the Middle Ages, and it was translated into English by King Alfred, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Queen Elizabeth I.