hout special mention of this fact. We look to August Engelbrecht for the
first critical edition of the _Consolatio_ at, we hope, no distant
date.

The text of the _Opuscula Sacra_ is based on my own collations of all
the important manuscripts of these works. An edition with complete
_apparatus criticus_ will be ready before long for the Vienna
_Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum_. The history of the
text of the _Opuscula Sacra_, as I shall attempt to show elsewhere, is
intimately connected with that of the _Consolatio_.

E.K.R.

INTRODUCTION

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, of the famous Praenestine family of the
Anicii, was born about 480 A.D. in Rome. His father was an ex-consul; he
himself was consul under Theodoric the Ostrogoth in 510, and his two sons,
children of a great grand-daughter of the renowned Q. Aurelius Symmachus,
were joint consuls in 522. His public career was splendid and honourable,
as befitted a man of his race, attainments, and character. But he fell
under the displeasure of Theodoric, and was charged with conspiring to
deliver Rome from his rule, and with corresponding treasonably to this end
with Justin, Emperor of the East. He was thrown into prison at Pavia, where
he wrote the _Consolation of Philosophy_, and he was brutally put to death
in 524. His brief and busy life was marked by great literary achievement.
His learning was vast, his industry untiring, his object unattainable--
nothing less than the transmission to his countrymen of all the works of
Plato and Aristotle, and the reconciliation of their apparently divergent
views. To form the idea was a silent judgment on the learning of his day;
to realize it was more than one man could accomplish; but Boethius
accomplished much. He translated the [Greek: Eisagogae] of Porphyry, and
the whole of Aristotle's _Organon_. He wrote a double commentary on the
[Greek: Eisagogae] and commentaries on the _Categories_ and the _De
Interpretatione_ of Aristotle, and on the _Topica_ of Cicero. He also
composed original treatises on the categorical and hypothetical syllogism,
on Division and on Topical Differences. He adapted the arithmetic of
Nicomachus, and his textbook on music, founded on various Greek
authorities, was in use at Oxford and Cambridge until modern times. His
five theological _Tractates_ are here, together with the _Consolation of
Philosophy_, to speak for themselves.

Boethius was the last of the Roman philosoph