ade against him. But it does perhaps
somewhat lessen his reputation for far-seeing statesmanship, since it
shows how thoroughly base and worthless was the body for whose sake he
sacrificed his loyalty to the new dynasty, how utterly unfit the Senate
would have been to take its old place as ruler of Italy, if Byzantine
Emperor and Ostrogothic King could have been blotted out of the
political firmament.

[Footnote 131: Boethius complains thus: "Now, at a distance of nearly
five hundred miles, unheard and undefended, I have been condemned to
death and proscription for my too enthusiastic love to the Senate".
Pavia, where he seems to have been first confined, was, according to the
Antonine Itinerary, 455 Roman miles from the capital.]

Boethius seems to have spent some months in prison after his trial, and
was perhaps transferred from Pavia to "the _ager Calventianus_", a few
miles from Milan. There at any rate he was confined when the messenger
of death sent by Theodoric found him. There is some doubt as to the mode
of execution adopted. One pretty good contemporary authority says that
he was beheaded, but the writer whom I have chiefly followed, who was
almost a contemporary, but a credulous one, says that torture was
applied, that a cord was twisted round his forehead till his eyes
started from their sockets, and that finally in the midst of his
torments he received the _coup de grace_ from a club.

In the interval which elapsed between the condemnation and the death of
this noble man, who died verily as a martyr for the great memories of
Rome, he had time to compose a book which exercised a powerful influence
on many of the most heroic spirits of the Middle Ages. This book, the
well-known, if not now often read, "Consolation of Philosophy", was
translated into English by King Alfred and by Geoffrey Chaucer, was
imitated by Sir Thomas More (whose history in some respects resembles
that of Boethius), and was translated into every tongue and found in
every convent library of mediaeval Europe. There is a great charm, the
charm of sadness, about many of its pages, and it may be considered from
one point of view as the swan's song of the dying Roman world and the
dying Greek philosophy, or from another, as the Book of Job of the new
mediaeval world which was to be born from the death of Rome. For like the
Book of Job, the "Consolation" is chiefly occupied with a discussion of
the eternal mystery why a Righteous and Almighty