The Consolation of Philosophy

life. The Goth Theodoric the Great, King of the Ostrogoths and ruler of Italy, judging that Boethius was as little capable of feigning a treason as of committing one, dispatched a Tribune to execute his death sentence; no sooner was this served to him than he proceeded to the place of execution as if he were marching toward a triumph. When he noticed one of his gentlemen-in-waiting, who was dissolving into tears, he commanded him to save them for the wretched, and to tell Symmachus Quintus Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, a Roman statesman and Boethius's father-in-law his father-in-law, and Rusticiana his wife, not to do anything unworthy of him in their weeping, since he was doing nothing unworthy of them in his dying. After these noble words, it was not long before he lost his head, which he gathered up from the ground, like a second Saint Denis The first Bishop of Paris, who, according to legend, carried his severed head after his execution (a "cephalophore"), and carried it before the altar of a nearby chapel, where he knelt to offer it to that great God whose cause he had just defended. Martian Likely referring to a medieval biographer or chronicler, who described his life, asserts that when someone asked him, seeing him in this posture, who had caused his death, he replied that it was the impious. One may still see his prison in Pavia today. It was in this somber dwelling that he composed this precious work of The Consolation The Consolation of Philosophy, written while Boethius awaited execution, wherein he introduces Philosophy, who proposes to him all the reasons that might soften an affliction,