SOURCE: "Boethius and the Legacy of Antiquity," in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, edited by A. H. Armstrong, Cambridge at the University Press, 1967, pp. 538-64.

[In the following excerpt, the critic provides a survey of Boethius's importance in the history of philosophy, maintaining that the work of the Roman senator defines the point where antiquity ends and the Middle Ages begin.]

When we try to draw a borderline between antiquity and Middle Ages, in order to define the point where the history of medieval philosophy begins, the work of Boethius comes immediately to our mind. The last Roman and the first schoolman, the two titles with which he is normally introduced, express in their combination clearly his position between the two periods. His link with the Middle Ages is obviously very strong. Translations of two treatises from Aristotle's Organon, his introductions for the beginners and his commentaries and monographs for the advanced student of logic, have deeply influenced the course of medieval thought. In this development the gradual absorption of the Boethian legacy remained an important aspect up to and including the rise of early Scholasticism in the twelfth century. Through all the centuries of the Middle Ages De consolatione philosophiae, the Roman senator's final account with life, was a standard book, stimulating discussions among scholars, and a source of spiritual strength in critical situations. Hundreds of manuscripts, originating from the eighth to the fifteenth century, prove the importance of the Boethian corpus of writings in the libraries of Western and Central Europe.

But the history of his influence in the medieval world shows clearly that the Roman interpreter of Aristotle was not himself a part of it, but rather an intellectual force radiating from a distance. In life and thought Boethius still belonged to Christian antiquity. There is no doubt that he and his contemporaries felt the possibility of the end approaching and certainly such foreboding had a stimulating influence on their studies and literary activities. At this time Italy was ruled by a Germanic king, and his Ostrogoth ic retainers represented the power in the state as a warrior class. Theodoric, in his attitude to learning, may appear rather similar to Charlemagne, if we do not compare them too closely. Boethius was favoured by the court for many years and reached finally a high position as magister officiorum in this society, in which military power and administration were divided between the Gothic swordsmen and the literary Romans. But Boethius, in contrast to representatives of learning in the medieval world was not only a layman—examples of this type existed still in the Carolingian period—but he did not write for the education and religious instruction of the Germanic society by their clergy; he expected his readers to come from the educated class of the landowning aristocracy, to which Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius himself belonged by his family. Symmachus, his father-in-law, who had also been the mentor of his youth, was the great-grandson of the man who had pressed the claim to restore the altar of Victory to the council chamber of the Senate. At this time that meant conflict with Ambrosius in the name of belief in the classical tradition and in Roman greatness. The fifth century had brought about a definite change. The national pride of this class, the feeling of continuity with the past was still alive. But now they found their ancient ideal represented in the position of Rome as the head of the Christian world. They were eager to defend such aspirations against rival claims from Constantinople and in the secrecy of their hearts they refused to recognize the Gothic rulers as legal representatives of the res publica, because of their adherence to a heretical creed, Arianism. Their zeal for orthodox belief had a background of Roman patriotism.

This social environment is relevant to the understanding of Boethius' thought. To the modern reader of his books he certainly appears as a trained scholar and man of letters. But he did not see himself merely as a professional writer, but rather as a late follower of Cicero, for whom literary activities were an appropriate occupation for the leisure hours which high office and politics allowed him. After 550 years he intended to complete the great task which the master of Latinity had started, to renew philosophical learning in his own mother tongue.

Boethius was conscious of the fact that his great predecessor in this task had already faced the problem of finding the adequate equivalents for Greek terminology in a language which had grown by describing the concrete world of an agricultural community not originally interested in the theoretical aspects of things.

This task was carried on in schools, where literature was taught as a part of rhetorical education. Martianus Capel1a offers examples for the period about 400. The patristic writers of the Latin Church from Tertullian to Marius Victorinus and Augustine did the corresponding work in the service of speculative theology. But it was finally Boethius who established the vocabulary of abstraction with which the schoolmen of later generations could do their work.

The programme by which the Roman senator in Gothic Italy intended to complete Cicero's work was very comprehensive. He planned to translate the whole Aristotelian corpus, as far as it was still available to him. In this way he hoped to bring all three sections of philosophy, logic, ethics and natural science, in their full range to his countrymen. The next step in his scheme was the translation of all Platonic dialogues as basis for a synthesis of Platonism and Aristotelianism. He wished to refute the majority opinion, that the two great teachers of Greek philosophy were opposed to each other in the essentials of their thought.

When, in consequence of a radical change of political conditions, Theodoric's will brought violent death to Boethius, while he was still in his forties, all his work in this field had been restricted to the logical doctrines of Aristotle; nothing lasting had been accomplished regarding the translation of the Platonic dialogues. But this does not imply any siding with Aristotle. His disinclination to define an opinion on an issue which to most people seemed to contain the essential difference between the two systems, is expressed in a clear refusal to declare one master right and the other wrong. We read this famous passage in two versions, which appear in the first and second edition of his interpretation of Porphyry's Isagoge, the introduction to the elementary concepts of logic. In the Greek text the question of the nature of species and genus had been raised; the alternatives are surveyed: either they are, as concepts, mere products of the human mind, or they exist, either as material or as immaterial beings. Their existence may be inherent in the things which are the objects of our senses, or they may be separate. Porphyry had refused to discuss this question, because it would have led him to an investigation beyond his literary purpose of writing an elementary book on philosophy. Boethius goes beyond the text he explains by refuting the objection that universal propositions are fictitious, because nobody can see them. Nobody would maintain that a geometrical line is the same kind of fiction as the centaur, a compound of man and horse. We think of this mathematical conception as of something outside corporal existence, but we are conscious of the fact that we have abstracted it from our sense experience. In the same way 'species' exists in the objects of our observation, from which we collect the impression of similarity between different things. This similarity becomes a thought in our mind and so a 'species'. When we go on to compare different species and find similarity between them, 'genus' arises in the same way as a mental phenomenon. While we observe the similarity in single things it remains an object of our sense experience; but when it leads to an act of generalization it is transformed into the mental process of understanding: species and genus are inherent in objects of observation. But as instruments in the process of understanding reality they belong to the sphere of the mind as separate entities.

Boethius concludes this chapter by stating that Plato went beyond this view when he maintained the existence of species and genus not only in the act of understanding, but in reality. Aristotle's opinion is identical with the doctrine Boethius himself was giving as further explanation to Porphyry's text. He did so because the Isagoge is an introduction to an Aristotelian treatise. But Boethius emphasized that by doing so he did not mean to give a judgement on the question as such, which must be decided on a higher level of philosophical reflection.

This abstention from a subject-matter which seemed to lie beyond the scope of the endeavour which the author has in hand, corresponds well with the carefully organized programme in which one stage of work was planned to follow the other in logical sequence. Boethius, while writing these paragraphs in his commentary to Porphyry, could not foresee that 600 years later the alternatives, which he had left side by side without definite conclusion, would form the centres around which the opposite views of realists and nominalists in the important debate on the nature of concepts would crystallize.

But the impact of Boethius' logical work on the development of Western thought is no product of historical chance. The bias of higher education towards rhetoric, which can be traced back to the sophist and the early Hellenistic period, had brought dialectic into the service of literary activities as a part of the trivium. The subject was planned to train the student in the shaping of a persuasive forensic argument rather than in methods for establishing truth scientifically. Boethius, as an author of textbooks on the liberal arts, avoided dealing with the trivium. He translated and compiled from the Greek in order to produce up-to-date Latin textbooks for the quadrivium, the mathematical sciences of numbers and bodies, of immobility and motion. The manuals on Arithmetic and on musical theory survived and had a long history in the schools. In connexion with these scientific interests he was also considered as an expert on a technical problem. Theodoric thought him well equipped by his studies to design a waterclock, which he wished to send to the Burgundian King Gundobad, his brother-in-law.

This attitude of mind, unusual in the Latin West, had also an influence on his extensive logical studies; they were taken out of their usual literary context and brought back to their original philosophical meaning of examining man's instrument for the understanding of his world. The function of higher education in the earlier Middle Ages was essentially to preserve a class of men capable of understanding Latin. The emphasis was no longer on speechmaking but on the writing of letters and documents, but the general aim of rhetorical training, which had made logic a part of the trivium, remained valid. We shall see later how the existence of Boethius' logical writings in the libraries and their use in schools was fitted into this framework of education. But their potential force as instruments for the investigation of truth did not remain latent for ever. Their fuller assimilation during the eleventh century was a factor in the rise of the scholastic method, and prepared the way for the full understanding and use of the whole Aristotelian organon during the twelfth century.

The strongest reason for tracing the origin of scholasticism back to Boethius is derived from his application of Aristotelian terminology to the definition of trinitarian doctrine. Not only Carolingian scholars and Gilbert de la Porée, but also Thomas Aquinas wrote commentaries to his theological treatises, and E. K. Rand went so far as to say that Boethius was perhaps only prevented by his early death from anticipating in his own way the great synthesis brought about by the Dominican master of the thirteenth century. In our context we cannot attempt to define the position of Boethius in the history of theological thought by measuring the distance which separates the Roman author at the end of Antiquity from his commentator in the thirteenth century. But we must try to sketch the relationship between philosophy and Christian belief in Boethius' mind as a necessary presupposition for the understanding of the book De consolatione philosophiae, which, on the strength of its theistic piety and Christian ethics, became a medieval classic. It is well known that its author has avoided any formulation which would declare an exclusively Christian belief and any clear reference to biblical or ecclesiastical authority. As long as the authorship of the theological treatises was disputed, this character of his final confession could be explained by the assumption that Boethius had always been a Christian only in name in order to fulfil the legal condition for holding high office in Rome. But the discovery of a short fragment from a writing by Cassiodorus about the men of letters related to his own family, has barred this easy way out of the difficulty.

The situation in which the Roman senator and philosopher entered the field of theological controversy has been reconstructed by recent research. Between 513 and 519 negotiations were going on for liquidating the schism between east and west, which more than thirty years earlier had arisen out of controversies about the definition of the two natures in Christ. A complicating element in the dispute of doctrines was the appearance of an ethnic group of monks from the lower Danube who, in order to reconcile the monophysite opinion of the East with Roman teaching, pressed for the inclusion of the formula unus de trinitate passus est in any proposed agreement. To the subject of this dispute, which combined subtle questions of doctrine with problems of political control and power, Boethius contributed four short theological treatises in 512 and 522. They were a kind of experiment, in which he applied the philosophical concepts, to which he had dedicated his studies, in order to define more clearly and persuasively the doctrine, once proclaimed by the council of Chalcedon under the influence of Pope Leo I. In this way he gave his support to the programme on which his Roman circle under the leadership of Symmachus wished to establish unity between east and west. They were successful in 519, when, after the death of the Emperor Anastasius, the new Byzantine regime under the influence of the future ruler Justinian decided to give in to Rome on the question of doctrine.

Boethius' intervention in the dogmatic debate was encouraged by Augustine's interpretation of the Trinity in philosophical terms. Boethius uses the concepts of substance and relation, which he had discussed thoroughly in his Aristotelian studies, to explain the dogma. The divine substance represents unity, relation within this unity is the presupposition of Trinity.

An investigation of the concepts natura and persona leads to the definition that nature is the specific peculiarity of every substance, while persona is the indivisible substance of a rational nature. In this way philosophical terminology renders Nestorius' doctrine of the two persons in Christ meaningless. At the end of one of the three treatises which were dedicated by Boethius to the deacon John, he asks his clerical friend whether he thinks these arguments agree with the teaching of the Church. In case John should not be able to give such assurance, he is requested to work out, if possible, another and more correct rational interpretation of faith. Boethius is conscious of the fact that this philosophical inquiry about theological questions cannot go beyond a certain point, but he adds that such a borderline also exists in other fields.

He knows well that he comes to theology as an outsider, who sees an opportunity of applying the resources of his own field of study, and cannot expect anything like general recognition. But he feels strongly that his own philosophical approach gives him superiority over the average ecclesiastic, the figure that dominates the council discussions, which do not even touch the surface of the subject. He gives in one preamble a short report on such a meeting, where he fell silent, because the pretensions of the ignorant controversialists impressed him like madness. But the problem of defining the right position between the heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches made his mind work; finally he formed a logically organized argument, which he submitted to the judgement of John, his theological expert.

There is no sign that any form of conversion or of Spiritual progress has led Boethius at this stage definitely away from philosophy, demoting his former studies to the stage of preparatory exercises. The concepts which he applies have not become for him mere reminiscences from the propaedeutics of his rhetorical school or from reading, which have led him on the way to the Church, to ecclesiastical duties or monastic vocation. He remains a man of the world who writes theological treatises. In this respect his mentality is different from that of the authors who represent our main sources for the history of religious thought in the Latin world of Christian antiquity and the Middle Ages. This peculiarity of Boethius' career may be relevant to the understanding of his intention in writing De consolatione philosophiae.

We summarize first the relevant facts about the circumstances which led to Boethius writing this book in prison, while waiting for Theodoric's decision on his own fate after his condemnation to death. The ecclesiastical settlement between Rome and Constantinople in 519 had removed a strong motive for the city aristocracy's loyalty towards the Gothic regime. But the situation in Italy did not deteriorate immediately. Three years later co-operation between Byzantium and Ravenna still seemed better than before. But in 523 the charge was raised against Boethius of having given support to a plot of Roman aristocrats with Constantinople to overthrow the Gothic dynasty; the judgement of a special court was confirmed by a frightened and compliant senate.

The story of the catastrophe is given without consideration for personalities in high position by Boethius to personified Philosophia in the first book of De consolatione. The outbreak of open hostility against Arianism and its freedom of worship in the Byzantine empire came after the end of Boethius. But we can assume that Theodoric at the moment of his action against the senatorial group had already some information about the preparation for this turn of religious policy and its impact on the loyalty of the Romans. Under these circumstances the reunification which ended the conflict between Constantinople and Rome, a result which Boethius had tried to strengthen by his theological writing, took on a different and more sinister look. The ecclesiastical element in the political conflict which led to Boethius' catastrophe is the genuine core in the ancient tradition that Boethius died as a martyr.

The idea that philosophy is called in to help in mastering a grave misfortune suffered by the author himself did not represent the usual convention of shaping the literary genus of consolatio. Normally such tractates were dedicated to another person in distress. When Cicero, after the death of his daughter, retired for some time from public life in order to recover quietness of mind by philosophical reflections, he observed that nobody before him had done so. Cicero had been an inspiring influence for Boethius in the earlier stages of his intellectual career, and he remained also the most important example for his final retreat to philosophy.

The book is a great dialogue between Boethius and Philosophia. When a certain result is reached, the preceding section is summarized in the form of a poem, in which the author tries to adapt the metre to the contents.

The same literary form had been taken up a hundred years earlier in the pseudo-apocalyptic introduction to Martianus Capella's encyclopaedia. The aim of the whole work is to discover the motives of the human soul's alienation from its genuine self and to point the way back from shadow to truth.

Philosophia starts with the assumption that the man whom she finds in prison still believes in the power of divine providence to establish and preserve the cosmic order, but that he sees in his personal fate only the cruel work of Fortuna's varying moods. But there is no real change in the character of this power when a good time is followed by evil days. Every gift of fate which makes the external life richer, contains necessarily an element of instability and induces man to forget what gives its real value to human existence. This theme is developed with the examples and the framework which were readily available from antiquity in the popular ethics of the diatribe. This section reaches its final conclusion with the statement that the good things of the world can only be right if they are accepted as gifts from the divine creator. In this context the fundamental idea of Plato's Timaeus is introduced in the poem III m. 9 which praises the creation of heaven and earth, man and animals in the harmony of the elements, as a witness to the goodness without envy which defines God. The medieval scholars in their commentaries have often seen in this poem, in which modern analysis has traced the influence of pagan liturgical literature, the core of De consolatione. It certainly offers the transition from the critical examination of secular values to theological ideas. The poem ends with a request that the divine creator may give strength to the human mind to find the way back out of the world to its origin.

The creation of the world by God means that there is no room for evil as a genuine reality, because there can be no being in opposition to divine providence. In defence of this optimistic interpretation against everyday experience, exemplified by Boethius' situation in the dungeon, Plato's argument in the Gorgias is used: there are evildoers in the world so powerful that they are beyond punishment. Nobody will stop their doings. But God has created man in such a way that evil itself is punishment, because it destroys the essence of the human soul and leaves only an empty shell.

This argument leaves unsolved the question why visitations, which are intended as chastisements for the criminal, strike the just man, who would prefer to continue his way of life undisturbed and in honour. This objection leads to the first of two metaphysical investigations on the structure of providence, which form the last part of De consolatione. At this point Philosophy emphasizes that a new line of thought has to be taken up. The transient affairs of our life have their origin in the stability of divine nature and its lasting simplicity. This centre of all events is providence in its purity. When we turn our observation to the periphery and try to see the realization of God's will in the changing pattern of things, we use quite correctly the ancient term 'fate'. All the infinite variety and multitude of phenomena in macrocosmos and microcosmos are comprehended in providence, but fate is the instrument allocating to every individual thing its special place and its special moment in time. Divine providence knows neither the one nor the other type of differentiation. This hierarchical subordination of fate to divine will and the concepts by which they are contrasted points clearly to a Neoplatonic origin.

But this philosophical doctrine appears here in a very simplified form, which allows it to avoid any deviation from biblical monotheism. Boethius emphasizes in this context the irrelevance of all concepts which describe the forces mediating between God and the variety of experience. Man's life is placed under the power of fate, but he is nevertheless able to turn from the periphery to the centre and to approach God directly without the intervention of cosmic forces, and so to escape from the pressure of necessity into freedom.

This idea of freedom also remains the theme in the long investigation by which De consolatione is concluded. The objection is raised that God's infallible prescience, which is an undeniable aspect of his providence, must frustrate man's liberty to act according to his own decisions. The answer starts with some reflections on the causal effect of knowledge on the event which forms its object. When we see a charioteer in the circus drive his horse as he thinks fit so as to win the race, our observation of his activities will in no way restrict his freedom of decision. Prescience does not differ from observation of events in the moment when they happen, as far as the lack of causal effect is concerned.

Against this argument the objection is raised that prescience of an event, which possibly might not happen, cannot be classified as knowledge, but only as opinion, and would therefore be quite unacceptable as an aspect of divine providence. But to argue in this way would mean misinterpreting the character of divine prescience, which is determined by eternity as an inherent quality. The implication of this attribute is made clear by a discussion of its contrast, the time process, which recalls very much the corresponding passages in Augustine's Confessiones. It is impossible for the individual existence to comprehend itself as a whole in one of the fleeting moments through which it passes from past to future. If one believes in the infinity of time, as Aristotle did, eternity is only imitated, without its essential quality. The quietness of eternity is transformed into a movement which has no beginning and no end. Unchanging simplicity appears degenerated into an infinite variety. For this reason it is wrong to blame Plato, because in his Timaeus he has not linked the process of creation to a definite time. His critics are wrong when they assume that the Attic philosopher, in doing so, makes the world co-eternal with God. Their assumption presupposes that the difference between creator and creature can be measured by the duration of time, while in reality eternity can only be understood as something beyond and above the course of time.

For this reason the character of God's knowledge is not influenced by the fact that every human action is preceded by a moment of uncertainty, in which the freedom of choice is exercised. The degradation of knowledge to opinion cannot take place in God's eternity. For the same reason divine prescience does not interfere with the sequence of human decision and action, which runs its course as a part of the time process.

The conversion, from the dependence on Fortuna and her external goods, to God as the only final value, does not imply a surrender of human freedom to a power which predestinates everything by knowing it before it happens. In God's view there is no difference of before and after. So ends Philosophia's message to the prisoner.

The most controversial question raised by the book in the mind of readers was always about the religious tendency of Boethius' philosophy. The range of the modern solution is marked by two answers at the opposite ends. Rand, who had done a great deal of spadework for the understanding of Boethius' writings, does not admit any serious problem. For him the Christian spirituality of this theistic philosophy disperses any serious doubts about the author's faith and intention which the lack of quotations from the Bible and ecclesiastical writings might raise. Boethius has tried out how far unaided reason is able to approach religious truth. If Theodoric had spared his life, Boethius might have supplemented the De consolatione by a second book demonstrating the complete harmony between the religious conclusions of his reason with revealed truth. This assumption implies that the design of Boethius' De consolatione was dictated by a methodical consideration of the parallelism of reason and revelation, which would have anticipated the thought-form of medieval scholasticism. The other alternative was recently formulated by Professor Momigliano, according to whom Boethius abandoned Christianity at the end of his life and, under the pressure of his experiences, returned to philosophy as the pagan way to human salvation.

The principle that Christian truth can be proved by philosophical argument, without any recourse to ecclesiastical tradition, had been established by the apologists in their attempts to win over educated opinion outside the Church. Lactantius' discreet circumscriptions of Christian concepts in his first treatise De opificio Dei is a good example of the tactical purpose of this method of defending the faith. Boethius had certainly no reason to introduce Christian truth in such disguise, and the situation which determined his work excludes any idea that he might have had in mind a plan to redevelop the doctrinal contents of revelation in a second work parallel to De consolatione. That in his four genuine theological treatises he attempted to find philosophical expressions for the central doctrine of the Christian faith, when it seemed helpful for the ecclesiastical cause to do so, does not form any basis for the assumption that De consolatione was designed as the section on rational theology in a system of revealed truth.

On the other hand, we cannot well overlook the fact that for his final confession he selected those ideas from the philosophical tradition which expressed essential features of Christian spirituality and ethics. Augustine's theoretical world-picture was still near to his thought, although he avoided any application leading to definite ecclesiastical doctrine. It is difficult to imagine that in the sixth century a former Christian should have written such a work in order to express renunciation of his faith by identifying philosophy with paganism in his mind as Symmachus in the fourth century had linked rational theism with the traditional worship of the Roman people.

The assumption of a real break at the end of Boethius' life would have greater force if we had to accept the treatise called De fide Catholica, which summarizes the history of salvation in theological, not philosophical terms, as a genuine work expressing Boethius' attitude a few years before he wrote De consolatione. The manuscript evidence allows for arguments on both sides. Differences of vocabulary and style between De fide and the four genuine treatises have been accounted for by the contrast in the subject-matter. But, while such differences can be easily understood in a case like that of Tacitus writing both the dialogue on the rhetor's education and the two small historical essays, it would be very difficult to find room for a purely theological composition in Boethius' intellectual career.

We saw that his literary activity in all periods of his life had centred around the task of preserving the legacy of ancient philosophy. His preference for the abstract problems of Aristotelian logic made any possibility of conflict between rational thought and the doctrines of Christian faith remote. When he used his intellectual equipment to give literary support to the cause of Roman orthodoxy and ecclesiastical unity, religious and patriotic motives were inseparably fused in the loyalty of his allegiance. We saw how this contribution to the unity of West and East by a prominent Roman aristocrat became politically suspicious at the moment when the future of the Gothic dynasty was menaced.

But we do not know whether the abstention from anything definitely ecclesiastical in doctrine and language was caused to some degree by the author's hope of turning his fate by giving the impression of philosophical neutrality to the Arian court at Ravenna. The very outspoken style of his political justification in book I seems, however, to contradict the assumption that such considerations of prudence played a predominant part in the shaping of De consolatione. On the other hand, the feeling of deep disappointment with the attitude of the Roman senate is clearly reflected in the work. Boethius had once applied philosophy to theology, acting as speaker for this body, who now had forsaken him. This experience did not change his deepest conviction, the belief in the harmony of philosophy and religious faith, but it made him refrain from the treatment of such problems and the use of any terminology which could lead a man into the sphere of political controversy. It was certainly the purpose of De consolatione to show the way of liberation from entanglement in the strife for power. His limitation to the expression of his faith in theistic universalism allowed him to avoid all problems which had become issues in the conflict between individuals and groups. That he knew patristic writings which followed a similar course, especially the early dialogues of Augustine, made this attitude easier. Boethius could neglect the fact that his circumstances and motive were different from those of the Fathers of the Church. That he was able to undertake such a task in the way he did was made possible by his contacts with the Hellenic East; here lies the key to his entire achievement.

The assumption that he was once a student in Athens has been ruled out by the consideration that it was based on a metaphorical description of his renewal of philosophy in the eulogistic letter of Cassiodorus. A further hypothesis that he spent his youth in Alexandria, where his father would have held high office, cannot be firmly established and does not fit in very well with the documentation of Boethius' life and career. On the other hand, the evidence that the Roman senator's unique intellectual position can only be accounted for by an intimate contact with Alexandrian thought and learning is very strong.

We must admit, it seems, that we simply do not know the way by which the Roman aristocrat acquired his extensive knowledge of language, methods and doctrines characteristic of contemporary Hellenic scholarship: in any case, the results were of lasting historical importance.

The spirit of scientific inquiry was very lively in Alexandria during the late fifth and the first half of the sixth century. The principles on which the right understanding of nature must be based were subjects of eager discussion. John Philoponus, who disputed Aristotle's dichotomy of heaven and sublunar world and aimed at a uniform explanation of the cosmos in physical terms, was a younger contemporary of Boethius, but in no way the first who introduced such themes among the scholars of this late period of Greek Alexandria. When the Roman philosopher's scientific interest enabled him to emancipate logic from the purely literary scope of the trivium, he did so in harmony with the ideas prevalent in the Greek thought of his days. But recent research, especially by Courcelle, has proved that the contacts between Boethius and the leading teachers of the Alexandrian school have left much more concrete results. The Egyptian centre of philosophical studies had shown a strong tendency to concentrate its main effort on the textual interpretation of the two classical authors, Plato and Aristotle. This approach corresponded to the interest in the critical study of authors which was rooted in local tradition of long standing. Moreover, there was the influence of an important section among the pupils, who wished to supplement their Christian belief by a training in abstract thought. Their purpose could easily collide with the tendency in the development of Neoplatonic speculation of combining philosophy with the defence of Polytheism. The safest way to avoid such serious friction was the return to the objective task of explaining the classic masters. This situation led also to emphasis on Aristotelian studies, especially on his Organon; while the tradition of the Alexandrian school prevented any refutation of Plato in favour of his master pupil. It is obvious that the comprehensive programme for his life's work, which Boethius has drawn up, corresponds to the syllabus of Alexandrian studies.

But the most intimate influence of the Alexandrian masters can be traced in De comolatione. The simplification of the hierarchical world picture, by which Boethius removed an important difference between the Neoplatonic theory of emanation and Christian monotheism, was already prepared for him by his Alexandrian sources. Here the theological interpretation of the demiurge in Plato's Timaeus by Ammonius allowed man to face God without mediating powers. The same author, a pupil of Proclus, had incorporated in commentaries to Aristotle's logical and scientific works speculations on the relationship of God's eternal decision to the fluctuations of fate, as well as the investigation on the compatibility of divine providence and human freedom which made it possible for Boethius to find an adequate expression for his Christian piety in purely philosophical concepts. Fifth-century Alexandria had also brought forth reinterpretations of Plato's Gorgias; the tendency of this dialogue corresponded closely to what De consolatione intended to teach about the relationship of human sin and happiness. While denying that the world's creation had happened in time, Boethius safeguarded an important axiom of theism by differentiating between God's eternity and the permanence of the world. By doing so, he accepted again a tradition from Alexandria as consistent with his own religion. His whole plan excluded the possibility of discussing in his context the Church's difficulty with a theory which would not allow the first two chapters of Genesis to be understood literally. In this way Boethius' discipleship to the Alexandrian school offered to later generations in a less sophisticated world stimulating but also puzzling problems.