The Consolation of Philosophy
Forthcoming The translation of this work is in preparation and will be published in the library.
Introduction
Imprisoned and awaiting execution, Boethius is writing elegies of self-pity when a majestic woman appears at his bedside: Philosophy herself. She drives away the Muses of poetry, who only feed his grief, and begins to heal him in alternating prose and verse. Fortune's wheel has always turned, and you cannot accept her gifts without her changes; wealth, power and fame are not true happiness, which is the highest good, which is God; the wicked who seem to prosper are in truth the most wretched; and God's foreknowledge does not contradict human freedom. After the Bible it was the most widely read book of the Middle Ages, and King Alfred, Chaucer and Elizabeth I all translated it themselves.