Author: BOETHIUS. Anicii Manlii Torquati Severini Boethii:
Title: De Consolatione Philosophiae. Libre Quinaue. Editi á P[etro] Bertio. Accessit Ejusdem de Disciplina Scholarium liber.
Description: Lugdun[i] Batavor[um] Ex Off. Joan. Maire, 1633. 32mo (in 8s), 84 x 43 mms., pp. 256, including engraved title-page with image of Boethius, later 18th century maroon morocco, ornately gilt borders on covers, repeated on both inside boards surrounding a rectangular blank, gilt spine with decorated gilt scroll, all edges gilt. A fine and attractive copy. De Consolatione Philosophiae was written, as every schoolchild knows, while Boethius (c. 480 - 524) was in prison awaiting trial for treason, of which he was convicted and rather brutally executed. The work alternates between verse and prose, with Boethius speaking his own person in prose, and philosophy answering in verse. In his History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell, another philosopher who was imprisoned but not executed, writes of Boethius: "During the two centuries before his time and the ten centuries after it, I cannot think of any European man of learning so free from superstition and fanaticism. Nor are his merits merely negative; his survey is lofty, distinterested, and sublime. He would have been remarkable in any age; in the age in which he lived, he is utterly amazing."

Keywords: binding philosophy prose Offered to Garth Reese, 20 March 2017, Wash State, St. Louis


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