For more than a millennium, Martianus Capella’s only extant work, The Marriage of Philology and Mercury (c. 425), was among the most popular books in western Europe.27 In the first two chapters, The Marriage relates the story, told by an old man to his son, of how the god Mercury chooses Philology, an erudite young woman, to be his bride. At the wedding banquet in the heavens, Mercury presents his bride with seven learned handmaids personifying the seven liberal arts. In each of the final seven chapters, one of the seven learned women is introduced and describes her art. Extolling Cicero and drawing upon a lost encyclopedia of Marcus Terentius Varro (116–c. 27 B.C.), Martianus warns against too intensive or lengthy study of dialectic, and presents the mathematical arts as compilations of factual information. Fundamentally, the nuptial allegory teaches the Ciceronian lesson embraced by Augustine: the liberal arts provide the means for joyfully attaining the divinely sanctioned goal of uniting eloquence (Mercury) and learning (Philology).
Aside from the wish to display his scanty learning drawn from handbooks and encyclopedias of the time, Martianus’s intentions are often understood in two ways. In one respect, The Marriage can be taken as a textbook for the preparatory education of the citizen having leisure to study; in another respect, when the description of liberal arts in the last seven books is combined with the allegorical mélange of metaphysics and theology in the first two books, it can be regarded as a compilation of knowledge. Neither interpretation is wholly satisfactory, however, because the scope of the work is too wide for a school text and too narrow for an encyclopedia. Taken together, these two interpretations suggest that The Marriage presents the sum total of education necessary for the citizen with leisure to study. Confirmation lies in the fact that Martianus stopped at seven liberal arts and explicitly excluded the practical and technical arts of medicine and architecture that Varro had included.28
Whatever Martianus’s intentions, Christians, after excising the first two books of pagan mythology, began to cite, teach, copy, and finally claim The Marriage as their own. Thus, Gregory of Tours in the sixth century urged leaders of the Church to study the “seven disciplines” of “our Martianus.”29 In this way, the treatise became renowned among teachers of the liberal arts during the middle ages, and its themes and motifs reappeared in the treatises, literature, sculpture, and painting of Western Europe.30 The notoriety of The Marriage extended into the early modern era. The Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) published a new edition, and the German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) planned a translation. Nevertheless, by the twentieth century, readers often found it arcane if not “insipid.”31 The authors of the modern critical translation and commentary of The Marriage observe, “the reader is immediately at a loss to explain how a book so dull and difficult could have been one of the most popular books of Western Europe.”32
More recently, questions have been raised about the ironical personification of the liberal arts as women, who were often thought to be incapable of studying the arts and excluded from study of them. Martianus’s The Marriage and the subsequent selections pose graphically the question of how to interpret the female representation of the liberal arts.
[5] [Mercury], then, was moved . . . by the reciprocity of love among the gods; at the same time he saw what was clear to many people—love and marriages being universally celebrated. He too decided to get married. His mother had encouraged him in this inclination when, on his yearly journey through the zodiac, he greeted her in the company of the Pleiades. She was concerned about him, especially because his body, through the exercise of wrestling and constant running, glowed with masculine strength and bore the muscles of a youth perfectly developed. Already with the first beard on his cheeks, he could not continue to go about half naked, clad in nothing but a short cape covering only the top of his shoulders—such a sight caused [Venus] great amusement. With all this in mind he decided to marry.
[6] Because of the importance of the venture, he pondered a great deal on whom he ought to marry. He himself ardently desired Wisdom, because she was prudent and holy, and purer and fairer than the other maidens. However, she was his sister’s [Athena] foster sister and seemed to be inseparably devoted to her, and seemed therefore to have espoused virginity herself; he accordingly decided not to marry her, as this would offend [Athena]. In the same way, the splendid beauty of Prophecy inflamed his desires. She was nobly born, being the eldest daughter of Forethought, and her farsighted and penetrating wisdom commended her to him. But at that very time, as it happened, she went of her own accord to young Apollo and, unable to endure her inordinate passion, she became his lover.
[7] He wanted then to ask Psyche, the daughter of Entelechia and Sol, because she was extremely beautiful and the gods had taken great care over her education. . . . [After considering several possible brides, Mercury settles on Philologia,34 who agrees to marry him and to live among the gods.]
[99] At length, when she learned the decrees of the gods, Philology, wakeful though the night was now far advanced, pondered long and anxiously with great concern. First she must enter the heavenly assembly, and she must be examined by [Jupiter] without preparation, and she must migrate to the heavens and to the gods’ way of life. [100] Then again, she was to be united to [Mercury], whom admittedly she had always desired with a remarkable passion, but whom she had barely glimpsed while she was picking blooms amongst certain select little herbs35 and he was running back after being anointed for exercise. What is this? Was she anxiously wondering whether this grand marriage was in her own interest? She had a fear, not without substance, that after she had ascended to the sky, she would forgo altogether the myths and legends of mankind, those charming poetic diversities of the Milesian tales. . . . [Ultimately, Philology decided to marry Mercury.]
[209] Jupiter was now sitting there with Juno and all the gods, on white benches placed on a great dais, waiting for the nuptial party to approach. He heard the voices of the Muses and the sweet strains of varied songs as the maiden drew near, and so he ordered [Mercury] to come forward. [210] [Bacchus] and [Phoebus],36 [Mercury’s] fondest and loyal brothers, and . . . all the divine progeny of [Jupiter] were in attendance on him. [211] The guardians of the elements followed the progress of [Mercury], as did a glorious assembly of angelic beings and the souls of the ancients who attained celestial bliss and had earned temples in heaven.37 [212] Linus, Homer, and [Vergil] were to be seen there, wearing crowns and chanting their poems; Orpheus and Aristoxenus were playing their lyres; Plato and Archimedes made golden spheres rotate. [213] Heraclitus was afire, Thales was soaked with moisture,38 and Democritus appeared surrounded with atoms. Pythagoras of Samos was cogitating certain celestial numbers. Aristotle with the utmost care was seeking Entelechia throughout the heights of heaven.39 Epicurus was carrying roses mixed with violets and all the allurements of pleasure. Zeno was leading a woman who practiced foresight, Arcesilaus was examining the neck of a dove,40 and a whole crowd of Greeks were singing discordantly; yet, loud as they were, they could not be heard through the harmonious songs of the Muses.
[214] As [Mercury] approached and entered, the whole senate of the gods rose in honor, to his exaltation. Jupiter himself sat him down next to himself, with [Athena] on Mercury’s right. [215] After a brief interval, Philology was brought in, surrounded by the Muses, with her mother walking ahead of her. . . . [217] Then her mother arose and asked of [Jupiter] and all the gods that whatever [Mercury] had prepared in the way of a dowry should be handed over in the sight of all, and then that a gift should be given by the maiden, and after that, let them permit the recital of the [marriage] laws. [218] In reply to this most reasonable plea, the senate of the gods decreed that the offerings should be approved in the full assembly of heaven. Now Phoebus arose, without usurping his brother’s duty, and he began to bring forward, one by one, chosen members of [Mercury’s] household, women who shone with a beauty in every way equal to their raiment.
[223] So [Apollo brought] forward from her former place one of the servants of Mercury, an old woman indeed but of great charm, who said that she had been born in [Egypt]41 when Osiris was still king;42 when she had been a long time in hiding, she was found and brought up by [Mercury] himself. This woman claimed that in Attica, where she had lived and prospered for the greater part of her life, she moved about in Greek dress; but because of the Latin gods and the Capitol and the race of Mars and the descendants of Venus, according to the custom of Romulus, she entered the senate of the gods dressed in a Roman cloak. She carried in her hands a polished box, a fine piece of cabinetmaking, which shone on the outside with light ivory, from which like a skilled physician the woman took out the emblems of wounds that need to be healed.
[224] Out of this box she took first a pruning knife with a shining point, with which she said she could prune the faults of pronunciation in children; then they could be restored to health with a certain black powder carried through reeds, a powder which was thought to be made of ash or the ink of cuttlefish. Then she took out a very sharp medicine which she had made of fennelflower and the clippings from a goat’s back, a medicine of purest red color, which she said should be applied to the throat when it was suffering from bucolic ignorance and was blowing out the vile breaths of corrupt pronunciation. She showed too a delicious savory, the work of many late nights and vigils, with which she said the harshness of the most unpleasant voice could be made melodious. [225] She also cleaned the windpipes and the lungs by the application of a medicine in which were observed wax smeared on beechwood and a mixture of gallnuts and gum and rolls of [papyrus]. Although this poultice was effective in assisting memory and attention, yet by its nature it kept people awake. [226] She also brought out a file fashioned with great skill, which was divided into eight golden parts joined in different ways,43 and which darted back and forth—with which by gentle rubbing she gradually cleaned dirty teeth and ailments of the tongue and the filth which had been picked up in the town of Sol [solecisms].
[227] She is reckoned to know by the effort of frequent calculations these arcane poems and manifold rhythms. Whenever she accepted pupils, it was her custom to start them with the noun. She mentioned also how many cases could cause faults or could be declined accurately. Then, appealing to her pupils’ powers of reasoning, she firmly held the different classes of things and the words for them, so that the pupils would not change one name for another, as often happens with those who need her attention. Then she used to ask them the moods of the verbs and their tenses and the figures, and she ordered others, on whom complete dullness and inert laziness had settled, to run through the steps and to climb upon as many works as possible, treading on the prepositions or conjunctions or participles, and to be exercised to exhaustion with every kind of skill.
[228] . . . So she was asked for her name and her profession and an explanation of her whole field of study. [229] As if it was normal for her to explain what had been asked and easy to tell what was wanted of her, she modestly and decently folded back her cloak from her right hand and began: “In Greece I am called Grammatiké, because a line is called grammé and letters are called grammata and it is my province to form the letters in their proper shapes and lines. For this reason Romulus gave me the name Litteratura, although when I was a child he had wanted to call me Litteratio, just as amongst the Greeks I was at first called Grammatistiké; and then Romulus gave me a priest and collected some boys to be my attendants. Nowadays my advocate is called Litteratus, who was formerly called Litterator. . . . Such a man was called by the Greeks Grammatodidaskalos.
[230] My duty in the early stages was to read and write correctly, but now there is the added duty of understanding and criticizing knowledgeably.44 These two aspects seem to me to be shared with the philosophers and the critics. . . .
[327] Into the assembly of the gods came Dialectic, a woman whose weapons are complex and knotty utterances.45 Without her, nothing follows, and likewise, nothing stands in opposition. She brought with her the elements of speech; and she had ready the school maxim which reminds us that speech consists in words which are ambiguous, and judges nothing as having a standard meaning unless it be combined with other words. Yet, though Aristotle himself pronounce his twice-five categories and grow pale as he tortures himself in thought; though the sophisms of the Stoics beset and tease the senses, as they wear on their foreheads the horns they never lost;46 though Chrysippus heap up and consume his own pile, and Carneades match his mental power through use of hellebore,47 no honor so great as this has ever befallen any of these sons of men, nor is it chance that so great an honor has fallen to your lot; it is your right, Dialectic, to speak in the realms of the gods, and to act as teacher in the presence of [Jupiter].
[328] So at [Phoebus’] summons this woman entered, rather pale but very keen-sighted.48 Her eyes constantly darted about; her intricate coiffure seemed beautifully curled and bound together, and descending by successive stages,49 it so encompassed the shape of her whole head that you could not have detected anything lacking, nor grasped anything excessive. She was wearing the dress and cloak of Athens, it is true, but what she carried in her hands was unexpected, and had been unknown in all the Greek schools. In her left hand she held a snake twined in immense coils; in her right hand a set of patterns carefully inscribed on wax tablets, which were adorned with the beauty of contrasting color, was held on the inside by a hidden hook; but since her left hand kept the crafty device of the snake hidden under her cloak, her right hand was offered to one and all. Then if anyone took one of those patterns, he was soon caught on the hook and dragged toward the poisonous coils of the hidden snake, which presently emerged and after first biting the man relentlessly with the venomous points of its sharp teeth then gripped him in its many coils and compelled him to the intended position.50 If no one wanted to take any of the patterns, Dialectic confronted them with some questions; or secretly stirred the snake to creep up on them until its tight embrace strangled those who were caught and compelled them to accept the will of the interrogator.
[329] Dialectic herself was compact in body, dark in appearance, with thick bushy hair on her limbs, and she kept saying things that the majority could not understand. For she claimed that the universal affirmative was diametrically opposed to the particular negative, but it was possible for them both to be reversed by connecting ambiguous terms to univocal terms;51 she claimed also that she alone discerned what was true from what was false, as if she spoke with assurance of divine inspiration. [330] She said that she had been brought up on an Egyptian crag and then had migrated to Attica to the school of Parmenides, and there, while the slanderous report was spread abroad that she was devoted to deceitful trickery, she had taken to herself the greatness of Socrates and Plato.
[331] This was the woman, well-versed in every deceptive argument and glorying in her many victories, whom [Mercury’s] two-fold serpent, rising on his staff, tried to lick at, constantly darting its tongues, while [Athena’s] Gorgon hissed with the joy of recognition. . . . [S]he was the most sharp-witted, and could not be scorned when she uttered her assertions. But [Athena] ordered Dialectic to hand over those items which she had brought to illustrate her sharpness and her deadly sure assertions, and told her to put on an appearance suitable for imparting her skill.
[333] Grammar was standing close by when the introduction was completed; but she was afraid to accept the coils and gaping mouth of the slippery serpent. Together with the enticing patterns and the rules fitted with the hook, they were entrusted to [Athena]. Thus Dialectic stood revealed as a genuine Athenian . . . by the beauty of her hair and especially because she was attended by a crowd in Greek dress, the chosen youth of Greece, who were filled with wonder at the woman’s wisdom and intelligence. But, for assessing virtue as well as practicing it, Jupiter considered the levity of the Greeks inferior to the vigor of [the Romans], so he ordered her to unfold her field of knowledge in Latin eloquence. [334] Dialectic did not think she could express herself adequately in Latin;52 but presently her confidence increased, the movements of her eyes were confined to a slight quivering, and, formidable as she had been even before she uttered a word, she began to speak as follows:
[335] “Unless amid the glories of the Latin tongue the learning and labor of my beloved and famous Varro had come to my aid, I could have been found to be a Greek by the test of Latin speech, or else completely uncultivated or even quite barbarous. Indeed, after the golden flow of Plato and the brilliance of Aristotle it was [Varro’s] labors which first enticed me into Latin speech and made it possible for me to express myself throughout the schools of [Italy]. [336] I shall therefore strive to obey my instructions and, without abandoning the Greek order of discussion, I shall not hesitate to express my propositions in [Latin]. First, I want you to realize that the toga-clad Romans have not been able to coin a name for me, and that I am called Dialectic just as in Athens: and whatever the other Arts propound is entirely under my authority. [337] Not even Grammar herself, whom you have just heard and approved, nor the lady renowned for the richness of her eloquence, nor the one who draws various diagrams on the ground with her rod, can unfold her subject without using my reasoning.”53 . . .
[425] Meantime the trumpets sounded, their strident song pierced the sky and heaven reechoed with an unfamiliar din; the gods were frightened and confused, the host of heaven’s minor inhabitants quaked. . . . [426] But while a great group of the earth-gods was disturbed by such thoughts, in strode a woman of the tallest stature and abounding self-confidence, a woman of outstanding beauty; she wore a helmet, and her head was wreathed with royal grandeur; in her hands the arms with which she used either to defend herself or to wound her enemies, shone with the brightness of lightning. The garment under her arms was covered by a robe wound about her shoulders in the Latin fashion; this robe was adorned with the light of all kinds of devices and showed the figures of them all, while she had a belt under her breast adorned with the rarest colors of jewels. [427] When she clashed her weapons on entering, you would say that the broken booming of thunder was rolling forth with the shattering clash of a lightning cloud; indeed it was thought that she could hurl thunderbolts like [Jupiter].54 For like a queen with power over everything, she could drive any host of people where she wanted and draw them back from where she wanted; she could sway them to tears and whip them to a frenzy; and change the countenance and senses not only of cities but of armies in battle. She was said to have brought under her control, amongst the people of Romulus, the senate, the public platforms, and the law courts, and in Athens had at will swayed the legislative assembly, the schools, and the theaters, and had caused the utmost confusion throughout Greece.
[428] What countenance and voice she had as she spoke, what excellence and exaltation of speech! It was worth even the gods’ effort to hear such genius of argument, so rich a wealth of diction, so vast a story of memory and recollection. What order in structure, what harmonious delivery, what movement of gesture, what profundity of concept! She was light in treating small topics, ready with middling topics, and with exalted topics a firebrand.55 In discussion she made her whole audience attentive, in persuasion amenable, full of conflict in disagreements, full of pride in speeches of praise. But when she had, through the testimony of some public figure, proclaimed some matter of dispute, everything seemed to be in turbulence, confusion, and on fire.56 This golden-voiced woman, pouring out some of the jewels of crowns and kingdoms, was followed by a mighty army of famous men, amongst whom the two [Demosthenes and Cicero] nearest her outshone the rest. These two were of different nationalities and styles of dress, one wearing the Greek pallium, the other the Roman trabea. Each spoke a different language, though one professed to have studied Greek culture at Athens and was considered quick in the studies of the Greek schools and in the constant disputes and discussions of the Academy. Both were men from poor families, who rose to fame from humble beginnings. . . . [436] She then, looking at the whole assembly of gods, with some emotion began to speak. . . .
[580] Immediately there came into view a distinguished-looking lady, holding a geometer’s rod in her right hand and a solid globe in her left. From her left shoulder a [shawl] was draped, on which were visible the magnitudes and orbits of the heavenly bodies, the dimensions, intersections, and outlines of the celestial circles, and even the shadow of the earth, reaching into the sky and giving a dark purplish hue to the golden orbs of the sun and the moon amidst the stars. [581] The [shawl] itself glistened with the sheen of the vernal sky; it was marked with many figures—to serve the purposes of her sister Astronomy as well—numbers of various kinds, gnomons of sundials, figures and designs showing intervals, weights, and measures, depicted in many colors. This tireless traveler was wearing walking shoes, to journey through the world, and she had worn the same shoes to shreds in traversing the entire globe. [582] She entered the senate of the gods. Though she could have told at once how many stadia and fathoms, down to the inch, she had measured in the distance between the earth and the celestial sphere, instead, moved by the majestic appearance of [Jupiter] and the heavenly company, she hastily made her way to the uncovered abacus board, glancing about at the adornment of the outer canopy and the palace studded with constellations. [583] Geometry came to a halt, struck with amazement at the glittering sky. . . .
[586] Geometry finally broke the spell of her rapt admiration of the glittering heavens and turned her eyes to regarding the gods about her, with a reserve becoming a dignified lady who enjoyed the respect of all and was considered mistress of the other arts which are known to the gods. A request was made that she begin disclosing the secrets of her knowledge, from the very beginning. As she brushed aside a lock of hair, her face shone with distinction and majesty. [587] She began drawing diagrams on the powdery surface of her abacus and spoke thus: “I see my Archimedes and the most learned Euclid among the philosophers present. I could call upon them to expound my doctrines to you at length, to ensure that every matter is expertly explained and no veil of obscurity is interposed. However, I deem it more appropriate, on this occasion which calls for rhetorical skill, to disclose these matters to you myself, as best I can, in the Latin tongue, something that rarely happens in this field. Those men, in fact, speak no Latin, and expound what I have taught them only in Greek.
[588] “First, I must explain my name, to counteract any impression of a grimy itinerant coming into this gilded senate chamber of the gods and soiling this gem-bedecked floor with dirt collected on earth. I am called Geometry because I have often traversed and measured out the earth, and I could offer calculations and proofs for its shape, size, position, regions, and dimensions.57 There is no portion of the earth’s surface that I could not describe from memory”58. . . .
[753] Some numbers are perfect, some are superabundant, and some are deficient; the Greeks call them perfect, overperfect, and underperfect. Perfect numbers are those that are equal to the sum of their parts; superabundant, those that have more in their parts than in themselves; and deficient, those that have less in their parts than in themselves. For example, let us take six. It can be divided into units, two, or three, since six times one, three times two, or two times three makes six; thus its parts are 1, 2, and 3; let these parts be added together and the sum is 6. This number is equal to its parts, and this type of number derives its virtue from that fact; the other types are faulty, because of superabundance or deficiency, as, for example, the number 12. Twelve times one, six times two, four times three, three times four, or two times six makes 12. The parts are 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6, which, when added together, make 16. The number twelve is therefore superabundant. Now take the number 16; it is made of sixteen times one, two times eight, four times four, or eight times two, and these are the only factors of the number. Add the numbers together and you get only 15, less than the number from which they sprang. This number is deficient.
[754] Some numbers are plane, others are solid. The Greeks call a number plane which is the product of two numbers. That is to say, in the reckoning of measures, they consider that as much is contained by the carpenter’s square [norma] as by the entire rectangle of which the carpenter’s square is a part. Thus, those numbers are regarded as plane numbers that are arranged along two sides so that they form a right angle and present the appearance of a carpenter’s square. For example, if one side is extended to a length of 4, another side to 3, the product of these two numbers is 12; and they call this a plane number.
According to the Greeks, solidity arises from three numbers. Let one side be four, another three; then four be added above.60 They say that altitude is filled out by these numbers placed above the underlying carpenter’s square, and that twenty-four is represented. There is no point in being obscure in this matter: it is very clear that a plane number comes from single numbers joined together in such a way that one is not above another; and that solidity is produced from numbers placed above other numbers. . . .
[890] But the father of the gods had been advised by [Juno] to hasten the proceedings. Nevertheless, so as not to scrimp the wedding preparations or dispense with the performance of so erudite a lady, pleasant as it would be to speed the marriage, Jupiter refused to be rushed: he asked how many bridesmaids remained to be heard from. [891] [Apollo] suggested that Medicine and Architecture were standing by, among those who had been prepared to perform. “But since these ladies are concerned with mortal subjects and their skill lies in mundane matters, and they have nothing in common with the celestial deities, it will not be inappropriate to disdain and reject them.62 They will keep silent in the heavenly company and will be examined in detail later by [Philologia] herself. But it would be a grave offense to exclude from this company the one bridesmaid who is the particular darling of the heavens, whose performance is sought with joy and acclamation.63
[892] “But first of all I would like to inform you that the mother of the maiden has brought along [the seven prophetic arts], endowed with lavish gifts, to be added to the dowry; she has agreed to submit them to that test of knowledge. These young women are of the same number and are equally attractive, and in the impressiveness of their erudition few of the maidens standing by them are on a par with them. They have been instructed in the more mystic and holy secrets of the maiden. With what displeasure or with what delight or weakness on the part of the celestial senate these girls would be passed over, I leave it to you, in the strength and majesty of your judgment, O [Jupiter], to decide . . .”
[897] After [Apollo] had spoken thus, [Jupiter] ordered Harmony to appear, as it was suggested to him, the last of the learned handmaids that remained. . . . [900] It will be both a pleasure and a profit to listen to this maiden, rediscovered after so many generations and restored to the melic arts. But the other learned and reverend sisters, when another day has dawned, will be introduced and given a thorough examination.64
Ancius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 480–525) was born into a prominent, wealthy family in Italy. Upon the death of his father, another patrician family adopted the boy and gave him the finest education available. Extraordinarily precocious, Boethius’s accomplishments attracted the attention of influential individuals, including his kinsman Cassiodorus and Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths. Having conquered Italy in about 490, Theodoric exercised autocratic control over his kingdom, but recognized the titular sovereignty of the Roman emperor who ruled the eastern half of the empire from Constantinople. This policy perpetuated the fiction of a single unified Empire, as well as governance through the longstanding Roman bureaucracy, replete with the traditional offices. Boethius rose rapidly through the administrative ranks and became Master of the King’s Offices, assuming responsibility for the entire public bureaucracy as well as the palace officials.
Apart from his administrative career, Boethius made outstanding achievements as a scholar and became the most authoritative source of secular scholarship throughout the middle ages. In particular, he took upon himself the breathtaking task of translating, interpreting, and reconciling the works of Aristotle and Plato. Boethius died before proceeding very far on this immense project and finished translating only the first two of Aristotle’s six treatises on logic, out of Aristotle’s entire corpus. Yet, those two introductory treatises became the sum total of Aristotle’s works available to Western Europe until the middle of the twelfth century, and they remained the standard authority on logic until the other four of Aristotle’s treatises, setting forth the deductive syllogism, reappeared in the final third of the twelfth century.65
Boethius also wrote or translated influential works on arithmetic, geometry, music, and possibly astronomy. In the introduction to his Arithmetic, he maintained that mathematics is the study of “abstract quantity” and coined the term quadrivium to describe the four mathematical arts serving as the “four roads” to philosophy.66 In addition to producing the authoritative works on logic and mathematics for the next 700 years, Boethius wrote several influential treatises on theology, applying logical analysis to complex theological problems in order to demonstrate the truth of orthodoxy.
These scholarly accomplishments, no less than his successful career, inspired jealousy among others, and in about 423 he was charged with treason. The charge was apparently fabricated, but Boethius’s integrity and personal devotion to Roman culture, combined with Theodoric’s perception of a growing threat to his power from the eastern Roman Empire, may have led the aging autocrat to credit the charge against Boethius. During his imprisonment, Boethius wrote the work for which he is chiefly known today: Consolation of Philosophy. This is a “satire” in the same sense as The Marriage of Martianus Capella; it offers a “stew” of literary forms including prose, poetry, and dialogue.67 In form, The Marriage is the most direct antecedent to the Consolation, although Martianus and Boethius are far apart intellectually. Boethius weaves Platonic and Aristotelian motifs and metaphors throughout his work in an attempt to show that love of wisdom, represented by lady Philosophy, leads human beings to discover and enjoy the supreme good, notwithstanding severe tribulations of life.
The Consolation did not receive a great deal of attention until the ninth century, when the first of many commentaries appeared. One of the early influential commentators, Remigius of Auxerre (c. 841–908), interpreted the feminine figure of Philosophy to represent education in the seven liberal arts, leading the student toward divine revelation. Though doubtful, this interpretations is not inappropriate for an author who contributed so much to the form and content of the medieval liberal arts and became the most authoritative source of secular scholarship in the middle ages. The tone of “nostalgic sadness”68 conveyed by the Consolation is also appropriate, because Boethius was sentenced without a trial, cruelly tortured, and executed at about age forty-five.
Verses I made once glowing with content;
Tearful, alas, sad songs must I begin.
See how the Muses grieftorn bid me write,
And with unfeigned tears these elegies drench my face.
But them at least my fear that friends might tread my path
Companions still
Could not keep silent: they were once
My green youth’s glory; now in my sad old age
They comfort me.
For age has come unlooked for, hastened by ills,
And anguish sternly adds its years to mine;
My head is white before its time, my skin hangs loose
About my tremulous frame; I am worn out.
Death, if he come
Not in the years of sweetness
But often called to those who want to end their misery
Is welcome. My cries he does not hear;
Cruel he will not close my weeping eyes.
While fortune favored me—
How wrong to count on swiftly-fading joys—
Such an hour of bitterness might have bowed my head.
Now that her clouded, cheating face is changed
My cursed life drags on its long, unwanted days.
Ah why, my friends,
Why did you boast so often of my happiness?
How faltering even then the step
Of one now fallen.
While I was thinking these thoughts to myself in silence, and set my pen to record this tearful complaint, there seemed to stand above my head a woman. Her look filled me with awe; her burning eyes penetrated more deeply than those of ordinary men; her complexion was fresh with an ever-lively bloom, yet she seemed so ancient that none would think her of our time. It was difficult to say how tall she might be, for at one time she seemed to confine herself to the ordinary measure of man, and at another the crown of her head touched the heavens; and when she lifted her head higher yet, she penetrated the heavens themselves, and was lost to the sight of men.71 Her dress was made of very fine, imperishable thread, of delicate workmanship: she herself wove it, as I learned later, for she told me.72 Its form was shrouded by a kind of darkness of forgotten years, like a smoke-blackened family statue in the atrium. On its lower border was woven the Greek letter pi and on the upper theta, and between the two letters, steps were marked like a ladder, by which one might climb from the lower letter to the higher.73 But violent hands had ripped this dress and torn away what bits they could.74 In her right hand she carried a book, and in her left, a scepter.
Now when she saw the Muses of poetry standing by my bed, helping me to find words for my grief, she was disturbed for a moment, and then cried out with fiercely blazing eyes: “Who let these theatrical tarts in with this sick man?75 Not only have they no cures for his pain, but with their sweet poison they make it worse. These are they who choke the rich harvest of the fruits of reason with the barren thorns of passion. They accustom a man’s mind to his ills, not rid him of them. If your enticements were distracting merely an unlettered man, as they usually do, I should not take it so seriously—after all, it would do no harm to us in our task—but to distract this man, reared on a diet of Eleatic and Academic thought!76 Get out, you Sirens, beguiling men straight to their destruction! Leave him to my Muses to care for and restore to health.” Thus upbraided, that company of the Muses dejectedly hung their heads, confessing their shame by their blushes, and dismally left my room.77 I myself, since my sight was so dimmed with tears that I could not clearly see who this woman was of such commanding authority, was struck dumb, my eyes cast down; and I went on waiting in silence to see what she would do next. Then she came closer and sat on the end of my bed, and seeing my face worn with weeping and cast down with sorrow, she bewailed my mind’s confusion bitterly in these verses:78
Ah! How steep the seas that drown him!
His mind, all dulled, its own light fled,
Moves into outer dark, while noxious care
Grows beyond measure.
This man
Used once to wander free under open skies
The paths of the heavens;79 used to gaze
On rosy sunlight, and on the constellations
Of the cold new moon,
And on each star that on its wandering ways
Turns through its changing circles—all such things
He mastered and bound by number and law.
Causes, moreover, he sought and knew:80
Why the winds howl and stir up the waves of the sea,
What breath turns the fixed stars’ sphere,
Why the sun rises in the red east
And sinks beneath the Western waves,
What warms the spring’s calm hours
So that the earth is lovely with flowers of roses,
And who makes fruitful autumn heavy, as the year fills,
With the full grapes, He sought and told
All Nature’s secret causes.
But now he lies
His mind’s light languishing,
Bowed with these heavy chains about his neck,
His eyes cast down beneath the weight of care,
Seeing nothing
But the dull, solid earth.
“But,” she said, “now is the time for cure rather than complaint.”81 Then, gazing keenly and directly on me, she said: “Are you the same man who was once nourished with my milk, once fed on my diet, till you reached your full manhood? And did I not furnish you with such weapons as would now keep you steadfast and safe if you had not thrown them away? Do you recognize me? Why do you say nothing? Were you silent because you were ashamed or stupefied? I should like to think that you were ashamed, but I can see that you are quite stupefied. Seeing that I was not merely silent, but altogether speechless and dumb, she gently laid her hand on my breast and said: “He is in no real danger, but suffers only from lethargy, a sickness common to deluded minds. He has for a little forgotten his real self. He will soon recover—he did, after all, know me before—and to make this possible for him, let me for a little clear his eyes of the mist of mortal affairs that clouds them.”82 And so saying she gathered her dress into a fold and dried my eyes, flowing as they were with tears.
Then was the night dispersed, and darkness left me;
My eyes grew strong again.
Just as when north-west winds pile up the weather
And rain-clouds fill the sky and the sun is hidden,
And before the stars come out
Night comes flooding down upon the world;
And then the north wind from the Thracian cavern
Sweeps away night and lets the daylight out
So that the sparkling sunlight
Suddenly flashes on our wondering eyes.83
Just so the clouds of misery were dispelled, and I drank in the clear light, recovering enough to recognize my healer’s face. So, when I looked on her clearly and steadily, I saw the nurse who brought me up, whose house I had from my youth frequented, the lady Philosophy.84 And I said: “Why have you come, Queen of all the virtues, why have you come down from your high seat in heaven to these wastes where I am banished? So that you too stand in the dock with me, falsely accused?”
“Should I desert you, my pupil?” she replied; “Should I not share your labor and help to bear your burden, which you bear because my name is hated? It could not be right that Philosophy should leave an innocent man companionless on the road. Surely I should then be afraid that I should be charged myself; I should shudder with horror at such an unheard-of thing! Do you think that this is the first time that Wisdom has been attacked and endangered by a wicked society? Did I not often of old also, before my Plato’s time, have to battle in mighty struggle with arrogant stupidity? And in his day, was I not beside his teacher Socrates when he won the prize of a martyr’s death? And after him the crowd of Epicureans and Stoics and the rest strove as far as they could to seize his legacy, carrying me off protesting and struggling, as if I were part of the booty, tearing my dress, which I wove with my own hands, and then went off with their torn-off shreds, thinking they possessed all of me. And because they seemed to be wearing certain bits of my dress, some were ignorantly accepted as my servants, and were abused by the delusions of the uneducated mob.85
But even if you knew nothing of Anaxagoras’s flight from Athens, or Socrates’s draught of hemlock, or Zeno’s sufferings, all these being foreign events, surely you could have thought of Canius and Seneca and Soranus whose stories are neither ancient nor obscure?86 The only cause of their deaths was that they were brought up in my ways, so that their behavior and pursuits were seen to be utterly different from those of wicked men. So it is no wonder if we are buffeted by storms blustering round us on the sea of this life, since we are especially bound to anger the wicked. Though their forces are large, yet we should hold them in contempt, for they are leaderless and are simply carried hither and thither at random in their crazed ignorance. If ever they range against us and press about us too strongly, Wisdom our captain withdraws her forces into her citadel, while our enemies busy themselves ransacking useless baggage. But we are safe from all their mad tumult and from our heights we can laugh at them as they carry off all those worthless things; we are protected by such a wall as may not be scaled by raging stupidity.”