all allowance for politeness, this letter indicates the large accomplishment of Boëthius, who was but twenty-five years old when it was written. We turn to the commentated Aristotelian translations which he now undertook.[1] "Although the duties of the consular office[2] prevent the bestowal of our time upon these studies, it still seems a proper part of our care for the Republic to instruct its citizens in the learning which is gained by the labours of the lamp. Since the valour of a bygone time brought dominion over other cities to this one Republic, I shall not merit ill of my countrymen if I shall have instructed the manners of our State with the arts of Greek wisdom."[3] These sentences open the second book of Boëthius's translation of the Categories of Aristotle. His plan of work enlarged, apparently, and grew more definite, as the years passed, each adding its quota of accomplishment. At all events, some time afterwards, when he may have been not far from thirty-five, he speaks in the flush of an intellectual anticipation which the many years of labour still to be counted on seemed to justify:
"Labour ennobles the human race and completes it with the fruits of genius; but idleness deadens the mind. Not experience, but ignorance, of labour turns us from it. For what man who has made trial of labour has ever forsaken it? And the power of the mind lies in keeping the mind tense; to unstring it is to ruin it. My fixed intention, if the potent favour of the deity will so grant, is (although others have laboured in this field, yet not with satisfactory method) to translate into Latin every work of Aristotle that comes to my hand, and furnish it with a Latin commentary. Thus I may present, well ordered and illustrated with the light of comment, whatever subtilty of logic's art, whatever weight of moral experience, and whatever insight into natural truth, may be gathered from Aristotle. And I mean to translate all the dialogues of Plato, or reduce them in my commentary to a Latin form. Having accomplished this, I shall not have despised the opinions of Aristotle and Plato if I evoke a certain concord between them
- ↑ Upon the dates of Boëthius's writings, see S. Brandt, "Entstehungszeit und zeitliche Folge der Werke des Boëtius," Philologus, Band 62 (N.S. Bd. 16), 1903, pp. 141 sqq. and 234 sqq.
- ↑ Social position, his own abilities, and the favour of Theodoric, obtained the consulship for Boëthius in 510, when he was twenty-eight or -nine years old.
- ↑ Migne, Pat. Lat. 64, col. 201.
