XXXIX. CHAP. courage to oppose the tyranny of the barbarians, elated by conquest, excited by avarice, and, as he complains, encouraged by impunity. In these honourable contests, his spirit soared above the consideration of danger, and perhaps of prudence; and we may learn from the example of Cato, that a character of pure and inflexible virtue is the most apt to be misled by prejudice, to be heated by enthusiasm, and to confound private enmities with public justice. The disciple of Plato might exaggerate the infirmi, ties of nature, and the imperfections of society; and the mildest form of a Gothic kingdom, even the weight of allegiance and gratitude, must be insupportable to the free spirit of a Roman patriot. But the favour and fidelity of Boethius declined in just proportion with the public happiness; and an unworthy colleague was imposed, to divide and control the power of the master of the offices. In the last gloomy season of Theodoric, he indignantly felt that he was a slave; but as his master had only power over his life, he stood without arms and without fear against the face of an angry barbarian, who had been provoked to believe that the safety of the senate was incompatible with his own. The senator Albinus was accused and already convicted on the presumption of hoping, as it was said, the liberty of Rome. "If Albinus be criminal," exclaimed the orator, "the senate and myself are all guilty of the same crime. If we are innocent, Albinus is equally entitled to the protection of the laws." These laws might not have punished the simple and barren wish of an unattainable blessing; but they would have shown less indulgence to the rash confession of Boe, thius, that, had he known of a conspiracy, the tyrant never should. The advocate of Albinus was soon He is ac cused of treason. P P Si ego scissem tu nescisses. Boethius adopts this answer (1. i. pros. 4. p. 53) of Julius Canus, whose philosophic death is described by Seneca (De Tranquillitate Animi, c. 14). XXXIX. involved in the danger and perhaps the guilt of his CHAP. client; their signature (which they denied as a forgery) was affixed to the original address, inviting the emperor to deliver Italy from the Goths; and three witnesses of honourable rank, perhaps of infamous reputation, attested the treasonable designs of the Roman patrician. Yet his innocence must be presumed, since he was deprived by Theodoric of the means of justification, and rigorously confined in the tower of Pavia, while the senate, at the distance of five hundred miles, pronounced a sentence of confiscation and death against the most illustrious of its members. At the command of the barbarians, the occult science of a philosopher was stigmatized with the names of sacrilege and magic." A devout and dutiful attachment to the senate was condemned as criminal by the trembling voices of the senators themselves; and their ingratitude deserved the wish or prediction of Boethius, that, after him, none should be found guilty of the same offence. sonment While Boethius, oppressed with fetters, expected His imprieach moment the sentence or the stroke of death, he and death, composed in the tower of Pavia the Consolation ofA. Philosophy; a golden volume not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or Tully, but which claims incomparable merit from the barbarism of the times and the situation of the author. The celestial guide, a The characters of his two delators, Basilius (Var. ii. 10, 11. iv. 22) and Opilio (v. 41. viii. 16), are illustrated, not much to their honour, in the Epistles of Cassiodorius, which likewise mention Decoratus (v. 31), the worthless colleague of Boethius (1. iii. pros. 4. p. 193). A severe inquiry was instituted into the crime of magic (Var. iv. 22, 23. ix. 18): and it was believed that many necromancers had escaped by making their gaolers mad: for mad, I should read drunk. s Boethius had composed his own Apology (p. 53), perhaps more interesting than his Consolation. We must be content with the general view of his honours, principles, persecution, &c. (l. i. pros. iv. p. 42—62), which may be compared with the short and weighty words of the Valesian Fragment (p. 723). An anonymous writer (Sinner, Catalog. MSS. Bibliot. Bern. tom. i. p. 287) charges him home with honourable and patriotic treason. XXXIX. CHAP. whom he had so long invoked at Rome and Athens, now condescended to illumine his dungeon, to revive his courage, and to pour into his wounds her salutary balm. She taught him to compare his long prosperity and his recent distress, and to conceive new hopes from the inconstancy of fortune. Reason had informed him of the precarious condition of her gifts; experience had satisfied him of their real value; he had enjoyed them without guilt; he might resign them without a sigh, and calmly disdain the impotent malice of his enemies, who had left him happiness, since they had left him virtue. From the earth, Boethius ascended to heaven in search of the SUPREME GOOD; explored the metaphysical labyrinth of chance and destiny, of prescience and free-will, of time and eternity; and generously attempted to reconcile the perfect attributes of the Deity with the apparent disorders of his moral and physical government. Such topics of consolation, so obvious, so vague, or so abstruse, are ineffectual to subdue the feelings of human nature. Yet the sense of misfortune may be diverted by the labour of thought; and the sage who could artfully combine in the same work the various riches of philosophy, poetry, and eloquence, must already have possessed the intrepid calmness which he affected to seek. Suspense, the worst of evils, was at length determined by the ministers of death, who executed, and perhaps exceeded, the inhuman mandate of Theodoric. strong cord was fastened round the head of Boethius, and forcibly tightened, till his eyes almost started from their sockets; and some mercy may be discovered in the milder torture of beating him with clubs till he expired. But his genius survived to A t He was executed in Agro Calventiano (Calvenzano, between Marignano and Pavia), Anonym. Vales. p. 723, by order of Eusebius count of Ticinum or Pavia. The place of his confinement is styled the baptistery, an edifice and XXXIX. diffuse a ray of knowledge over the darkest ages of CHAP. the Latin world; the writings of the philosopher were translated by the most glorious of the English kings," and the third emperor of the name of Otho removed to a more honourable tomb the bones of a Catholic saint, who, from his Arian persecutors, had acquired the honours of martyrdom, and the fame of miracles. In the last hours of Boethius, he derived some comfort from the safety of his two sons, of his wife, and of his father-in-law, the venerable Symmachus. But the grief of Symmachus was indiscreet, and perhaps disrespectful: he had presumed to lament, he might dare to revenge, the death of an injured friend. He was dragged in chains from Rome Death of to the palace of Ravenna; and the suspicions of chus, Theodoric could only be appeased by the blood of A. D. 525. an innocent and aged senator." Symma of Theo A. D. 526, Humanity will be disposed to encourage any re- Remorse port which testifies the jurisdiction of conscience and and death the remorse of kings; and philosophy is not ignorant doric, that the most horrid spectres are sometimes created August 30. by the powers of a disordered fancy, and the weakness of a distempered body. After a life of virtue and glory, Theodoric was now descending with shame Lame peculiar to cathedrals. It is claimed by the perpetual tradition of the church of Pavia. The tower of Boethius subsisted till the year 1584, and the draught is yet preserved (Tiraboschi, tom. iii. p. 47, 48). u See the Biographia Britannica, ALFRED, tom. i. p. 80. 2d edition. The work is still more honourable if performed under the learned eye of Alfred by his foreign and domestic doctors. For the reputation of Boethius in the middle ages, consult Brucker (Hist. Crit. Philosoph. tom. iii. p. 565, 566). ▾ The inscription on his new tomb was composed by the preceptor of Otho the third, the learned pope Silvester II. who, like Boethius himself, was styled a magician by the ignorance of the times. The Catholic martyr had carried his head in his hands a considerable way (Baronius, A. D. 526, No 17, 18); yet on a similar tale, a lady of my acquaintance once observed "La distance n'y fait rien; il n'y a que le premier pas qui coute." w Boethius applauds the virtues of his father-in-law (1. i. pros. 4. p. 59. 1. ii. pros. 4. p. 118). Procopius (Goth. 1. i. c. i), the Valesian Fragment (p. 724), and the Historia Miscella (1. xv. p. 105), agree in praising the superior innocence or sanctity of Symmachus; and in the estimation of the legend, the guilt of his murder is equal to the imprisonment of a pope. XXXIX. X CHAP. and guilt into the grave: his mind was humbled by the contrast of the past, and justly alarmed by the invisible terrors of futurity. One evening, as it is related, when the head of a large fish was served on the royal table, he suddenly exclaimed that he beheld the angry countenance of Symmachus, his eyes glaring fury and revenge, and his mouth armed with long sharp teeth, which threatened to devour him. The monarch instantly retired to his chamber, and, as he lay, trembling with aguish cold, under a weight of bed-clothes, he expressed in broken murmurs to his physician Elpidius, his deep repentance for the murders of Boethius and Symmachus. His malady increased, and after a dysentery which continued three days, he expired in the palace of Ravenna, in the thirty-third, or, if we compute from the invasion of Italy, in the thirty-seventh year of his reign. Conscious of his approaching end, he divided his treasures and provinces between his two grandsons, and fixed the Rhone as their common boundary." Amalaric was restored to the throne of Spain. Italy, with all the conquests of the Ostrogoths, was bequeathed to Athalaric; whose age did not exceed ten years, but who was cherished as the last male offspring of the line of Amali, by the short-lived marriage of his mother Amalasuntha with a royal fugitive of the same blood. In the presence of the In the fanciful eloquence of Cassiodorius the variety of sea and river fish are an evidence of extensive dominion; and those of the Rhine, of Sicily, and of the Danube, were served on the table of Theodoric (Var. xii. 14). The monstrous turbot of Domitian (Juvenal. Satir. iii. 39) had been caught on the shores of the Adriatic. y Procopius, Goth. 1. i. c. 1. But he might have informed us, whether he had received this curious anecdote from common report, or from the mouth of the royal physician. Procopius, Goth. 1. i. c. 1, 2. 12, 13. This partition had been directed by Theodoric, though it was not executed till after his death. Regni hereditatem superstes reliquit (Isidor. Chron. p. 721. edit. Grot.) a Berimund, the third in descent from Hermanric, king of the Ostrogoths, had retired into Spain, where he lived and died in obscurity (Jornandes, c. 33. p. 202. edit. Muratori). See the discovery, nuptials, and death of his grandson |