curious that the man who was to lead the Catholic party and to suffer
in the national cause had translated thirty books of Aristotle into
Latin; his name was Boethius and he was master of the offices.

This great and pathetic figure had been till the year 523 continually
in the favour of Theodoric. In that year suddenly an accusation was
brought against the patrician Albinus of "sending letters to the
emperor Justin hostile to the royal rule of Theodoric." In the debate
which followed, Boethius claimed to speak and declared that the
accusation was false, "but whatever Albinus did, I and the whole
senate of Rome with one purpose did the same." We may well ask for a
clear statement of what they had done; we shall get no answer.
Boethius himself speaks of "the accusation against me of having hoped
for Roman freedom," and adds: "As for Roman freedom, what hope is left
to us of that? Would that there were any such hope." To the charge of
"hoping for Roman freedom" was added an accusation of sorcery.

Boethius was tried in the senate house in Rome while he was lying in
prison in Pavia. Without being permitted to answer his accusers or to
be heard by his judges he was sentenced to death by the intimidated
senate whose freedom he was accused of seeking to establish. From
Pavia, where in prison awaiting death he had written his _De
Consolatione Philosophiae_ which was so largely to inform the new
Europe, he was carried to "the _ager Calventianus_" a few miles from
Milan; where he was tortured, a cord was twisted round his forehead
till his eyes burst from their sockets, and then he was clubbed to
death. This occurred in 524, and in that same year throughout the
empire we find the great movement against Arianism take on new life.

[Illustration: CAPITAL FROM S. VITALE]