extraordinary favour, his two sons, young as they were for so exalted an
honour, were created joint Consuls and rode to the senate-house
attended by a throng of senators, and the acclamations of the multitude.
Boethius himself, amid the general applause, delivered the public speech
in the King's honour usual on such occasions. Within a year he was a
solitary prisoner at Pavia, stripped of honours, wealth, and friends,
with death hanging over him, and a terror worse than death, in the fear
lest those dearest to him should be involved in the worst results of his
downfall. It is in this situation that the opening of the 'Consolation
of Philosophy' brings Boethius before us. He represents himself as
seated in his prison distraught with grief, indignant at the injustice
of his misfortunes, and seeking relief for his melancholy in writing
verses descriptive of his condition. Suddenly there appears to him the
Divine figure of Philosophy, in the guise of a woman of superhuman
dignity and beauty, who by a succession of discourses convinces him of
the vanity of regret for the lost gifts of fortune, raises his mind once
more to the contemplation of the true good, and makes clear to him the
mystery of the world's moral government.




INDEX

OF

VERSE INTERLUDES.


BOOK I.