For this issue, I wanted to share a chapter that has been sticking with me lately, as it relates quite well to our current day. Boethius’ opus probably needs no introduction to those familiar with general philosophy; but as for me, I have only read through it within the past few months. I would certainly encourage who hasn’t read it yet to do so!
For context, Boethius is jailed and about to executed at the time of writing this book for alleged treason against King Theodoric of the Ostergoths. As such, its perspective consists of a fictitious conversation with himself and ‘Lady Philosophy’, who reassures him that ‘Lady Fortune’ is fickle, and goodness it bestows is impermanent. This excerpt is taken primarily from the 1897 translation by H.R. James with some minor translation edits by me for readability purposes.
Said I: ‘Verily, your pleas are plausible – yes, steeped in the honeyed sweetness of music and rhetoric. But their charm lasts only while they are sounding in the ear; the sense of misfortune lies deeper in the heart of the wretched. So, when the sound ceases to vibrate upon the air, the heart’s indwelling sorrow is felt with renewed bitterness.’
Then said she: 'It is indeed as you say, for we have not yet come to the curing of your sickness; as yet these are but lenitives conducing to the treatment of a malady hitherto obstinate. The remedies which go deep I will apply in due season. Nevertheless, to deprecate your determination to be thought wretched, I ask you, have you forgotten the extent and bounds of your felicity?
I say nothing of how, when orphaned and desolate, you were taken into the care of illustrious men; how you were chosen for alliance with the highest in the state – and even before you were bound to their house by marriage, were already dear to their love, which is the most precious of all ties. Did not all pronounce you most happy in the virtues of your wife, the splendid honors of her father, and the blessing of male issue? I pass over – for I care not to speak of blessings in which others also have shared – the distinctions often denied to age which you enjoyed in your youth. I choose rather to come to the unparalleled culmination of your good fortune. If the fruition of any earthly success has weight in the scale of happiness, can the memory of that splendor be swept away by any rising flood of troubles?
That day when you saw your two sons ride forth from home joint consuls, followed by a train of senators, and welcomed by the good-will of the people; when these two sat in curule chairs in the Senate-house, and you, by your speech to the king, earned the fame of eloquence and ability; when in the Circus, seated between the two consuls, you glutted the multitude thronging around with the triumphal largesses for which they looked – methinks you did deceive Fortune while she caressed you, and made you her darling. You did bear off a boon which she had never before granted to any private person. Are you, then, minded to cast up a reckoning with Fortune? Now for the first time she has turned a jealous glance upon you.
If you compare the extent and bounds of your blessings and misfortunes, you cannot deny that you are still fortunate. Or if you esteem not yourself favoured by Fortune in that your then seeming prosperity hath departed, deem not yourself wretched, since what you now believe to be calamitous passes also. What! Are you but now come suddenly and a stranger to the scene of this life?
Thinkest you there is any stability in human affairs, when man himself vanishes away in the swift course of time? It is true that there is little trust that the gifts of chance will abide; yet the last day of life is in a manner the death of all remaining Fortune. What difference, then, do you think, is there, whether you leave her by dying, or she leave you by fleeing away?
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