THE GREAT work of Boethius,—his “Consolations of Philosophy,”—was the last product of Roman civilization. It was written after the Goths had conquered the Roman Empire, and it is possible that if Boethius had not been imprisoned by Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, it might never have been written at all,—for it is said that he wrote it in prison at Pavia. He was born at Rome 475 A.D. (conjecturally). His father was consul in 487 A.D., and in 510 Boethius himself succeeded to the office which brought him close to Theodoric, the Ostrogoth. For a time Theodoric held him in high favor, but afterwards suspected him of treason and sent him to prison in Pavia, where he was put to death 524 A.D. Besides his “Consolations of Philosophy” and his “Meters,” which were translated by Alfred the Great, he wrote on Music, Mathematics, and Logic. His miscellaneous essays on such topics were held in high favor during the Middle Ages, but he is remembered now almost wholly by his “Consolations of Philosophy,”—the work which made him, in Gibbon’s estimation, “the last Roman whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged as a countryman.”