Boethius was born around 480, but his …
Years: 510 - 510
Boethius was born around 480, but his exact birth date is unknown.
Boethius was born to a patrician family; his father Manlius Boethius was appointed consul in 487.
However, his father died when Boethius was young, and he had been adopted by another patrician, Quintus Aurelius Memmius Symmachus.
Memmius Symmachus had raised him and instilled in him a love for literature and philosophy.
Both Memmius Symmachus and Boethius are fluent in Greek, an increasingly rare skill at this time in the Western Empire, which has led some scholars to think that Boethius was educated in the East.
According to John Moorhead, the traditional view is that Boethius studied in Athens based on Cassiodorus's rhetoric describing Boethius' learning in one of his letters, but this appears to be a misreading and his studying in Athens is more likely a legend.
The French scholar Pierre Courcelle has argued that Boethius studied at Alexandria with the Neo-Platonist philosopher Ammonius Hermiae.
However, Moorhead observes that the evidence supporting Boethius having studied in Alexandria "is not as strong as it may appear", and concludes "Perhaps Boethius was able to acquire his formidable learning without travelling".
(Moorhead, "Boethius' life and the world of late antique philosophy", in The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, edited by John Marenbon (Cambridge: University Press, 2009), p. 29) Due to his erudition, Boethius had entered the service of Theodoric.
His earliest documented acts on behalf of the Ostrogothic ruler were to investigate allegations that the paymaster of Theodoric's bodyguards had debased the coins of their pay, to produce a water clock that Theodoric intended to give to king Gundobad of the Burgunds, and to recruit a lyre-player to perform for king Clovis of the Franks.
Boethius had married his foster-father's daughter Rusticiana, and their children include two boys, Symmachus and Boethius.
He holds many important offices during Theodoric's reign, including being appointed consul for the year 510.
Locations
People
Groups
- Goths (East Germanic tribe)
- Italy, Praetorian prefecture of
- Francia (Merovingians)
- Ostrogoths, Italian Kingdom of the
