The Consolation of Philosophy

Bywater (Journ. of Philology 1869, 55) and Usener¹) have argued that Boethius returned to Aristotle’s Protrepticus exhortation to philosophy and Cicero’s Hortensius—a work mentioned in Book II of Boethius's De differentiis topicis On Topical Differences (Migne LXIV 1188 a). Georgius Schepss highlighted several authors: many writers (Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, concerning which certain commentaries by Pohlenz exist;²) Crantor’s On Grief³)), as well as books written by or falsely attributed to Plutarch, such as the Consolations to Apollonius (Apoll.), the Consolation to his Wife (Ad ux.), and the book On Exile (De ex.). Beyond what he explained in Comment. in honorem E. Woelfflini (Lips. 1891, 275), I had access to the materials collected by Schepss himself, which, after his death, were handed over to the Vienna Academy by his wife.

In the fourth year of the current era likely referring to the date of the cited publication, Rand⁴) proved that Boethius did not copy Aristotle’s Protrepticus or any other book. Rather, using what he had read and remembered, he wove together a new work of his own kind,⁵) whose parts cohered with one another, in such a way that up to the end of the third book he followed Plato and Aristotle, whom