The Consolation of Philosophy

than by devoting it to the study of wisdom, and above all to the reading, translation, and explanation of Aristotle, the greatest of philosophers, following the example of the greatest men: Cato, M. Tullius Cicero, Seneca, and others. For he himself had been delighted by those studies from an early age, and he understood that there is nothing in which the human mind rejoices as much as in the knowledge of truth: and he hoped that the Roman youth could be roused to that ancient virtue through his work. He possessed a library most excellently stocked with a wealth of the best books in both languages, the walls of which shone, decorated with ivory and glass; nor did he suffer anything more painfully in prison later than that he had to be without it. Therefore, he himself laments about this matter with his Philosophy while in chains: 'Is this,' he says, 'the library that you had chosen for yourself as the most certain seat in our home? In which, often sitting with me, you used to discourse on the knowledge of divine and human things?'

Instructed by these safeguards, therefore, Boethius had intended to illustrate all Philosophy in Latin letters. For he writes thus: 'I, translating every work of Aristotle that comes into my hands into the Roman style, shall write out the commentaries of them all in the Latin language: so that if anything is clear from Aristotle regarding the subtlety of the art of Logic, or the gravity of Morals, or the sharpness of Natural truth, I shall translate it all in an ordered fashion and illustrate it with a certain light of commentaries.'

With this effort, he either translated many works in all of Philosophy from the Greek, or wrote them himself in Latin.

Two books on the Isagoge Introduction of Porphyry.
One book of the second edition.
Two books on the Categories of Aristotle.
One book on the Peri hermeneias On Interpretation.
Six books of the second edition.
One book On Division.
One book On Definitions.