The Consolation of Philosophy

Preface.

...because they contain the exceptional preaching of Boethius. Hear, therefore, what Theodoric writes in a previous letter: "The lord of the Burgundians has requested of us with great effort that we should transmit to him a clock which is regulated by water flowing according to a measure, and which is distinguished by the captured illumination of the immense sun, together with the masters of such things.... Truly, they rightly desire to behold that at which they stand amazed through the reports of their ambassadors. We have learned that you, saturated with much erudition, know this so well that you have drunk from the very fountain of the disciplines, while remaining ignorant of the arts which they practice commonly. For you entered the schools of the Athenians while placed far away; you so mixed your toga with the choirs of the cloaked ones a reference to the pallium, the traditional garb of philosophers that you made the dogmas of the Greeks into Roman doctrine. For you learned with what depth the Speculative theoretical philosophy is pondered with its parts; by what reason the Active practical philosophy is learned with its division: bringing to the Romulean senators whatever the Cecropians the Athenians had done as unique in the world. For by your translations, Pythagoras the Musician and Ptolemy the Astronomer are read by the Italians: Nicomachus the Arithmetician and Euclid the Geometrician are heard by the Ausonians an ancient name for the Italians: Plato the Theologian and Aristotle the Logician debate with a Quirinal Roman voice: you have also restored the Mechanician Archimedes to the Latials Italians from the Sicilians: and whatever disciplines or arts fruitful Greece has produced through individual men, Rome has received in her native tongue with you as the sole author: whom you have rendered famous with such brilliance of words, and conspicuous with such propriety of language, that even they could have preferred your work, had they learned both. You entered the aforementioned art, born of noble disciplines, through the fourfold gates of Mathesis mathematics. You, with the inviting books of the authors, recognized it sitting in the inner chambers of Nature by the light of the heart..... Because we have found that you have read these things quite studiously, you will hasten to transmit the aforementioned clocks to us as soon as possible; so that you may make yourself known in that part of the world where you could not otherwise arrive. Let foreign nations recognize through you that we have such nobles as the authors who are read. How often will those who have seen them not believe! How often will they think this truth to be the dreams of play! And when they have been turned from their stupor, they will not dare to call themselves our equals, among whom they know wise men have thought such things."