Boethius

This volume provides the first critical edition of Boethius' De divisione. The importance of Boethius' treatise is twofold: it was widely read in the medieval schools, and it preserves the only known vestiges of Porphyry's commentary on Plato's Sophist and of Andronicus' treatise on diaeresis. The book is in four main sections: prolegomena in three parts, dealing with the date, source(s), and text of De divisione; critical text with apparatus and English translation; detailed philological and philosophical commentary; appendix, bibliography, and three indices. This is the first edition of De divisione based on the earliest extant manuscripts, and the first complete commentary in any modern language. It will be of particular interest to students of later ancient and medieval philosophy and literature.

The book called 'The Consolation of Philosophy' was throughout the Middle Ages, and down to the beginnings of the modern epoch in the sixteenth century, the scholar's familiar companion. Few books have exercised a wider influence in their time. It has been translated into every European tongue, and into English nearly a dozen times, from King Alfred's paraphrase to the translations of Lord Preston, Causton, Ridpath, and Duncan, in the eighteenth century. The belief that what once pleased so widely must still have some charm is my excuse for attempting the present translation. The great work of Boethius, with its alternate prose and verse, skilfully fitted together like dialogue and chorus in a Greek play, is unique in literature, and has a pathetic interest from the time and circumstances of its composition. It ought not to be forgotten.