Boethius

Boethius was born into the most distinguished aristocracy of Rome, lost his father young, was raised by another nobleman and married his daughter. He knew Greek, already rare in the West. He served the Ostrogothic king Theodoric, became consul in 510, and in 522, when both his sons were consuls together, reached the height of his fortune. The next year he was accused of treasonable correspondence with Constantinople, imprisoned, and executed at Pavia around 524.

In youth he set himself to translate all of Plato and Aristotle into Latin and to show their agreement. He completed only Aristotle's logical works and Porphyry's Introduction, but those translations and commentaries were all the Greek logic the Latin West possessed for six hundred years; medieval thinkers learned to reason from them. He also wrote on arithmetic, music and theology, and a passage in one commentary on the problem of universals started the longest dispute of the Middle Ages.

The Consolation of Philosophy, written in prison, alternates prose and verse. Lady Philosophy visits his cell and they discuss the fickleness of fortune, true happiness, the powerlessness of evil, and providence and free will. The book never names Christ, yet after the Bible it was the most read book of the Middle Ages, translated into English by Alfred the Great, Chaucer and Elizabeth I. His definition of eternity, 'the complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of unending life', became canonical.