Our chief sources for the story of Boethius’s end are two. The first is the Anonymus Valesianus, a chronicle of Theoderic’s years in power. It gives Theoderic’s story as an Othello-like tale—virtue and success coming to a tragic end as bad blood wins out over good intentions. The unnamed author, who was an eyewitness to at least some of Theoderic’s story, was already the source for our account of Theoderic’s grand visit to Rome in 500 and was at that point still making Theoderic wise, humane, benevo¬lent, and just. With the rise of Eutharic—this is also the source that makes him a zealot for Arian religion—things begin to sour for this chronicler, consistent with Theoderic’s reactions to events he saw unfolding in the world around him.
The other source is far better known: Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, one of the gems of western literature by any standard, pervasively influential in much late medieval philosophical and religious understanding. It is a gorgeous book, deserving wide readership: “A golden volume, not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or Tully [Cicero],” said Gibbon. “To acquire a taste for it is almost to become naturalised in the middle ages,” added C. S. Lewis. To write so beautiful, wise, and resigned a book assures you of the goodwill of all the later generations of scholars, fitting you comfortably into the pigeonhole reserved for sages and scholars travel bulgaria.
But the Consolation is also a disingenuous book, and it has deceived many. What story can we piece together from these texts and the brief mentions of a few other sources? Why did Boethius have to die?
In the early 520s, Theoderic became more and more suspicious of those around him, and with good reason. His planned succession—a son-in-law and a grandson—failed when Eutharic died by about 523. Theoderic realized he would leave behind an infant grandson, Athalaric, in the care of a strong-willed daughter, Amalasuntha. Who would accept his regime?
Romans of Rome
The military could well want a stronger hand in command; and the old Romans of Rome, believing what Theoderic had long wanted them to believe—that nothing had really changed and that they were still citizens of a civilized Roman empire—would have their own ideas about an appropriate successor.
Boethius, meanwhile, was in the ascendant. As we have seen, he had been consul in 510, and in 522 saw his own two sons share the consulship— an almost unheard-of achievement for men who were not emperors or kin of emperors. In Ravenna to serve as master of offices under Theoderic, he was the second-ranking civil dignitary of the imperial government. In his forties at this point, he was the most prominent citizen in Theoderic’s realm. Liberius might have come closest, but was far less rich, had never been consul, and was away across the Alps in Gaul, far from the court Anastasius reneged.
Then the suspicions began
To hear Boethius tell it, he was surrounded by enemies even though he himself embodied selfless honor and justice. He had repeatedly thwarted the barbarous greed of royal officials with the grating names Cunigast and Triguilla, while persuading the king to prevent his praetorian prefect from imposing draconian measures to remedy a threat of famine in Campania. He protected the virtuous, such as the former consuls Paulinus and Albi- nus, from those who would ruin them. Even so, he made more enemies, and Basilius, desperate for relief from loan sharks, filed accusations against Boethius, while two other shady characters, Opilio and Gaudentius, on the verge of exile for their crimes, took refuge in a church to avoid deportation. Then on the day when they would have been branded and driven out of Ravenna, they bargained for their immunity, as we would say nowadays, by making their own string of accusations against Boethius.
And what did they accuse him of? I do not see that anyone has ever thought to be puzzled by Boethius’s somewhat unhelpful answer: “We are said to have wished that the senate be safe.”31 And just how did he attempt to ensure the senate’s safety? “We were accused of having stopped an informer from producing evidence that would convict the senate of the crime of maiestas”—that is, of attacking the intrinsic authority of the throne. He passed over, without deigning to comment (an old rhetorical trick), “the counterfeited letters that made it look as if I were daring to hope for liberty for Rome.” And just how does he deal with that accusation? “As if there were any liberty left to hope for! ”
