Boethius
Roman philosopher, theologian and statesman (c. 480–524/525), born into one of Rome's oldest and most prestigious aristocratic families, trained in Greek and Latin philosophy, and elevated to the highest offices of the Ostrogothic administration of Italy under King Theodoric, becoming consul in 510 and later magister officiorum, the kingdom's most important civil office. Accused of treason and of conspiring with the Eastern Roman Empire — charges he always denied and which most historians consider largely fabricated or exaggerated amid Theodoric's growing distrust of the senatorial Roman aristocracy — he was imprisoned at Pavia and eventually executed without a fair trial. It was precisely during this imprisonment, awaiting execution, that Boethius wrote his masterwork, The Consolation of Philosophy (c. 523), a dialogue in prose and verse between Boethius himself and an allegorical figure, Philosophy personified as a majestic woman, who consoles and guides him with rational arguments — not explicitly Christian, despite Boethius being a Christian — on the illusory nature of fortune, the true source of happiness, and the problem of reconciling divine providence with human free will, one of the most widely read and influential works of the entire Middle Ages and Renaissance, translated into numerous European vernacular languages, including by Alfred the Great and Chaucer. Prior to this final work, Boethius had undertaken an encyclopaedic project of translating and commenting on Aristotelian logic into Latin, only partially completed, which for centuries, until the recovery of further works of Aristotle in the twelfth century, became the almost sole channel for transmitting Greek logical thought to medieval Latin Europe, earning him the epithet 'the last of the Romans and the first of the Scholastics'.