public occasions. The third, fourth, fifth, and sixth contain his contributions to the Transactions of the Berlin Academy, and the seventh contains his critiques. The first two are valuable among other excellences from an educational point of view, and contain an exposition of many sound educational principles. In them Boeckh shows himself a man of wide heart, interested in the most diverse forms of investigation, an ardent patriot, and a lover of justice and truth. (J. D.) BOEHME, JAKOB (1575-1624), a mystical writer, whose surname (of which Fechner gives eight German varieties) appears in English literature as Beem, Behmont, &c., and notably in the form BEHMEN, was born at AltSeidenberg, in Upper Lusatia, a straggling hamlet among the hills, some ten miles S. E. of Görlitz. He came of a well-to-do family, but his first employment was that of herd boy on the Landskrone, a hill in the neighbourhood of Görlitz, and the only education he received was at the town-school of Seidenberg, a mile from his home. Seidenberg, to this day, is filled with shoemakers, and to a shoemaker Jakob was apprenticed in his fourteenth year (1589), being judged not robust enough for husbandry. Ten years later (1599) we find him settled at Görlitz as master-shoemaker, and married to Katharina, daughter of Hans Kuntzschmann, a thriving butcher in the town. After industriously pursuing his vocation for ten years, he bought (1610) the substantial house, which still preserves his name, close by the bridge, in the NeissVorstadt. Two or three years later he gave up business, and did not resume it as a shoemaker; but for some years before his death he made and sold woollen gloves, regularly visiting Prague fair for this purpose.

Boehme's authorship began in his 37th year (1612) with a treatise, Morgen Röthe im Auffgang, which though unfinished was surreptitiously copied, and eagerly circulated in MS. by Karl von Ender, This raised him at once out of his homely sphere, and made him the centre of a local circle of liberal thinkers, considerably above him in station and culture. The charge of heresy was, however, soon directed against him by Gregorius Richter, then pastor primarius of Görlitz. Feeling ran so high after Richter's pulpit denunciations, that, in July 1613, the municipal council, fearing a disturbance of the peace, made a show of examining Boehme, took possession of his fragmentary quarto, and dismissed the writer with an admonition to meddle no more with such matters. For five years he obeyed this injunction. But in 1618 began a second period of authorship; he poured forth, but did not publish, treatise after treatise, expository and polemical, in the next and the two following years. In 1622 he composed nothing but a few short pieces on true repentance, resignation, &c., which, however, devotionally speaking, are the most precious of all his writings. They were the only pieces offered to the public in his lifetime and with his permission, a fact which is evidence of the essentially religious and practical character of his mind. Their publication at Görlitz, on New Year's Day 1624, under the title of Der Weg zu Christo, was the signal for renewed clerical hostility. Boehme had by this time entered on the third and most prolific though the shortest period (1623-4) of his speculation. His labours at the desk were interrupted in May 1624 by a summons to Dresden, where his famous "colloquy" with the Upper Consistorial Court was made the occasion of a flattering but transient ovation on the part of a new circle of admirers. Richter died in August 1624, and Boehme did not long survive his pertinacious foe. Seized with a fever when away from home, he was with difficulty conveyed to Görlitz. His wife was at Dresden on business; and during the first week of his malady he was nursed by

church, grudgingly administered by the authorities, on Sunday, 17th November. Clerical ill-will followed him to the grave, and the malice of the vulgar defaced his monument. Boehme always professed that a direct inward opening or illumination was the only source of his speculative power. He pretended to no other revelation. Ecstatic raptures we should not expect, for he was essentially a Protestant mystic. No "thus saith the Lord" was claimed as his warrant, after the manner of Antoinette Bourignon, or Ludowick Muggleton; no spirits or angels held converse with him as with Swedenborg. It is needless to dwell, in the way either of acceptance or rejection, on the very few occasions in which his outward life seemed to him to come into contact with the invisible world. The apparition of the pail of gold to the herd boy on the Landskrone, the visit of the mysterious stranger to the young apprentice, the fascination of the luminous sheen, reflected from a common pewter dish, which first, in 1600, gave an intuitive turn to his meditations, the heavenly music which filled his ears as he lay dying-none of these matters are connected organically with the secret of his special power. The mysteries of which he discoursed were not reported to him: he "beheld" them. He saw the root of all mysteries, the Ungrund or Urgrund, whence issue all contrasts and discordant principles, hardness and softness, severity and mildness, sweet and bitter, love and sorrow, heaven and hell. These he "saw" in their origin; these he attempted to describe in their issue, and to reconcile in their eternal result. He saw into the being of God; whence the birth or going forth of the divine manifestation. Nature lay unveiled to him, he was at home in the heart of things. "His own book, which he himself was," the microcosm of man, with his threefold life, was patent to his vision. Such was his own account of his qualification. If he failed it was in expression; he confessed himself a poor mouthpiece, though he saw with a sure spiritual eye.

It must not be supposed that the form in which Boehme's pneumatic realism worked itself out in detail was shaped entirely from within. In his writings we trace the influence of Theophr. Bombast von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus (1493-1541), of Kaspar Schwenkfeld (14901561), the first Protestant mystic, and of Valentin Weigel (1533-1588). From the school of Paracelsus came much of his puzzling phraseology,—his Turba and Tinctur and so forth, a phraseology embarrassing to himself as well as to his readers. His friends plied him with foreign terms, which he was delighted to receive, interpreting them by an instinct, and using them often in a corrupted form and always in a sense of his own. Thus the word Idea called up before him the image of "a very fair, heavenly, and chaste virgin." The title Aurora, by which his earliest treatise is best known, was furnished by Dr Balthasar Walther. These, however, were false helps, which only serve to obscure a difficult study, like the Flagrat and Lubet, with which his English translator veiled Boehme's own honest Schreck and Lust. There is danger lest his crude science and his crude philosophical vocabulary conceal the fertility of Boehme's ideas and the transcendent greatness of his religious insight. Few will take the pains to follow him through the interminable account of his seven Quellgeister, which remind us of Gnosticism; or even of his three first properties of eternal nature, in which his disciples find Newton's formulæ anticipated, and which certainly bear a marvellous resemblance to the three ȧpxaí of Schelling's Theogonische Natur. Boehme is always greatest when he breaks away from his fancies and his trammels, and allows speech to the voice of his heart. Then he is artless, clear, and strong; and no man can help listening to him, whether he dive deep down with the

conviction "ohne Gift und Grimm kein Leben," or rise with the belief that "the being of all beings is a wrestling power," or soar with the persuasion that Love "in its height is as high as God." The mystical poet of Silesia, Joh. Angelus, discerned where Boehme's truest power lay when he sang

"Im Wasser lebt der Fisch, die Pflanze in der Erden,
Der Vogel in der Luft, die Sonn' am Firmament,
Der Salamander muss im Feu'r erhalten werden,
Und Gottes Herz ist Jakob Böhme's Element."

The three periods of Boehme's authorship constitute three distinct stages in the development of his philosophy. He himself marks a threefold division of his subject matter:-1. PHILOSOPHIA, ¿.e., the pursuit of the divine Sophia, a study of God in himself; this was attempted in the Aurora. 2. ASTROLOGIA, i.e., in the largest sense, cosmology, the manifestation of the divine in the structure of the world aud of man; hereto belong, with others, Die drei Principien göttlichen Wesens; Vom dreifachen Leben der Menschen; Von der Menschwerdung Christi; Von der Geburt und Bezeichnung aller Wesen (known as Signatura Rerum). 3. THEOLOGIA, i.e., in Scougall's phrase, "the life of God in the soul of man.' Of the speculative writings under this head the most important are Von der Gnadenwahl; Mysterium Magnum (a spiritual commentary on Genesis); Von Christi Testamenten (the Sacraments). Although Boehme's philosophy is essentially theological, and his theology essentially philosophical, one would hardly describe him as a philosophical theologian; and, indeed, his position is not one in which either the philosopher or the theologian finds it easy to make himself completely at home. The philosopher finds no trace in Boehme of a conception of God which rests its own validity on an accord with the highest canons of reason or of morals; it is in the actual not in the ideal that Boehme seeks God, whom he discovers as the spring of natural powers and forces, rather than as the goal of advancing thought. The theologian is staggered by a language which breaks the fixed association of theological phrases, and strangely reversing the usual point of view, characteristically pictures God as underneath rather than above. Nature rises out of Him; we sink into Him. The Ungrund of the unmanifested Godhead is boldly represented in the English translations of Boehme by the word Abyss, in a sense altogether unexplained by its Biblical use. In the Theologia Germanica this tendency to regard God as the substantia, the underlying ground of all things, is accepted as a foundation for piety; the same view, when offered in the colder logic of Spinoza, is sometimes set aside as atheistical. The procession of spiritual forces and natural phenomena out of the Ungrund is described by Boehme in terms of a threefold manifestation, commended no doubt by the constitution of the Christian Trinity, but exhibited in a form derived from the school of Paracelsus. From Weigel he learned a purely idealistic explanation of the universe, according to which it is not the resultant of material forces, but the expression of spiritual principles. These two explanations were fused in his mind till they issued forth as equivalent forms of one and the same thought. Further, Schwenkfeld supplied him with the germs of a transcendental exegesis, whereby the Christian Scriptures and the dogmata of Lutheran orthodoxy were opened up in harmony with his new-found views. Thus equipped, Boehme's own genius did the rest. A primary effort of Boehme's philosophy is to show how material powers are substantially one with moral forces. This is the object with which he draws out the dogmatic scheme which dictates the arrangement of his seven Quellgeister. Translating Boehme's thought out of the uncouth dialect of material symbols (as to which one doubts sometimes whether he means them as concrete

instances, or as pictorial illustrations, or as a mere memoria technica) we find that Boehme conceives of the correlation of two triads of forces. Each triad consists of a thesis, an antithesis, and a synthesis; and the two are connected by an important link. In the hidden life of the Godhead, which is at once Nichts and Alles, exists the original triad, viz., Attraction, Diffusion, and their resultant, the Agony of the unmanifested Godhead. The transition is made; by an act of will the divine Spirit comes to Light; and immediately the manifested life appears in the triad of Love, Expression, and their resultant, Visible Variety. As the action of contraries and their resultant are explained the relations of soul, body, and spirit; of good, evil, and free will; of the spheres of the angels, of Lucifer, and of this world. It is a more difficult problem to account on this philosophy for the introduction of evil. Boehme does not resort to dualism, nor has he the smallest sympathy with a pantheistic repudiation of the fact of sin. That the difficulty presses him is clear from the progressive changes in his attempted solution of the problem. In the Aurora nothing save good proceeds from the Ungrund, though there is good that abides and good that falls-Christ and Lucifer. In the second stage of his writing the antithesis is directly generated as such; good and its contrary are coincidently given from the one creative source, as factors of life and movement; while in the third period evil is a direct outcome of the primary principle of divine manifestation-it is the wrath side of God. Corresponding to this change we trace a significant variation in the moral end contemplated by Boehme as the object of this world's life and history. In the first stage the world is created in remedy of a decline; in the second, for the adjustment of a balance of forces; in the third, to exhibit the eternal victory of good over evil, of love over wrath.

Boehme's influence has lain chiefly with the learned. Translations of sundry treatises have been made into Latin (by J. A. Werdenhagen, 1632), Dutch (complete, by W. v. Bayerland, 163441), and French (by Jean Macle, circ. 1640, and L. C. de SaintMartin, 1800-9). For the nearest approach to popularity which his writings have enjoyed we must search the annals of the English Commonwealth. Between 1644 and 1662, all Boehme's works were translated by John Ellistone (d. 1652) and John Sparrow, assisted by Durand Hotham and Humphrey Blunden, who paid for the undertaking. At that time regular societies of Behmenists, embracing not only the cultivated but the vulgar, existed in England and in Holland. They merged into the Quaker movement, holding already in common with Friends that salvation is nothing short of the very presence and life of Christ in the believer, and only kept apart by an objective doctrine of the sacraments which exposed them to the polemic of Quakers (e.g., J. Anderdon). Muggleton led an anthropomorphic reaction against them, and between the two currents they were swept away. The Philadelphian Society at the beginning of the 18th century consisted of cultured mystics, Jane Lead, Pordage, Francis Lee, Bromley, &c., who fed upon Boehme. William Law (1686-1761) somewhat later recurred to the same spring, with the result, however, in those dry times of bringing his own good sense into question rather than of reviving the credit of his author. After Law's death the old English translation was in great part re-edited (4 vols. 1762-84) as a tribute to his memory, by George Ward and Thomas Langcake, with plates from the designs of D. A. Freher (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 5767-94). This forms what is commonly called Law's translation; to complete it a 5th vol. (12mo, Dublin, 1820) is needed. Germany has also in this century turned to Boehme with eyes directly philosophical. 66 and in reality through him for the first time did philosophy in "He is known," says Hegel, "as the Philosophus Teutonicus; Germany come forward with a characteristic stamp. The kernel of his philosophizing is purely German (Gesch. Ph., iii. 1836, p. 300). Franz Baader is the most remarkable of his recent philoPhilosophen J. Boehmes, 1844; Alb. Peip, J. Boehme der deutsche sophical exponents. See also Hamberger, Die Lehre des deutschen Philosoph, 1860; von Harless, J. Boehme und die Alchymisten, 1870. For Boehme's life, consult the Memoirs, by Abm. von Frankenberg and others, trans. by Fras. Okely, 1870; La Motte Fouque's J. Boehm, ein biographischer Denkstein, 1831; and, above all, H. A. Fechner's J. Böhme, sein Leben und seine Schriften, 1857. A comprehensive study of Boehme in English is a desideratum. See Memorial of W. Law (by Chr. Walton, 1856); Sat. Rev., xxxvi.

(1873) p. 52; Unitar. Rev. (Amer.), ii. (1874) pp. 243, 447, art. by Prof. R. E. Thomson. Boehme's MSS. went to Holland. His works, having been separately printed at Amsterdam, 1631-82, by Hen. Beets and others, were first uniformly edited by J. G. Gichtel, Amst. 1682-3, in 24 pts. 8vo, bound in 6, 7, or 9 vols. ; reprinted Amst. 1715, 2 vols. 4to; again, Amst. 1730-1, in 21 pts. 8vo, bound in 6 vols. They were re-edited by K. W. Schiebler, Leips. 1831-47, in 7 vols. 8vo; reprinted 1861, ff.

BOOTIA (Boría) a country of Central Greece, bounded on the S. by the Gulf of Corinth, Megaris, and Attica; on the E. by Attica and the Euripus, which separates it from Euboea; on the N. by the territory of the Locri Opuntii; and on the W. by Phocis. Its surface is estimated at 1119 English square miles. Surrounded nearly on all sides by mountains, it divides itself naturally into three parts, the low country about Lake Copais, or, as it is now called, the Lake of Topolias, the valley of the River Asopus (now Oropo), and the coast district between Mount Helicon and the Corinthian Gulf. The country about the lake is a large valley, so completely surrounded by hills that it is connected with the Euboean Sea by subterranean passages only. The natural passages, or katavothra, not being sufficient to carry off the great masses of water accumulating in the valley, which is traversed by the Cephisus, the principal river in the country, the early inhabitants often suffered severely from inundations; and at a very remote period large artificial drains were constructed, probably by the Minyans of Orchomenos, to supplement the natural outlets. Remains of these works, as stupendous as any that were executed in antiquity, still excite the admiration of the traveller. They formerly rendered that part of Boeotia one of the most fertile districts of Greece, but being neglected for centuries, the shores of the lake became an extensive marsh. A large stretch of country is still often under water during the winter, but it begins to dry up in spring, and in summer forms fine wheat-fields and meadows. Between this valley of the Copais and the basin of the Asopus is situated the Theban plain, which is still distinguished for its fertility, especially in grain. The lowlands and valleys of Boeotia were notorious in antiquity for their moist and thick atmosphere, which was believed to render the inhabitants dull and stupid. For these characteristics the Boeotians are frequently satirized by the Attic writers; and it is certain that comparatively few names were added to the long roll of Greek literature from this portion of the Greek soil. One writer alone, perhaps, the poet Pindar, stands out in striking contrast to the national character; the two others who alone of his fellow-countrymen can I claim to be also his intellectual kinsmen, Hesiod and Plutarch, bear no small trace of a Boeotian origin. The dialect spoken by the Boeotians was a broad Eolic. In the earliest times of history Boeotia was inhabited by various tribes, such as the Aonians, Temmicians, Thracians, Leleges, Phlegyans, and the Minyans of Orchomenos. Of these we know almost nothing, but the last-mentioned appear to have formed a great centre of civilization at a very remote period. All these tribes were gradually expelled or absorbed by the Boeotian Eolians, who immigrated from Thessaly about sixty years after the destruction of Troy, according to the ordinary chronology. The country, which had previously possessed no common name, henceforth is always spoken of as Boeotia, and the several cities and towns, with Thebes at their head, formed a sort of confederation, in which, however, the Thebans and the other Bootians frequently came into hostile collision, Thebes claiming the supremacy of the whole country, and the other cities insisting on their independence. The confederation was administered by a number of officers called Bootarchs, of whom two were chosen by Thebes and one by each of the remaining confederate communities. The federal temple was that of Athene Itonica

at Coronea, and there a religious festival was held. The political history of the country is inseparable from that of ORCHOMENOS, THEBES, PLATEE, and THESPIÆ, to which the reader must be referred for details. The confederacy continued its nominal existence even under the Roman emperors, although the country was so reduced that, about the time of Augustus, Tanagra and Thespia alone could be considered towns, the other cities having either been entirely destroyed, or existing only as villages. The more important of the towns which had formerly existed, besides those already mentioned, were Tegyra, Arne, Haliartus, Alalcomenæ, and Lebadea in the Copaic valley; Anthedon, Mycalessus, and Oropus along the Euripus; Thisbe and Creusis on the Corinthian Gulf; Ascra and Leuctra further inland; and Sidæ, Tanagra, and Phere in the valley of the Asopus. During the Middle Ages and under the Turkish domination, Livadia, the ancient Lebadea, was the capital of the country, which indeed was frequently called after that city. The district is now united in one Nomos with Attica (Attikoviotia), and is divided into two eparchies that take their names from Thebes and Livadia. The population in the eastern part is largely Albanian, and is engaged in the growing of grain and culture of the vine. See the Travels of Clarke, Wheler, Dodwell, Sir W. Gell, Hobhouse, Holland, Leake, and Mure; Thiersch, État actuel de la Grèce, 1833; Forchhammer, Hellenika, 1837; Kruse, Hellas, 1825--28; Klütz, De fœdere Boeotico, 1821; Ten Breujel, De fœdere Boeotico, 1834; Francke, Der Böotische Bund, 1843; and Bursian's Geographie von Griechenland,

1863.

BOERHAAVE, HERMANN, one of the most celebrated physicians of modern times, was born at Voorhout near Leyden, December 31, 1668. Destined for the clerical profession, to which his father belonged, he received a liberal education, and early displayed unusual abilities. At the age of sixteen he entered the University of Leyden, where he studied under Gronovius, Ryckius, Trigland, and other distinguished men, and obtained the highest academical honours. In 1690 he took his degree in philosophy; on which occasion he delivered an inaugural dissertation De distinctione mentis a corpore, wherein he attacked the doctrines of Epicurus, Hobbes, and Spinoza. Being left, on the death of his father, without any provision, he was compelled to support himself by teaching mathematics. By the advice of Vandenberg, the burgomaster of Leyden, Boerhaave now applied himself with ardour to the study of medicine, to which indeed he had early manifested a decided inclination. The works of Hippocrates among the ancients, and those of Sydenham among the moderns, were the especial objects of his study; but his reading was by no means confined to these authors. In 1693 he took his degree of M.D. at Harderwyck in Guelderland, and immediately entered on the studies of his profession. His merits were soon recognized, and in 1701 he was appointed by the University of Leyden to supply the place of Drelincourt as lecturer on the institutes of medicine. His inaugural discourse on this occasion was entitled De commendando Hippocratis studio, in which he recommended to his pupils that great physician as their model. In 1709, the university appointed him successor to Hotton in the chair of botany and medicine, in which capacity he did good service, not only to his own university, but also to botanical science, by his improvements and additions to the botanic garden of Leyden, and by the publication of numerous works descriptive of new species of plants. He was appointed in 1714 rector of the university. In the same year he succeeded Bidloo in the chair of practical medicine, and in this capacity he had the merit of introducing into modern practice the system of clinical instruction. Four years later he was appointed to the

chair of chemistry, and delivered an inaugural discourse, which contains the germs of his celebrated Elements of Chemistry. In 1728 he was elected into the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris, and two years later into the Royal Society of London; to both of which he communicated his chemical researches. In 1729 declining health obliged him to resign the chairs of chemistry and botany; and in 1731 he resigned the rectorship of the university, to which office he had been re-elected. On this occasion he delivered a discourse De Honore Medici Servitute. This great and good man died, after a lingering and painful illness, on the morning of the 23d September 1738.

To uncommon

From the time of Hippocrates, no physician had more justly merited the esteem of his contemporaries and the admiration of posterity than Boerhaave. intellectual abilities he united those amiable qualities of the heart which give them so great a value to society. His personal appearance was simple and venerable. He taught very methodically, and with great precision; his style was eloquent, and his delivery dignified and graceful. He sometimes also gave his lectures a lively turn; but his raillery was never coarse or satirical. He possessed remarkable powers of memory, and was an accomplished linguist. A declared foe to all excess, he considered decent mirth as the salt of life. He was fond of music, with which he had a scientific acquaintance; and during winter he had a weekly concert in his house. It was his daily practice throughout life, as soon as he rose in the morning, which was generally very early, to retire for an hour to private prayer and meditation on some part of the Scriptures. He often told his friends, when they asked him how it was possible for him to go through so much fatigue, that it was this practice which gave him spirit and vigour in the business of the day.

Of his sagacity, and the wonderful penetration with which he often discovered and described, at first sight, such distempers as betray themselves by no symptoms to common eyes, very surprising accounts have been transmitted to us. Yet so far was he from having presumptuous confidence in his own abilities, or from being puffed up by prosperity, that he was condescending to all, and remarkably diligent in his profession. His great skill and celebrity as a physician brought him a large fortune. He left his only surviving daughter two millions of florins.

The genius of Boerhaave raised the fame of the University of Leyden, especially as a school of medicine, so as to make it a resort of strangers from every part of Europe. All the princes of Europe sent him disciples, who found in this skilful professor not only an indefatigable teacher, but an affectionate guardian. When Peter the Great went to Holland in 1715, to instruct himself in maritime affairs, he also took lessons from Boerhaave. The reputation of this not confined to Europe; a Chinese m a letter directed "To the illustrious an in Europe," and it reached him in due conTM ae city of Leyden raised a splendid monuwent o his memory in the church of St Peter, inscribed "To the health-giving genius of Boerhaave," SALUTIFERO BOERHAAVII GENIO SACRUM.

1

The principal works of Boerhaave are-(1.) Institutiones Medica, Leyden, 1708; (2.) Aphorismi de cognoscendis et curandis Morbis, Leyden, 1709,-on this work, which was the text-book of Boerhaave's lectures, Van Swieten published a commentary in 5 vols. 4to; (3.) Libellus de Materia Medica et Remediorum Formulis, Leyden, 1719; (4.) Institutiones et Experimenta Chemiæ, Paris, 1724. BOETIUS, ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS, is described by Gibbon" as the last of the Romans whom Cato or Tully could have acknowledged for their countryman." The events of his life are involved in uncertainty. The

historians of the day give us but imperfect records or make unsatisfactory allusions. Later chroniclers indulged in the fictitious and the marvellous, and it is almost exclusively from his own books that trustworthy information can be obtained.

There is considerable diversity among authorities as to the name of Boetius. One editor of his De Consolatione, Bertius, thinks that he bore the prænomen of Flavius, but there is no authority for this supposition. His father bore the name of Flavius, and it is probable that the Flavius Boetius who was prætorian præfect, and who was put to death in 455 A.D., by order of Valentinian III., was the grandfather of the subject of our notice; but these circumstances form no good reason for supposing that he also had the prænomen of Flavius. Many of the earlier editions inserted the name of Torquatus, but it is not found in any of the best manuscripts. The last name is generally written Boethius, from the idea that it is connected with the Greek Bontós; but here, again, the best manuscripts agree in reading Boetius, and the latest editors have adopted this form.

The date of his birth is unknown; but it is conjectured on good grounds that he was born at Rome somewhere about the year 475 A.D. He was, therefore, too young to see the last of the Roman emperors (476), and his boyhood was spent in Rome while Odoacer, king of the Heruli, was monarch of that city. We know nothing of his early years. A passage in a treatise falsely ascribed to him (De Disciplina Scholarium) and a misinterpretation of a passage in Cassiodorus, led early scholars to suppose that he spent a long time in Athens pursuing his studies there; but later biographers have seen that there is no foundation for this opinion. His father, Flavius Manlius Boetius was consul in the year 487. It is probable that he died soon after; for Boetius states that, when he was bereaved of his parent, men of the highest rank took him under their charge (De Con., lib. ii. c. 3). He soon became well known for his energy and ability, and his high rank gave him access to the noblest families. He married Rusticiana, the daughter of the senator Symmachus. By her he had two sons, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boetius and Q. Aurelius Memmius Symmachus. When Theodoric, the king of the Ostrogoths, displaced Odoacer no change of fortune for the worse seems to have befallen Boetius. On the contrary he became a favourite with that monarch, and was one of his intimate friends. Boetius attained to the consulship in 510, and his sons, while still young, held the same honour together (522). Boetius regarded it as the height of his good fortune when he witnessed his two sons, consuls at the same time, convoyed from their home to the senatehouse by a crowd of senators amidst the enthusiasm of the masses. On that day, he tells us, while his sons occupied the curule chairs in the senate-house, he himself had the honour of pronouncing a panegyric on the monarch, and placed between his two sons he distributed largesses among the people in the circus. But his good fortune did not last, and he attributes the calamities that came upon him to the ill-will which his bold maintenance of justice had caused, and to his opposition to every oppressive measure. "How often," he says, "have I opposed the attacks of Conigastus on the property of the weak? how often have I kept Trigguilla, the chamberlain of the palace, from perpetrating acts of injustice? how often have I protected, by influence exercised at my own peril, the miserable whom the licensed avarice of the barbarians always harassed with endless insults?" then he mentions several particular cases. A famine had begun to rage. The prefect of the praetorium was determined to satisfy the soldiers, regardless altogether of the feelings of the provincials. He accordingly issued an edict for a coemptio, that is, an order compelling the provincials

And