sons to the discipline of the republic. In the youth of Boethius
the studies of Rome were not totally abandoned; a Virgil ^90 is
now extant, corrected by the hand of a consul; and the professors
of grammar, rhetoric, and jurisprudence, were maintained in their
privileges and pensions by the liberality of the Goths. But the
erudition of the Latin language was insufficient to satiate his
ardent curiosity: and Boethius is said to have employed eighteen
laborious years in the schools of Athens, ^91 which were
supported by the zeal, the learning, and the diligence of Proclus
and his disciples. The reason and piety of their Roman pupil
were fortunately saved from the contagion of mystery and magic,
which polluted the groves of the academy; but he imbibed the
spirit, and imitated the method, of his dead and living masters,
who attempted to reconcile the strong and subtile sense of
Aristotle with the devout contemplation and sublime fancy of
Plato. After his return to Rome, and his marriage with the
daughter of his friend, the patrician Symmachus, Boethius still
continued, in a palace of ivory and marble, to prosecute the same
studies. ^92 The church was edified by his profound defence of
the orthodox creed against the Arian, the Eutychian, and the
Nestorian heresies; and the Catholic unity was explained or
exposed in a formal treatise by the indifference of three
distinct though consubstantial persons. For the benefit of his
Latin readers, his genius submitted to teach the first elements
of the arts and sciences of Greece. The geometry of Euclid, the
music of Pythagoras, the arithmetic of Nicomachus, the mechanics
of Archimedes, the astronomy of Ptolemy, the theology of Plato,
and the logic of Aristotle, with the commentary of Porphyry, were
translated and illustrated by the indefatigable pen of the Roman
senator. And he alone was esteemed capable of describing the