ould be employed. The work of Boetius is in five books and
is a very complete exposition of the subject. It long remained a
text-book of music in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. It is
still very valuable as a help in ascertaining the principles of ancient
music, and gives us the opinions of some of the best ancient writers on
the art. The manuscripts of the geometry of Boetius differ widely from
each other. One editor, Godofredus Friedlein, thinks that there are only
two manuscripts which can at all lay claim to contain the work of
Boetius. He published the _Ars Geometriae_, in two books, as given in
these manuscripts; but critics are generally inclined to doubt the
genuineness even of these. Professor Rand, Georgius Ernst and A.P.
McKinlay regard the _Ars_ as certainly inauthentic, while they accept
the _Interpretatio Euclidis_ (see works quoted in bibliography).

By far the most important and most famous of the works of Boetius is
his book _De Consolatione Philosophiae_. Gibbon justly describes it as
"a golden volume, not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or Tully, but
which claims incomparable merit from the barbarism of the times and the
situation of the author." The high reputation it had in medieval times
is attested by the numerous translations, commentaries and imitations of
it which then appeared. Among others Asser, the instructor of Alfred the
Great, and Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, commented on it.
Alfred translated it into Anglo-Saxon. Versions of it appeared in
German, French, Italian, Spanish and Greek before the end of the 15th
century. Chaucer translated it into English prose before the year 1382;
and this translation was published by Caxton at Westminster, 1480.
Lydgate followed in the wake of Chaucer. It is said that, after the
invention of printing, amongst others Queen Elizabeth translated it, and
that the work was well known to Shakespeare. It was the basis of the
earliest specimen of Provencal literature.

This famous work consists of five books. Its form is peculiar, and is
an imitation of a similar work by Marcianus Capella, _De Nuptiis
Philologiae et Mercurii_. It is alternately in prose and verse. The
verse shows great facility of metrical composition, but a considerable
portion of it is transferred from the tragedies of Seneca. The first
book opens with a few verses, in which Boetius describes how his
sorrows had brought him to a premature old age. As he is th