Boethius and Epic Truth The opening lines of Boethius' prosi­ metric Consolation place it firmlyin the epic tradition as a rich series of Stoic and Neoplatonic writings had contextualized it. Echoing at once both the epilogue to Virgil's Georgics (4.564-565) and the pseudo-Virgilian prologue to the Aeneid, 1 the weeping prisoner re­ calls the tranquil writings of his youth, even as he sounds the initial theme of a more serious work: "sad songs must I begin" (l.m1 ,2: "maestos cogor inire modos"). 2 Identifyinghims elf with a composite epic hero defined as Everyman, Boethius assumes the posture of an Aeneas (Cf. Aen. 6.6gg) who, in the underworld of afflictive earthly struggle, weeps as he speaks: "ueris elegi fletibus ora rigant" (l.m 1 ,4). At the same time he plays the part of an Odysseus assailed by the pathetic, self-pityingst rains and seductive blanishments of the poeti­ cal Muses, who accompany him, weeping, on his joumey, and whom Lady Philosophy denounces and dismisses as sweetly destructive 1. For Boethius' sources I am indebted to the references in Joachim Gruber, Kommentar zu Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiae (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978), and Helga Scheible, Die Gedichte in der Consolatio Philosophiae desBoethius (Heid elberg: Carl Winter, 1972). For a treatment of the pseudo-Virgilian prologue, see P. A. Hansen, "ILLE EGO QUI QUONDAM ...Once Again," Classical Quarterly n.s. 22 (1972): 139-49· 2. For the Latin text of Boethius I use L. Bieler, ed., De consolatione philosophiae, CCSL 94 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1957). The literal English translations given for pas­ sages indented in my text are from The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. S. J. Te ster, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918, 1978). 42 Jo b, Boethius, and Epic Truth Sirens: "Sirenes usque in exitium dulces" (I. p 1,1 1 ) . Finally, in his offended sense of justice and passionate despair, the prisoner ac­ costed by a Philosophia with blazing eyes (l.p1,1: "oculis arden­ tibus") resembles the wrathful Achilles at Iliad 1.200 confronted by a towering Athena. 3 Even as Athena, goddess of wisdom, directs Achilles and protects Odysseus, Philo sophia fulfillsthe tutelaryfu nc­ tion of a Sibyl as she reminds Boethius of his final goaland reiterates the Delphic oracle that recalls Boethius to self-knowledge. Although these parallels at the outset readily liken the prisoner in our eyes to an epic hero, he is initially blind to any analogybet ween himself and Homer's and Virgil's protagonists. He sees himself as a victim, not a victor. He can liken his situation only to that of other persecuted philosophers. Philosophia herself begins with that an­ alogy, comparing Boethius' fate to that of Socrates, Zeno, Canius, Seneca, and Soranus, all of them philosophers put to death for opposing wickedness with wisdom (l.p3,g). The prisoner confirms the comparison in his autobiographical complaint when he calls himself one of Philosophia's ill-rewarded, obedient servants (l.p4,4). Later references to Nero and Seneca (ITI.ps,1o-11; ITI.m4) under­ score the close historical comparison between Boethius' fate in the court of Theodoric the Ostrogoth and that of Seneca in Nero's.4 Boethius only begins to see himself as an epic hero and thus become one when his understanding of his own situation changes from a literal to a figurativeone. At the same time, as we shall see, his philosophical quest advances from a consideration of extemal causes (material and efficient) in Books I and IT to the internal causes of idea and intention in Books III and IV. In both cases Boethius leams to prove into the deeper meaning of things. By the end of Book III the prisoner is able to read the story of his own life allegorically as a heroic descent to the underworld comparable to that of Orpheus (III.m1 2); as a mental victoryover the body and its passions, similar 3· See Robert Lamberton, Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Read­ ing and the Growth of the Epic Tradition (Berkeley: University of Califomia Press, 1986), P· 276. 4· For a discussion of Boethius and Seneca see Seth Lerer, Boethius and Dialogue: Literary Method in "The Consolation of Philosophy" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 245-47. For an excellent introduction to Boethius' life and times, see Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philoso­ phy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981, repr. 1983), pp. 1-68. Boethius and Epic Truth 43 to Ulysses' (IV.m3); and even as a victorious ascent to the stars like Hercules' (IV.m7). As Seth Lerer phrases it, "he leams to see himself through the texts he has read."5 When Boethius discovers that his own struggle with misfortune is mirrored in the paradigmatic agon of epic heroes like Ulysses and Hercules, he reads the myths much as Seneca and Lucretius did. In De rerum natura 5.22-54, for instance, Lucretius exalts the Epi­ curean philosopher, who conquers the monstrous fear of death, over Hercules, who triumphed in his labors over terrible beasts. The ostensible contrast, however, turns into a metaphor, and Hercules becomes for Lucretius an image of the heroic philosopher. Seneca, like Lucretius, assigns the myths of monster-killers to a primitive past ("excussa iam antique credulitate") while at the same time using them to represent the greatness of a man like Cato , who struggled against ambition and the greed for power and stood alone against the hydra-like vices of a degenerate state.6 For Seneca, as Villy S0renson observes, "Cato is the Hercules of his day."7 For Boethius, as we shall see, everyman is called to be a Hercules. In the prose section immediately preceding the Hercules-metrum, Philosophia makes the epic comparison explicit. Not only does a true hero combine in himself the classical, martial virtues of prudence and courage; his wisdom actually is his strength. The vir sapiens, she reminds Boethius, enters into his battle with fortune as fearlessly as a strong man (vir fo rtis) aroused by battle-cry. As she explains it, the word virtus derives from vis, meaning force or strength, because the virtuous man, relying on his own powers (IV.p7, 19: "suis viribus nitens"), is not overcome by adversities. Boethius' thrice-repeated glance into the mythic mirror which represents the self archetypally in the form of an epic hero brings to a climax the educational process Lady Philosophy begins when she asks Boethius whether he remembers who he is: "hominemne te esse 5· Lerer, Boethius and Dialogue, p. 168. Lerer's pioneering work, to which I am indebted, focuses particularly on Boethius' pedagogical use of dialogue as a literary form and his revision of selected Senecan sources. 6. Seneca, "De constantia sapientis," in Moral Essays, vol. 1, trans. John W. Basore, Loeb Classical Library {Cambridge: Harvard University Press), ll.i-iii, pp. 50-53· 7. Villy S0rensen, Seneca: The Humanist at the Court of Nero, trans. W. Glyn Jones (Edinburgh: Canongate; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1 g84), p. 203. 44 Jo b, Boethius, and Epic Truth meministi?" (l.p6, 14). As we have noted, there are only three mytho­ logical metra among the thirty-nine in Boethius' Consolation. Al­ though few in number, these poems, as Gerard O'Daly insists, have a "significance" that "must not be underestimated."8 Not merely "in­ terludes in the argument or decorative embellishments of it,"9 the metra featuring Orpheus (lll.m 1 2 ), Ulysses and Circe (IV.m3), and Agamemnon, Ulysses, and Hercules (IV.m 7) are placed "at important junctures in the work" 10 to summarize and advance its themes by relating them to the allegorical exegesis of heroic myth practised in the Hellenistic and N eo platonic philosophical schools. While Lerer, O'Daly, and others have related the mythological metra in general terms to the pedagogical progression of the Consolation, no one has drawn a direct correlation between the three metra and the threefold definition of human nature that Philosophia helps her pupil, Bo­ ethius, to recall. Even as the allegorical reading of ancient myth, deeply grounded in moral philosophy, had defined a threefold self­ knowledge as epic truth, Lady Philosophy assesses Boethius' condi­ tion and effects his cure according to a tripartite definition of human nature. When Philosophia cross-examines the prisoner to determine his mental state, she asks him, first of all, about his belief in divine providence. When he avers that the course of the world is directed not by mere chance but by God, she applauds his answer but presses him more closely to discover the cause of his obvious despair. Further questioning reveals that although he remembers the origin of every­ thing, he has forgotten the final cause of the universe, the end at which the whole of creation aims and moves. He has similarly lost sight of his own telos as a human being. He confesses himself to be a man ("homo"), definedin Aristotelian terms as a rational and mor­ tal animal (l.p6, 15: "rationale animal atque mortale") and nothing more (l.p6, 16: "nihil"). He has, in short, forgotten the third part of the hominal definition, according to which a human being possesses an immortal soul and a divine destiny. As Philo sophia pointedly tells him, he no longer knows what he is: "quid ipse sis, nosse desisti" (l.p6, 1 7). 8. Gerard O'Daly, The Po etry of Boethius (Chapel Hill: Universityof North Caro­ lina Press, 1991), p. 178. g. Ibid., p. vii. 1 o. Ibid., p. 1 78. Boethius andEpic Truth 45 As we shall see, the three mythological metra, as fables teaching truth, constitute a step-by-step unfolding of the three essential fea­ tures of human nature.