How The Consolation of Philosophy drew on The Works of Cicero
A documented line of influence: Boethius demonstrably engaged Marcus Tullius Cicero’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Works of Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero · c. 50 BCE
Ancient RomeThe influenced
The Consolation of Philosophy
Boethius · c. 524
Ancient RomeRelevance
6/10
On The Consolation of Philosophy’s page
- The Consolation is Cicero metabolized by a man awaiting execution
- Its wheel of Fortune and its store of historical examples come out of Cicero's De Officiis and the Dream of Scipio; Boethius had spent years inside these texts, even commenting on them
- Book V's great knot — how can God foreknow what we freely choose? — is set deliberately against Cicero's On Fate. Read Cicero and you see the question Boethius inherited
On The Works of Cicero’s page
- Boethius knew his Cicero cold — he wrote a full commentary on him, the In Ciceronis Topica
- That intimacy feeds the Consolation: the turning wheel of Fortune and its parade of historical examples descend from Cicero's De Officiis and the Dream of Scipio
- Cicero's On Fate is the partner Boethius is arguing with when the Consolation takes up divine foreknowledge against free will