Consolation
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 477–524)
A dialogue with Wisdom herself, written in a death cell. She is still talking when it ends.
- Catch rate
- 53 / 255
- Base research
- 184
- Stat total
- 314
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
Five books of prose and verse, written fast in a cell. Not a long book, and it never pretends the case is settled — Lady Philosophy is still arguing when the manuscript stops.
It argues wholly from reason, with nothing quoted from Scripture, because a condemned man reaching for consolation reached for what he could hold in the dark. It contends steadily rather than hard.
A high Defend, and earned: the book IS a defence — a mind under sentence of death, talked back to steadiness point by point, and fifteen centuries of readers have leaned on it and not broken it.
Enormous Popularity. The most-copied secular book of the Middle Ages: King Alfred put it into English, so did Chaucer, so did Elizabeth I.
Cited for this book
Boethius wrote the Consolation in prison near Pavia in 524, waiting to be executed for a treason he did not commit; he was beaten and killed before the year was out. The book never names Christ, which is why Christians and non-Christians have both read it for fifteen hundred years — but his signed theological tractates walk the Scriptural story straight: God “might in the last days grant us His own Son to come to us, clothed in human form.”
Development
A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | God Is Happiness | Rationality | Argument | 90 | 100% | 10 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 32 | Argument from Desire | Natural Theology | Argument | 74 | 100% | 10 |
| 33 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 34 | The Wheel of Fortune | Experience | Argument | 60 | 100% | 20 |
| 36 | The Still Centre | Rationality | Argument | 75 | 100% | 15 |
| 38 | The Two Necessities | Rationality | Argument | 90 | 100% | 10 |
| 39 | An Eternal Present | Theology Proper | Argument | 95 | 95% | 5 |
Read it: The Wheel That Spins
The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Latin.
“This is my art, this the game I never cease to play. I turn the wheel that spins. I delight to see the high come down and the low ascend.”
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy II.2 — Lady Philosophy speaking in the voice of Fortune (trans. H. R. James, 1897, public domain).
“Then,” said she, “it is necessary to acknowledge that God is very happiness.” … “But we have also proved that God and true happiness are one and the same.”
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy III.10 (trans. H. R. James, 1897, public domain), elided.
“as the innermost of several circles revolving round the same centre approaches the simplicity of the midmost point… things are free from fate in proportion as they seek to come nearer to that central pivot.”
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy IV.6 (trans. H. R. James, 1897, public domain), elided.
“eternity is the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single moment.”
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy V.6 (trans. H. R. James, 1897, public domain). The sentence Aquinas takes over whole.
Written in prison near Pavia in 524, waiting to be executed for a treason he did not commit. He was beaten and killed before the year was out.
The book never names Christ, which is why Christians and non-Christians have both read it for fifteen hundred years. His signed theological tractates walk the Scriptural story straight.