WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.879 I want you to just for a second close your eyes 00:00:01.879 --> 00:00:04.639 and imagine the absolute worst case scenario. 00:00:05.080 --> 00:00:07.719 You're in a prison cell. It's damp. It's cold. 00:00:07.879 --> 00:00:10.839 The walls of these thick oppressive stone blocks. 00:00:11.539 --> 00:00:14.289 You're in the city of Pavia. in what we now call 00:00:14.289 --> 00:00:18.350 Northern Italy. And the year is roughly 524 AD. 00:00:18.989 --> 00:00:21.629 Outside that cell, the world feels like it's 00:00:21.629 --> 00:00:25.489 in total chaos. The Roman Empire, you know, greatest 00:00:25.489 --> 00:00:28.230 civilization the world had ever known. It's technically 00:00:28.230 --> 00:00:30.530 fallen. Barbarian kings are running the show. 00:00:30.859 --> 00:00:33.340 It's a genuinely terrifying time. And inside 00:00:33.340 --> 00:00:36.060 that specific cell, it is so much worse. You're 00:00:36.060 --> 00:00:37.820 completely alone. They've stripped you of your 00:00:37.820 --> 00:00:41.240 titles. I mean, your massive wealth, your reputation. 00:00:41.539 --> 00:00:43.200 Everything. Everything. You're cut off from your 00:00:43.200 --> 00:00:45.259 family. And you know, you know with this cold, 00:00:45.380 --> 00:00:48.000 hard certainty that you are going to die. And 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:49.780 it's not going to be a peaceful death. It's going 00:00:49.780 --> 00:00:52.219 to be an execution, a brutal one. Yeah, it sounds 00:00:52.219 --> 00:00:54.020 like the opening scene of some kind of psychological 00:00:54.020 --> 00:00:56.520 horror film. Yeah. But this isn't fiction. This 00:00:56.520 --> 00:00:59.219 is history. And the man sitting in that cell 00:00:59.219 --> 00:01:04.079 is Aeneas Manlius Severinus Boethius. Now, I 00:01:04.079 --> 00:01:05.700 think most people in that situation, they would 00:01:05.700 --> 00:01:07.900 just break, wouldn't they? Oh, completely. You'd 00:01:07.900 --> 00:01:10.239 scream, you'd beg, or maybe you'd just stare 00:01:10.239 --> 00:01:13.439 at the wall in catatonic shock. But Boethius... 00:01:13.439 --> 00:01:14.819 He did something completely different. He did 00:01:14.819 --> 00:01:17.700 something extraordinary. In the face of torture 00:01:17.700 --> 00:01:21.280 and certain death, he didn't panic. He wrote. 00:01:21.900 --> 00:01:24.400 He picked up a stylus and he wrote a book that 00:01:24.400 --> 00:01:26.379 would go on to become one of the most influential 00:01:26.379 --> 00:01:29.299 texts in the entire history of the Western world. 00:01:29.420 --> 00:01:31.280 And that is the paradox we're exploring today 00:01:31.280 --> 00:01:34.060 on this deep dive. The book is The Constellation 00:01:34.060 --> 00:01:37.760 of Philosophy. And the man, Boethius, is someone 00:01:37.760 --> 00:01:40.819 you absolutely need to know. He's often called... 00:01:41.040 --> 00:01:43.799 The last of the Romans. And the schoolmaster 00:01:43.799 --> 00:01:46.280 of the Middle Ages. Those are heavy titles. The 00:01:46.280 --> 00:01:48.540 last Roman. I mean, it implies he was the final 00:01:48.540 --> 00:01:51.219 flickering candle of a world that was just going 00:01:51.219 --> 00:01:54.079 dark. It really does. Exactly. And our mission 00:01:54.079 --> 00:01:55.859 today is to unpack that. We want to understand 00:01:55.859 --> 00:01:59.379 how this one man served as a kind of human bridge. 00:02:00.040 --> 00:02:02.709 He's standing there with one foot. planted firmly 00:02:02.709 --> 00:02:05.709 in the classical world of Plato, Aristotle and 00:02:05.709 --> 00:02:08.229 the Roman Senate. And the other foot is stepping 00:02:08.229 --> 00:02:10.509 into the rising Middle Ages of, you know, knights 00:02:10.509 --> 00:02:13.389 and monks and cathedrals. And without him, that 00:02:13.389 --> 00:02:16.710 connection might have just snapped. So today 00:02:16.710 --> 00:02:19.110 we're going to explore his massive intellectual 00:02:19.110 --> 00:02:22.150 project. I mean, his goal was to translate all 00:02:22.150 --> 00:02:24.550 of Greek thought into Latin. We'll look at his 00:02:24.550 --> 00:02:26.969 meteoric rise to political power. Yeah, he was 00:02:26.969 --> 00:02:28.909 basically the prime minister of Italy. He was. 00:02:28.990 --> 00:02:32.849 And then his tragic... incredibly violent fall. 00:02:33.090 --> 00:02:35.169 And we have a serious stack of sources to help 00:02:35.169 --> 00:02:37.189 us do it. We're pulling from historical records 00:02:37.189 --> 00:02:39.909 from the Ostrogothic court. We've got biographies 00:02:39.909 --> 00:02:41.949 by scholars like Helen Barrett and John Moorhead. 00:02:42.110 --> 00:02:44.669 And of course, Boethius' own words, his treatises 00:02:44.669 --> 00:02:47.849 on music, arithmetic, logic, and the consolation 00:02:47.849 --> 00:02:50.909 itself. It's a story of genius, power, corruption, 00:02:51.050 --> 00:02:54.310 and ultimately of transcendence. So let's start 00:02:54.310 --> 00:02:56.509 at the very beginning. Who was this guy? Let's 00:02:56.509 --> 00:02:59.379 set the stage. Part one, The Last Roman. To really 00:02:59.379 --> 00:03:01.580 understand Boethius, you have to understand the 00:03:01.580 --> 00:03:04.439 world he was born into. So he's born around 480 00:03:04.439 --> 00:03:08.099 A .D. in Rome itself. Now, if you check your 00:03:08.099 --> 00:03:10.219 standard history textbook, it'll tell you the 00:03:10.219 --> 00:03:14.219 Western Roman Empire fell in 476 A .D. Right. 00:03:14.340 --> 00:03:16.699 That's the date everyone learns. When the last 00:03:16.699 --> 00:03:19.060 emperor, this kid named Romulus Augustulus, gets 00:03:19.060 --> 00:03:22.020 kicked off the throne by Odoacer. Exactly. So 00:03:22.020 --> 00:03:24.759 your first thought is, OK. Boethius is born into 00:03:24.759 --> 00:03:26.979 the Dark Ages. It's post -apocalyptic, right? 00:03:27.139 --> 00:03:29.699 Mad Max with Togus. Well, that's the popular 00:03:29.699 --> 00:03:32.300 narrative, but it's not really true. The fall 00:03:32.300 --> 00:03:34.479 of Rome wasn't like a light switch just flicking 00:03:34.479 --> 00:03:36.979 off. It was much more like a dimmer switch slowly 00:03:36.979 --> 00:03:40.379 fading over a century. When Boethius was a kid, 00:03:40.639 --> 00:03:44.250 Rome was still Rome. What do you mean by that? 00:03:44.330 --> 00:03:46.270 I mean, the buildings were there, the Colosseum, 00:03:46.270 --> 00:03:48.889 the Forum. The Senate was still meeting in the 00:03:48.889 --> 00:03:51.870 Curia. The aristocracy was still fantastically 00:03:51.870 --> 00:03:53.750 wealthy. They were still wearing their togas 00:03:53.750 --> 00:03:56.169 and holding your offices. The only real difference 00:03:56.169 --> 00:03:58.210 was that the man at the very top wasn't a Roman 00:03:58.210 --> 00:04:00.849 emperor anymore. He was a Germanic king. First, 00:04:00.870 --> 00:04:03.430 Odoacer, and then the man who really defines 00:04:03.430 --> 00:04:06.169 this whole era, the Order of the Great. King 00:04:06.169 --> 00:04:08.669 of the Ostrogoths. Exactly. Theoderic is this 00:04:08.669 --> 00:04:11.250 endlessly fascinating figure. He's a goth, a 00:04:11.250 --> 00:04:13.150 barbarian in the eyes of the Romans, but he was 00:04:13.150 --> 00:04:15.990 actually raised as a royal hostage in Constantinople. 00:04:16.129 --> 00:04:19.110 Oh, right. So he was educated. Deeply. He loved 00:04:19.110 --> 00:04:21.970 Roman culture. He admired it. He wanted to preserve 00:04:21.970 --> 00:04:24.569 what they called civilitist, civilized life, 00:04:24.629 --> 00:04:28.550 the rule of law. So for a Roman aristocrat, life. 00:04:29.230 --> 00:04:31.970 Well, life more or less went on. And Boethius 00:04:31.970 --> 00:04:34.069 wasn't just any aristocrat. He was from the gens 00:04:34.069 --> 00:04:37.689 Anitia. He was an Anitius. The Anitiae. That 00:04:37.689 --> 00:04:39.589 name just sounds important. It was the most important. 00:04:39.810 --> 00:04:41.689 I mean, think of, I don't know, the Kennedys, 00:04:41.790 --> 00:04:43.829 the Rockefellers, and maybe the British royal 00:04:43.829 --> 00:04:46.490 family all rolled into one. The Anitiae had been 00:04:46.490 --> 00:04:49.870 at the absolute... pop of Roman society for centuries. 00:04:50.189 --> 00:04:52.790 It produced emperors, right? Emperors and an 00:04:52.790 --> 00:04:55.189 endless line of consuls. To be an Anicius was 00:04:55.189 --> 00:04:57.649 to be part of the bedrock of Rome itself. You 00:04:57.649 --> 00:04:59.750 were untouchable. Or at least that's what they 00:04:59.750 --> 00:05:02.149 thought. But Boethius himself had kind of a rocky 00:05:02.149 --> 00:05:04.970 start. His father... Manlius Boethius died when 00:05:04.970 --> 00:05:07.110 he was just a little kid, didn't he? Yeah, very 00:05:07.110 --> 00:05:09.029 young. His father had just served as consul in 00:05:09.029 --> 00:05:11.670 487, and then he passed away. So Boethius is 00:05:11.670 --> 00:05:14.110 an orphan, but, you know, in that stratospheric 00:05:14.110 --> 00:05:16.949 layer of Roman society, being an orphan didn't 00:05:16.949 --> 00:05:19.189 mean you were sent to the workhouse. He was immediately 00:05:19.189 --> 00:05:22.069 taken in by a man named Quintus Aurelius Memmius 00:05:22.069 --> 00:05:25.019 Symmachus. Symmachus. We need to remember that 00:05:25.019 --> 00:05:27.759 name. He's a huge figure in this story. He is 00:05:27.759 --> 00:05:30.480 absolutely crucial. Symmachus was the head of 00:05:30.480 --> 00:05:33.379 another of these great ancient families. He was 00:05:33.379 --> 00:05:36.339 a former consul, a historian, but more than that, 00:05:36.360 --> 00:05:39.000 he was a serious intellectual, a true philosopher 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:42.319 statesman in that old Roman tradition. He didn't 00:05:42.319 --> 00:05:45.360 just give Boethius a home. He mentored him. He 00:05:45.360 --> 00:05:47.579 saw this brilliant young mind and decided to 00:05:47.579 --> 00:05:50.370 cultivate it. And it became a family affair because 00:05:50.370 --> 00:05:52.509 Boethius eventually married Symmachus' daughter, 00:05:52.790 --> 00:05:56.069 Rusticiana. He did. So his mentor becomes his 00:05:56.069 --> 00:05:58.629 father -in -law. It's an incredibly tight circle 00:05:58.629 --> 00:06:02.050 of elite intellectual aristocrats. And it's in 00:06:02.050 --> 00:06:04.110 this environment, probably in the vast library 00:06:04.110 --> 00:06:06.449 of Symmachus, that Boethius develops the one 00:06:06.449 --> 00:06:09.069 skill that makes him so utterly unique for his 00:06:09.069 --> 00:06:12.970 time. He learned Greek. He mastered Greek. Okay, 00:06:13.170 --> 00:06:15.170 let's unpack this for a minute, because why is 00:06:15.170 --> 00:06:17.910 knowing Greek a superpower? Today, you know, 00:06:17.910 --> 00:06:19.850 being violent is great, but it's not going to 00:06:19.850 --> 00:06:22.829 save civilization. In 500 AD, it was everything. 00:06:23.519 --> 00:06:26.800 You have to remember, for the previous 500, 600 00:06:26.800 --> 00:06:30.139 years, every educated Roman spoke Greek. It was 00:06:30.139 --> 00:06:33.779 a given. Cicero, Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, they 00:06:33.779 --> 00:06:36.660 all read Plato and Aristotle in the original 00:06:36.660 --> 00:06:39.639 Greek. The entire cultural and intellectual DNA 00:06:39.639 --> 00:06:42.220 of Rome was Greek. It was the language of philosophy, 00:06:42.420 --> 00:06:44.420 of science. Of everything that mattered. But 00:06:44.420 --> 00:06:47.160 by the late 5th century, the West was crumbling. 00:06:47.279 --> 00:06:49.959 The education system was collapsing. The trade 00:06:49.959 --> 00:06:51.839 routes, the lines of communication with the Greek 00:06:51.839 --> 00:06:54.879 -speaking East. Constantinople, they were fraying. 00:06:55.120 --> 00:06:57.300 So people were literally forgetting how to read 00:06:57.300 --> 00:06:59.199 the most important books on their own shelves. 00:06:59.360 --> 00:07:02.199 Precisely. It was like a cultural dementia setting 00:07:02.199 --> 00:07:05.060 in across the Latin West. The knowledge of Greek 00:07:05.060 --> 00:07:07.800 was just vanishing from Italy. So Boethius was 00:07:07.800 --> 00:07:10.019 one of the very, very last people in the West 00:07:10.019 --> 00:07:12.360 who could pick up a copy of Aristotle's Physics 00:07:12.360 --> 00:07:14.579 and actually understand what it said. That is 00:07:14.579 --> 00:07:16.920 just wild to think about. He's holding the keys 00:07:16.920 --> 00:07:19.779 to the entire library of Western thought, and 00:07:19.779 --> 00:07:21.699 almost everyone else is forgetting how to unlock 00:07:21.699 --> 00:07:24.120 the doors. How did he get that good? Did he study 00:07:24.120 --> 00:07:26.699 abroad? That is the great debate among historians. 00:07:27.459 --> 00:07:30.220 For a long time, the standard theory, the one 00:07:30.220 --> 00:07:32.579 you'd see in Gibbon's Decline and Fall, was that 00:07:32.579 --> 00:07:35.259 Boethius must have spent his youth in Athens. 00:07:36.060 --> 00:07:38.860 They said, you know, 18 years in Athens. It makes 00:07:38.860 --> 00:07:40.720 a certain kind of sense, doesn't it? Sure. Go 00:07:40.720 --> 00:07:42.459 to the source. You want to learn philosophy? 00:07:42.540 --> 00:07:45.319 You go to the academy. But modern scholars, people 00:07:45.319 --> 00:07:47.240 like Helen M. Barrett, have really pushed back 00:07:47.240 --> 00:07:49.240 against that. They point out that, you know, 00:07:49.319 --> 00:07:52.420 the Athens of 500 A .D. wasn't exactly the Harvard 00:07:52.420 --> 00:07:55.079 of philosophy anymore. The Neoplatonic Academy 00:07:55.079 --> 00:07:58.540 had been closed or was in serious decline. And 00:07:58.540 --> 00:08:01.139 there's actually zero concrete evidence he ever 00:08:01.139 --> 00:08:03.600 left Italy. Really? So no student visa records 00:08:03.600 --> 00:08:06.069 or anything? Nothing. Well, another theory is 00:08:06.069 --> 00:08:08.310 that he might have gone to Alexandria in Egypt 00:08:08.310 --> 00:08:11.029 to study with the great Neoplatonist Ammonius 00:08:11.029 --> 00:08:12.910 Hermiae, because some of their writing styles 00:08:12.910 --> 00:08:15.709 are very, very similar. But the most likely scenario, 00:08:15.970 --> 00:08:18.670 championed by scholars like John Moorhead, is 00:08:18.670 --> 00:08:20.709 that he might have just had incredible tutors 00:08:20.709 --> 00:08:23.529 right there in Rome, perhaps Greek scholars who 00:08:23.529 --> 00:08:25.589 were fleeing the instability in the East and 00:08:25.589 --> 00:08:28.529 found a wealthy patron in Symmachus. So he might 00:08:28.529 --> 00:08:31.430 have been essentially homeschooled by the best 00:08:31.430 --> 00:08:33.950 minds available. But however she got the skills. 00:08:34.649 --> 00:08:36.450 The important thing is what he decided to do 00:08:36.450 --> 00:08:39.610 with them. And this brings us to part two, the 00:08:39.610 --> 00:08:43.110 grand intellectual project. Yes. This is where 00:08:43.110 --> 00:08:46.250 we see the sheer, almost terrifying scale of 00:08:46.250 --> 00:08:49.190 Boethius's ambition. He looked around him. He 00:08:49.190 --> 00:08:51.269 saw that his civilization was losing its memory. 00:08:51.730 --> 00:08:54.590 And he decided he personally was going to do 00:08:54.590 --> 00:08:57.190 something about it. He announced a project that... 00:08:57.340 --> 00:08:59.059 I mean, it makes me tired just thinking about 00:08:59.059 --> 00:09:01.360 it. What was the goal? His stated goal was to 00:09:01.360 --> 00:09:03.879 translate the entirety of Plato and the entirety 00:09:03.879 --> 00:09:07.840 of Aristotle into Latin. Every single book. Every 00:09:07.840 --> 00:09:11.159 dialogue. Every single word. thousands and thousands 00:09:11.159 --> 00:09:13.159 of pages of the most difficult philosophical 00:09:13.159 --> 00:09:15.480 Greek you can imagine. That's a lifetime's work 00:09:15.480 --> 00:09:17.200 on its own. And that wasn't even the whole plan. 00:09:17.279 --> 00:09:18.879 He don't just want to translate them. He wanted 00:09:18.879 --> 00:09:21.000 to write detailed commentaries explaining what 00:09:21.000 --> 00:09:23.799 they meant. And then, and this is the real holy 00:09:23.799 --> 00:09:27.039 grail of his project, he wanted to write a final 00:09:27.039 --> 00:09:29.720 synthesis demonstrating that Plato and Aristotle, 00:09:30.000 --> 00:09:32.159 who everyone thought were in conflict, were actually 00:09:32.159 --> 00:09:34.539 in perfect agreement. The Great Reconciliation. 00:09:35.340 --> 00:09:38.620 Showing that Plato, the idealist, and Aristotle 00:09:38.620 --> 00:09:40.899 the Realist were really just two sides of the 00:09:40.899 --> 00:09:44.139 same coin. Precisely. And... implicitly that 00:09:44.139 --> 00:09:46.519 their combined wisdom was perfectly compatible 00:09:46.519 --> 00:09:49.039 with christian theology we should probably clarify 00:09:49.039 --> 00:09:51.240 that boethius was a devout christian right oh 00:09:51.240 --> 00:09:55.000 absolutely a staunch nicene catholic he wrote 00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:57.779 some very complex theological tracks on the nature 00:09:57.779 --> 00:10:00.759 of the trinity and the incarnation his ultimate 00:10:00.759 --> 00:10:03.860 goal was to build this unified theory of everything 00:10:03.860 --> 00:10:07.299 greek reason and christian faith standing together 00:10:07.299 --> 00:10:10.240 supporting one another wow if he had actually 00:10:10.240 --> 00:10:13.080 finished that project the history of the world 00:10:13.080 --> 00:10:14.320 might look very different. There wouldn't have 00:10:14.320 --> 00:10:16.419 been a dark ages in terms of lost knowledge. 00:10:16.559 --> 00:10:18.659 We might have had the Renaissance about 800 years 00:10:18.659 --> 00:10:20.639 early. I mean, it's not an exaggeration, but 00:10:20.639 --> 00:10:23.399 sadly, he didn't finish. He got sidetracked by 00:10:23.399 --> 00:10:25.919 his political career and, well, his execution. 00:10:26.919 --> 00:10:29.480 But what he did manage to complete became the 00:10:29.480 --> 00:10:31.460 foundation for the entire medieval curriculum. 00:10:31.840 --> 00:10:34.019 He basically wrote the textbooks. Let's talk 00:10:34.019 --> 00:10:36.080 about that curriculum. He's famous for popularizing 00:10:36.080 --> 00:10:38.299 the concept of the quadrivium. The four ways. 00:10:38.730 --> 00:10:40.710 He actually coined the term. It consisted of 00:10:40.710 --> 00:10:44.429 arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These 00:10:44.429 --> 00:10:47.009 were the four mathematical arts, the higher learning 00:10:47.009 --> 00:10:50.149 that came after the basic trivium of grammar, 00:10:50.350 --> 00:10:53.590 logic, and rhetoric. And his take on these subjects 00:10:53.590 --> 00:10:55.690 is so different from ours. I was reading about 00:10:55.690 --> 00:10:58.450 his book on arithmetic, The Arithmetica. He doesn't 00:10:58.450 --> 00:11:00.919 treat numbers like... you know, abstract tools 00:11:00.919 --> 00:11:03.240 for calculation. He treats them like they have 00:11:03.240 --> 00:11:06.279 personalities. He really does. This is Neo -Pythagorean 00:11:06.279 --> 00:11:08.220 in math. It's not about calculating your taxes. 00:11:08.299 --> 00:11:10.059 It's about understanding the fundamental nature 00:11:10.059 --> 00:11:12.500 of the universe. He gets this from a Greek author 00:11:12.500 --> 00:11:15.899 named Nicomachus. He categorizes numbers. You 00:11:15.899 --> 00:11:19.639 have even and odd, sure, but also evenly even. 00:11:20.299 --> 00:11:22.460 Evenly odd and oddly even. What on earth is an 00:11:22.460 --> 00:11:24.299 evenly odd number? I know, it sounds bizarre. 00:11:24.320 --> 00:11:25.940 It has to do with how many times you can divide 00:11:25.940 --> 00:11:28.419 a number by two. But the point for him was that 00:11:28.419 --> 00:11:30.419 he was exploring the relationships, the ratios, 00:11:30.620 --> 00:11:32.899 the deep structures. He believed that God was 00:11:32.899 --> 00:11:35.940 a geometer, that he created the world using numbers 00:11:35.940 --> 00:11:39.340 as a blueprint. So for Boethius, studying number 00:11:39.340 --> 00:11:41.580 theory was a way of peering into the mind of 00:11:41.580 --> 00:11:44.940 God. And this fascination with ratios and harmony 00:11:44.940 --> 00:11:49.460 leads right into his work on music. The Institutione 00:11:49.460 --> 00:11:52.700 Musica. Now, when I first saw music on the list, 00:11:52.779 --> 00:11:54.720 I thought, OK, cool, he's going to teach us how 00:11:54.720 --> 00:11:57.940 to play the lyre. But that is not what this book 00:11:57.940 --> 00:12:00.340 is about at all, is it? Not even close. In fact, 00:12:00.419 --> 00:12:02.860 Boethius was a bit of an intellectual snob about 00:12:02.860 --> 00:12:05.500 actual musicians. He thought that performing 00:12:05.500 --> 00:12:08.700 on an instrument was mere manual labor, the work 00:12:08.700 --> 00:12:11.299 of an entertainer. So he looked down on the performers. 00:12:11.700 --> 00:12:14.500 He did. He said the true musician was the theorist, 00:12:14.539 --> 00:12:16.580 the philosopher who understands the mathematical 00:12:16.580 --> 00:12:19.600 principles behind the music. For him, music theory 00:12:19.600 --> 00:12:22.139 was a branch of mathematics, a key to understanding 00:12:22.139 --> 00:12:24.360 the ordering principle of the entire cosmos. 00:12:24.779 --> 00:12:26.919 He breaks all of music down into three distinct 00:12:26.919 --> 00:12:28.659 types. Let's go through them, because this is 00:12:28.659 --> 00:12:30.799 so fundamental to how the medieval mind worked. 00:12:30.960 --> 00:12:34.059 First up, musica mundana. The music of the spheres. 00:12:34.480 --> 00:12:37.549 Or the music of the world. Boethius, following 00:12:37.549 --> 00:12:40.309 the Pythagoreans and Plato, argues that the universe 00:12:40.309 --> 00:12:42.649 is made of these massive bodies, the planets, 00:12:42.809 --> 00:12:44.889 the stars, the sun, all moving at incredible 00:12:44.889 --> 00:12:48.450 speeds in perfect, predictable orbits. But then 00:12:48.450 --> 00:12:51.700 he adds the next logical step. We know from experience 00:12:51.700 --> 00:12:54.779 that motion creates sound. If I pluck a string, 00:12:54.940 --> 00:12:58.559 it vibrates and makes a sound. So if these massive 00:12:58.559 --> 00:13:01.240 celestial bodies are moving, they must be producing 00:13:01.240 --> 00:13:03.940 a sound. And because their motion is so perfectly 00:13:03.940 --> 00:13:06.659 ordered and mathematical, that sound must be 00:13:06.659 --> 00:13:09.879 a perfect, unchanging harmony. So the universe 00:13:09.879 --> 00:13:13.559 is literally a giant song, a cosmic symphony. 00:13:13.639 --> 00:13:15.820 Exactly. But I can't hear it. Why can't we hear 00:13:15.820 --> 00:13:18.460 it? That's the great question. Boethius speculates 00:13:18.460 --> 00:13:21.090 on it. He offers a couple of possibilities. Maybe 00:13:21.090 --> 00:13:23.350 the sound is just too overwhelmingly loud for 00:13:23.350 --> 00:13:26.509 our tiny human ears to process. Or, and this 00:13:26.509 --> 00:13:28.470 is the one I find more compelling, maybe it's 00:13:28.470 --> 00:13:30.649 because we have been hearing it constantly since 00:13:30.649 --> 00:13:32.669 the moment we were born. It's the ultimate background 00:13:32.669 --> 00:13:35.049 noise. We've just tuned it out. It's the hum 00:13:35.049 --> 00:13:38.210 of existence. Precisely. That's a beautiful idea. 00:13:38.389 --> 00:13:40.129 Okay, so that's the highest level. What's the 00:13:40.129 --> 00:13:43.080 second type? Musica Humana. The music of the 00:13:43.080 --> 00:13:45.299 human. And again, this isn't about someone singing. 00:13:45.460 --> 00:13:48.000 This is about the harmony within you. It's the 00:13:48.000 --> 00:13:50.820 perfect ratio and balance between your immortal 00:13:50.820 --> 00:13:53.899 soul and your physical body. It's the harmony 00:13:53.899 --> 00:13:56.440 of the four elements or humors in your body. 00:13:56.580 --> 00:13:59.220 It's the harmony between your reason and your 00:13:59.220 --> 00:14:01.659 passions. So when you're healthy and virtuous, 00:14:01.899 --> 00:14:05.200 you are literally in tune. Yes. And when you're 00:14:05.200 --> 00:14:08.399 sick, you're dissonant. When you allow your passions 00:14:08.399 --> 00:14:11.559 to override your reason, you're creating a jarring, 00:14:11.620 --> 00:14:14.840 ugly chord in your own soul. Being a good person 00:14:14.840 --> 00:14:17.360 is a musical state. And then finally, the lowest 00:14:17.360 --> 00:14:20.379 level of the three. Musica instrumentalis. This 00:14:20.379 --> 00:14:22.799 is what we actually call music. The sound produced 00:14:22.799 --> 00:14:25.419 by tension, like on a string, or by wind, like 00:14:25.419 --> 00:14:28.000 in a pipe, or by percussion. For Boethius, this 00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:30.379 was just a dim, imperfect, audible reflection 00:14:30.379 --> 00:14:33.000 of those two higher, inaudible forms of music. 00:14:33.159 --> 00:14:35.090 But it's still important, isn't it? oh it's crucial 00:14:35.090 --> 00:14:38.419 because he believed that by studying it By carefully 00:14:38.419 --> 00:14:40.860 measuring the length of the strings, by calculating 00:14:40.860 --> 00:14:43.320 the mathematical ratios that produce consonant 00:14:43.320 --> 00:14:45.500 intervals like the octave, the fifth, the fourth, 00:14:45.659 --> 00:14:47.879 we could get a glimpse of the higher truths. 00:14:48.519 --> 00:14:51.779 If you understand why a two -to -one ratio in 00:14:51.779 --> 00:14:54.960 a string's length creates a perfect octave, you've 00:14:54.960 --> 00:14:56.940 understood something fundamental about the structure 00:14:56.940 --> 00:14:59.460 of the human soul and the cosmos itself. It's 00:14:59.460 --> 00:15:02.019 incredible. It integrates everything. Math, music, 00:15:02.159 --> 00:15:05.120 ethics, cosmology. It's all one unified system. 00:15:05.320 --> 00:15:09.090 It is. Deep, driving desire to organize all of 00:15:09.090 --> 00:15:11.090 knowledge didn't stop at music. It went right 00:15:11.090 --> 00:15:13.169 to the heart of how we think. And we absolutely 00:15:13.169 --> 00:15:15.730 have to talk about Boethius the Logician. Part 00:15:15.730 --> 00:15:18.710 three, the logic machine. Now, I have to admit, 00:15:18.769 --> 00:15:20.789 logic can feel a little dry. You know, if A, 00:15:20.870 --> 00:15:23.230 then B, therefore C. But you've argued that this 00:15:23.230 --> 00:15:25.929 is actually his most impactful work. Without 00:15:25.929 --> 00:15:28.220 a single doubt. Because this is the part of his 00:15:28.220 --> 00:15:31.299 grand project that he largely completed. He translated 00:15:31.299 --> 00:15:33.740 Porphyry's Isagoge, which is an introduction 00:15:33.740 --> 00:15:36.860 to Aristotle's logic, and he translated two of 00:15:36.860 --> 00:15:39.779 Aristotle's core logical works, the categories, 00:15:39.899 --> 00:15:42.909 and Didae Interpretatione. Now that might not 00:15:42.909 --> 00:15:44.490 sound like much. It doesn't sound like the whole 00:15:44.490 --> 00:15:47.509 library. No, but for the next 600 years, from 00:15:47.509 --> 00:15:50.669 about 550 AD to the middle of the 12th century, 00:15:50.929 --> 00:15:54.289 these few translations by Boethius, along with 00:15:54.289 --> 00:15:56.870 his commentaries on them, were the only texts 00:15:56.870 --> 00:15:59.269 of Greek login available anywhere in Europe. 00:15:59.409 --> 00:16:02.169 Wow. So if you were a monk in, say, the year 00:16:02.169 --> 00:16:05.830 900 AD at a monastery in Ireland or Germany, 00:16:05.970 --> 00:16:07.970 and you wanted to learn how to construct a formal 00:16:07.970 --> 00:16:10.809 argument. You were reading Boethius. He was the 00:16:10.809 --> 00:16:13.549 only game in town. He single -handedly taught 00:16:13.549 --> 00:16:15.929 the West how to think. He gave them the vocabulary, 00:16:15.950 --> 00:16:18.409 the rules for defining terms, for categorizing 00:16:18.409 --> 00:16:20.850 concepts, for building a valid syllogism. He 00:16:20.850 --> 00:16:22.889 essentially wrote the source code for Western 00:16:22.889 --> 00:16:24.750 reasoning for half a millennium. And in doing 00:16:24.750 --> 00:16:27.169 so, he accidentally kicks off what might be the 00:16:27.169 --> 00:16:29.149 biggest philosophical debate of the entire Middle 00:16:29.149 --> 00:16:31.490 Ages. The problem of universals. Right. This 00:16:31.490 --> 00:16:33.090 is a bit abstract, but it's so important. Can 00:16:33.090 --> 00:16:35.429 you break it down for us? I'll try. So Boethius 00:16:35.429 --> 00:16:37.490 is translating this introduction by porphyry, 00:16:37.529 --> 00:16:39.809 and he comes across a question about genera and 00:16:39.809 --> 00:16:42.669 species. Let's use a simple example. We see a 00:16:42.669 --> 00:16:44.629 chair. We see another chair and another. They're 00:16:44.629 --> 00:16:47.049 all individual physical objects. But we have 00:16:47.049 --> 00:16:50.169 this one word, this concept, chair or chairness, 00:16:50.370 --> 00:16:54.159 the universal idea of a chair. Okay. The question 00:16:54.159 --> 00:16:56.919 is, does that universal chairness exist as a 00:16:56.919 --> 00:17:00.220 real thing somewhere? Is there like a perfect, 00:17:00.299 --> 00:17:03.759 ghostly, ideal chair floating in some platonic 00:17:03.759 --> 00:17:07.160 heaven? Or is chair just a word, a sound we make 00:17:07.160 --> 00:17:09.380 with our mouths, a convenient label we use for 00:17:09.380 --> 00:17:11.539 a group of objects that have similar characteristics? 00:17:12.039 --> 00:17:14.180 This is the fight between realism and nominalism. 00:17:14.319 --> 00:17:17.700 Exactly. Realism says the universal idea is real, 00:17:17.839 --> 00:17:19.960 maybe even more real than the physical chairs. 00:17:20.380 --> 00:17:23.740 Nominalism says it's just a name, a nomen. Boethius 00:17:23.740 --> 00:17:26.059 very carefully laid out the arguments for both 00:17:26.059 --> 00:17:29.339 sides. He didn't definitively solve it. He kind 00:17:29.339 --> 00:17:31.640 of leans towards Aristotle's more moderate position. 00:17:32.059 --> 00:17:34.579 But the way he framed the problem became the 00:17:34.579 --> 00:17:37.339 central obsession of medieval philosophy. So 00:17:37.339 --> 00:17:40.220 thinkers like Abelard, William of Ockham, Duns 00:17:40.220 --> 00:17:42.859 Scotus. They spent centuries and wrote thousands 00:17:42.859 --> 00:17:45.339 of pages fighting over the question that Boethius 00:17:45.339 --> 00:17:47.579 put on the table. It shaped everything about 00:17:47.579 --> 00:17:49.599 their theology and philosophy. And he also wrote 00:17:49.599 --> 00:17:52.480 this other book. De Topicis Differentes. Yeah. 00:17:52.579 --> 00:17:54.400 Which, frankly, sounds like a spell from Harry 00:17:54.400 --> 00:17:57.079 Potter. It really does. It's a book on topics 00:17:57.079 --> 00:18:00.279 or loci, which is an old term from rhetoric. 00:18:00.500 --> 00:18:03.819 Yeah. It's basically an advanced manual for how 00:18:03.819 --> 00:18:06.940 to win debates. He explains this concept of maximal 00:18:06.940 --> 00:18:09.720 proposition. A maximal proposition. What is that? 00:18:09.859 --> 00:18:12.019 It's a self -evident truth. It's a statement 00:18:12.019 --> 00:18:14.279 that is so obviously true it needs no proof. 00:18:14.720 --> 00:18:17.500 For example, the whole is greater than the part. 00:18:18.009 --> 00:18:20.829 Or things equal to the same thing are equal to 00:18:20.829 --> 00:18:23.289 each other. The building blocks of reason. Exactly. 00:18:23.329 --> 00:18:25.569 And Boethius explains how you can take these 00:18:25.569 --> 00:18:28.329 undeniable truths and use them as anchors, as 00:18:28.329 --> 00:18:31.170 foundations, to build arguments and prove other, 00:18:31.230 --> 00:18:33.809 more controversial points. He gave people the 00:18:33.809 --> 00:18:36.869 entire toolkit for formal argumentation. So we 00:18:36.869 --> 00:18:39.890 have this picture of Boethius emerging. He's 00:18:39.890 --> 00:18:42.450 a super genius. He's a translator, a mathematician, 00:18:42.829 --> 00:18:46.019 a music theorist, a logician. If he had just 00:18:46.019 --> 00:18:48.440 stayed in his library, he would have been remembered 00:18:48.440 --> 00:18:50.559 as the greatest scholar of his age, but he didn't 00:18:50.559 --> 00:18:52.859 stay in the library. No, he was a Roman of the 00:18:52.859 --> 00:18:55.559 Annici family, and for them, public service, 00:18:55.740 --> 00:18:58.819 a political life, was a duty. It wasn't an option. 00:18:59.000 --> 00:19:01.420 Which brings us to part four, the golden hour, 00:19:01.559 --> 00:19:05.859 his spectacular rise to political power. Boethius 00:19:05.859 --> 00:19:07.579 seems to have met Theoderic the Great around 00:19:07.579 --> 00:19:10.500 the year 500. Boethius was still very young, 00:19:10.579 --> 00:19:13.019 only about 20, but he must have made incredible 00:19:13.019 --> 00:19:16.190 impression on the king. Theodoric realized that 00:19:16.190 --> 00:19:18.190 this young man wasn't just a bookworm. He was 00:19:18.190 --> 00:19:20.529 a practical genius who could solve real -world 00:19:20.529 --> 00:19:23.670 problems. He became Theodoric's fixer. I love 00:19:23.670 --> 00:19:26.630 the list of odd jobs Theodoric gave him. It wasn't 00:19:26.630 --> 00:19:29.069 just, you know, writing laws or managing finances. 00:19:29.589 --> 00:19:32.150 No, it was highly specific technical consulting. 00:19:32.690 --> 00:19:36.369 There's a famous letter from Cassiodorus, Theodoric's 00:19:36.369 --> 00:19:39.430 secretary, where the king asks Boethes to investigate 00:19:39.430 --> 00:19:42.720 the paymaster of the royal bodyguards. The soldiers 00:19:42.720 --> 00:19:44.559 were complaining that the gold coins they were 00:19:44.559 --> 00:19:47.299 being paid with were light. They'd been debased 00:19:47.299 --> 00:19:50.019 with cheaper metals. So Theodoric says. He basically 00:19:50.019 --> 00:19:52.559 says, Boethius, you're the expert on arithmetic 00:19:52.559 --> 00:19:55.880 and geometry. You understand ratios. Go weigh 00:19:55.880 --> 00:19:58.400 the coins, use your science, and catch this fraud 00:19:58.400 --> 00:20:01.039 for me. And the water clock. That's my favorite 00:20:01.039 --> 00:20:04.500 one. Yes. The king of the Burgundians, a rival 00:20:04.500 --> 00:20:07.420 Germanic king named Gundobad, wanted a water 00:20:07.420 --> 00:20:10.259 clock and a sundial as a gift. Theodoric wanted 00:20:10.259 --> 00:20:12.460 to impress him with the superiority of Roman 00:20:12.460 --> 00:20:15.299 technology. So who do you call? You call Boethius. 00:20:15.420 --> 00:20:17.880 He says, build me a clock that will amaze these 00:20:17.880 --> 00:20:20.240 barbarians and show them the power of Roman learning. 00:20:20.440 --> 00:20:22.160 And my other favorite is when he has to find 00:20:22.160 --> 00:20:24.799 a lyre player for Clovis, the king of the Franks. 00:20:25.200 --> 00:20:27.579 It just shows his incredible range. He was the 00:20:27.579 --> 00:20:29.599 minister of science, the minister of culture, 00:20:29.720 --> 00:20:31.779 and the minister of finance all rolled into one. 00:20:31.900 --> 00:20:34.680 And this loyal service paid off spectacularly. 00:20:34.680 --> 00:20:37.279 His rise was meteoric. He was a senator by 25. 00:20:37.619 --> 00:20:40.380 He was made consul by the time he was 33 in the 00:20:40.380 --> 00:20:45.200 year 510. And then in 522 AD, he hits the absolute 00:20:45.200 --> 00:20:48.539 summit, the year of triumph. This is the moment. 00:20:49.099 --> 00:20:53.039 In 522, Theodoric names Boethius Magister Officiorum 00:20:53.039 --> 00:20:55.920 the Master of Offices. This is the highest civilian 00:20:55.920 --> 00:20:58.099 post in the entire government. He's the head 00:20:58.099 --> 00:20:59.599 of the civil service. He's the commander of the 00:20:59.599 --> 00:21:02.059 palace guard. He's the chief of protocol. He 00:21:02.059 --> 00:21:04.559 is, for all intents and purposes, the prime minister. 00:21:04.839 --> 00:21:07.680 And as if that's not enough, his two young sons 00:21:07.680 --> 00:21:10.970 are both named consuls. In the same year. This 00:21:10.970 --> 00:21:13.170 was an unprecedented honor. Usually you'd have 00:21:13.170 --> 00:21:15.470 one consul appointed in Rome and one in Constantinople, 00:21:15.589 --> 00:21:18.809 but the emperor in the east, Justin I, waived 00:21:18.809 --> 00:21:21.609 his right to appoint a consul just to honor Boethius. 00:21:21.869 --> 00:21:24.009 So both of the consulships for that year went 00:21:24.009 --> 00:21:26.599 to Boethius' sons. And there's this incredibly 00:21:26.599 --> 00:21:29.599 vivid description of this day in the consolation. 00:21:30.019 --> 00:21:32.259 Boethius is sitting in the circus, the great 00:21:32.259 --> 00:21:36.759 stadium, the crowd is roaring, his two sons are 00:21:36.759 --> 00:21:39.619 sitting in the curial chairs of the consuls wearing 00:21:39.619 --> 00:21:43.380 the ceremonial purple bordered togas, and Boethius, 00:21:43.420 --> 00:21:45.880 the proud father, is sitting right between them. 00:21:46.220 --> 00:21:48.279 He's distributing largesse to the crowd throwing 00:21:48.279 --> 00:21:51.059 gold coins. He writes later that he felt he had 00:21:51.059 --> 00:21:53.180 won the game of life. He'd restored his family's 00:21:53.180 --> 00:21:55.700 glory. He had wealth, immense power, wisdom, 00:21:55.960 --> 00:21:58.980 a beautiful family, a legacy. He felt he had 00:21:58.980 --> 00:22:01.339 reached the very summit of human happiness. And 00:22:01.339 --> 00:22:03.299 we all know what happens when you reach the absolute 00:22:03.299 --> 00:22:05.660 summit of a wheel. The only way to go is down. 00:22:05.799 --> 00:22:08.839 Part five. The wheel turns. The downfall was 00:22:08.839 --> 00:22:11.400 shockingly fast, and it was brutal. How does 00:22:11.400 --> 00:22:13.180 the most powerful man in the kingdom, besides 00:22:13.180 --> 00:22:15.799 the king himself, end up on death row in just 00:22:15.799 --> 00:22:18.440 two years? It was a perfect storm of court corruption, 00:22:18.779 --> 00:22:21.579 professional jealousy, and shifting geopolitics. 00:22:21.660 --> 00:22:24.039 First, the corruption. As master of offices, 00:22:24.279 --> 00:22:26.619 Boethius took his job seriously. He wasn't there 00:22:26.619 --> 00:22:28.960 to enrich himself. He was there to govern justly. 00:22:29.180 --> 00:22:31.319 And that, of course, made him powerful enemies. 00:22:31.680 --> 00:22:34.119 He actually names them in his book. He calls 00:22:34.119 --> 00:22:36.690 out a guy named Tregea. and another named Cunegast. 00:22:36.869 --> 00:22:40.269 Yes, Cunegast was a powerful Gothic minister. 00:22:41.049 --> 00:22:44.170 Boethius says he was devouring the substance 00:22:44.170 --> 00:22:47.529 of the poor. There was a specific very brave 00:22:47.529 --> 00:22:50.170 incident in the province of Campania. There was 00:22:50.170 --> 00:22:53.259 a famine. The corrupt court officials were trying 00:22:53.259 --> 00:22:56.200 to impose a coemptio basically, a forced purchase 00:22:56.200 --> 00:22:58.980 of all the grain at a fixed low price. Which 00:22:58.980 --> 00:23:01.599 would have wiped out the local farmers and starved 00:23:01.599 --> 00:23:04.220 the province. Completely. It was pure extortion. 00:23:04.420 --> 00:23:06.880 And Boethius, using the authority of his office, 00:23:07.059 --> 00:23:09.480 stepped in and single -handedly blocked it. So 00:23:09.480 --> 00:23:11.940 he saved the people of Campania, but he cost 00:23:11.940 --> 00:23:14.619 Cunegast and his cronies a lot of money. A fortune. 00:23:14.839 --> 00:23:17.279 So he has these powerful enemies in the court 00:23:17.279 --> 00:23:19.339 just waiting for him to make a mistake. And the 00:23:19.339 --> 00:23:21.680 mistake happened with what's known. as the Albinus 00:23:21.680 --> 00:23:23.480 Affair. You have to describe the context here. 00:23:23.599 --> 00:23:26.200 Why was everyone in Theoderic's court so on edge? 00:23:26.460 --> 00:23:28.519 You have to look at the religious and political 00:23:28.519 --> 00:23:31.740 map of the time. Theoderic is an Ostrogoth, and 00:23:31.740 --> 00:23:33.980 crucially, he's an Arian Christian. Which means 00:23:33.980 --> 00:23:36.200 he doesn't believe in the full divinity of Christ. 00:23:36.960 --> 00:23:39.920 The Catholic Church considered it a heresy. A 00:23:39.920 --> 00:23:43.539 major heresy. His subjects, the Roman aristocracy 00:23:43.539 --> 00:23:47.440 like Boethius, are all staunchly Orthodox Nicene 00:23:47.440 --> 00:23:49.900 Catholics. Now, for a long time, there was a 00:23:49.900 --> 00:23:52.500 schism, a big fight between the Catholic pope 00:23:52.500 --> 00:23:55.180 in Rome and the Catholic emperor in Constantinople. 00:23:55.299 --> 00:23:57.000 Which was great for Theodoric. It was perfect 00:23:57.000 --> 00:23:58.880 for him. It kept his potential enemies divided. 00:23:59.240 --> 00:24:02.519 But in 519, the schism ended. The pope and the 00:24:02.519 --> 00:24:06.220 emperor made up. Suddenly, Theoderic feels very, 00:24:06.319 --> 00:24:09.519 very isolated. He's an elderly Aryan king with 00:24:09.519 --> 00:24:12.839 no clear male heir, ruling over a vast Catholic 00:24:12.839 --> 00:24:15.480 population that is now religiously aligned with 00:24:15.480 --> 00:24:18.000 the powerful Roman emperor in the east. He becomes 00:24:18.000 --> 00:24:20.400 deeply paranoid. He starts seeing plots everywhere. 00:24:20.700 --> 00:24:22.940 And then a senator named Albinus gets caught. 00:24:23.160 --> 00:24:25.819 A letter is intercepted. Theoderic's secret police 00:24:25.819 --> 00:24:27.960 claim that Albinus was writing to the emperor 00:24:27.960 --> 00:24:30.579 Justin in Constantinople. They accuse him of 00:24:30.579 --> 00:24:33.420 treason. Albinus is hauled before the royal council, 00:24:33.519 --> 00:24:35.539 which is being held in Verona. And Boethius is 00:24:35.539 --> 00:24:38.339 there. And he makes a fateful choice. He does. 00:24:38.559 --> 00:24:40.960 He stands up to defend his friend and fellow 00:24:40.960 --> 00:24:43.140 senator. According to his own account, he says 00:24:43.140 --> 00:24:46.119 to the king, the charge of Cyprianus is false. 00:24:46.559 --> 00:24:49.460 But if Albinus did that, so also have I and the 00:24:49.460 --> 00:24:51.960 whole senate with one accord done it. It is false, 00:24:52.119 --> 00:24:54.019 my lord king. Okay, so what he was trying to 00:24:54.019 --> 00:24:57.140 say was, this charge is ridiculous. Albinus is 00:24:57.140 --> 00:24:59.480 as loyal as the rest of us senators. Exactly. 00:24:59.599 --> 00:25:02.259 It was a statement of solidarity. But his enemies, 00:25:02.440 --> 00:25:04.660 led by the chief accuser, Cyprianus, twisted 00:25:04.660 --> 00:25:07.079 it. Cyprianus basically jumps up and says, oh, 00:25:07.319 --> 00:25:09.319 you admit it. You and the whole Senate are in 00:25:09.319 --> 00:25:11.319 on it. Thank you for your confession. Then you 00:25:11.319 --> 00:25:14.000 were guilty of treason, too. It's a trap. A beautifully 00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:17.259 laid and sprung trap. And Boethius walked right 00:25:17.259 --> 00:25:19.819 into it. They immediately produced three witnesses 00:25:19.819 --> 00:25:23.220 against him. Men named Basilius, Opelio, and 00:25:23.220 --> 00:25:25.559 Gaudentius. And Boethius claims in the consolation 00:25:25.559 --> 00:25:28.420 that these guys were... Totally unreliable, compromised 00:25:28.420 --> 00:25:32.700 witnesses. He pulls no punches. He says Basilius 00:25:32.700 --> 00:25:34.960 had been fired from the royal service for massive 00:25:34.960 --> 00:25:37.980 deaths. He says Opilio and Gaudentius were known 00:25:37.980 --> 00:25:40.299 fraudsters who had been exiled for their crimes 00:25:40.299 --> 00:25:42.759 and that they were brought back to court specifically 00:25:42.759 --> 00:25:45.420 to perjure themselves against him. He claims 00:25:45.420 --> 00:25:48.099 they were bribed with immunity. But Theoderic, 00:25:48.160 --> 00:25:51.099 in his paranoid state, didn't care. He had the 00:25:51.099 --> 00:25:54.180 confession he wanted. He had his pretext. He 00:25:54.180 --> 00:25:56.359 needed a scapegoat from the Roman aristocracy. 00:25:56.619 --> 00:25:59.619 And Boethius was the most prominent one. Boethius 00:25:59.619 --> 00:26:01.980 was arrested on the spot. He was stripped of 00:26:01.980 --> 00:26:04.779 his insignia. His vast properties were confiscated. 00:26:04.859 --> 00:26:06.940 He wasn't even given a trial in front of the 00:26:06.940 --> 00:26:09.279 Senate, which was his right as a senator. He 00:26:09.279 --> 00:26:11.660 was condemned unheard. And shipped off to that 00:26:11.660 --> 00:26:13.920 prison in Pavia. And that's where we find him. 00:26:14.140 --> 00:26:16.599 Which brings us to part six, the masterpiece, 00:26:16.940 --> 00:26:19.500 the consolation of philosophy. This is the moment 00:26:19.500 --> 00:26:21.859 that defines his entire legacy. He's in that 00:26:21.859 --> 00:26:24.440 cell. He knows he's innocent. He knows he's going 00:26:24.440 --> 00:26:27.220 to die. He is watching his life's work, his reputation, 00:26:27.279 --> 00:26:30.460 his family's honor all turn to ash. Most men 00:26:30.460 --> 00:26:33.480 would be consumed by rage or despair. But Boethius 00:26:33.480 --> 00:26:36.099 turns to his oldest friends, Plato, Aristotle, 00:26:36.559 --> 00:26:39.660 the Stoics. He begins to write a dialogue. It's 00:26:39.660 --> 00:26:42.019 in a form called a prosimitrum, right? Yes. It 00:26:42.019 --> 00:26:43.980 alternates between prose sections and poetry. 00:26:44.509 --> 00:26:47.029 It begins with the character of Boethius sitting 00:26:47.029 --> 00:26:49.589 in his cell, weeping. He's surrounded by the 00:26:49.589 --> 00:26:51.829 muses of poetry, and they're helping him write 00:26:51.829 --> 00:26:54.990 these sad, self -pitying poems about how miserable 00:26:54.990 --> 00:26:57.970 he is and how unfair life has been to him. And 00:26:57.970 --> 00:27:00.529 then suddenly, the room changes. A majestic woman 00:27:00.529 --> 00:27:03.210 appears. He describes her as having eyes that 00:27:03.210 --> 00:27:05.890 were burning and of more than human insight. 00:27:06.349 --> 00:27:08.690 She seems ancient, but also full of youthful 00:27:08.690 --> 00:27:10.589 vector. Her height keeps changing. Sometimes 00:27:10.589 --> 00:27:12.930 she's normal human size, but then her head touches 00:27:12.930 --> 00:27:15.509 the heavens. She's wearing a dress woven by her 00:27:15.509 --> 00:27:18.190 own hands with the Greek letter pi for practical 00:27:18.190 --> 00:27:21.750 philosophy at the bottom hem and theta for theoretical 00:27:21.750 --> 00:27:24.640 philosophy at the top. It's Lady Philosophy herself, 00:27:24.839 --> 00:27:27.420 and she is not happy to see the muses. She is 00:27:27.420 --> 00:27:31.099 furious with them. She screams at them. The translation 00:27:31.099 --> 00:27:33.839 is something like hysterical sluts. She says 00:27:33.839 --> 00:27:36.660 they are just feeding Boethius' sickness with 00:27:36.660 --> 00:27:39.420 their sweet poison of self -pity. She kicks them 00:27:39.420 --> 00:27:41.460 out of the cell. And then she turns to Boethius 00:27:41.460 --> 00:27:44.299 and says, it's time for the strong medicine of 00:27:44.299 --> 00:27:48.089 reason. So the therapy session begins. What is 00:27:48.089 --> 00:27:50.750 her diagnosis of Boethius' problem? She says 00:27:50.750 --> 00:27:53.369 he's suffering from a kind of spiritual amnesia, 00:27:53.369 --> 00:27:56.410 a lethargy. He has forgotten who he truly is. 00:27:56.589 --> 00:27:58.890 He thinks he is just a mortal man who has lost 00:27:58.890 --> 00:28:01.250 his fortune and his good name. She's there to 00:28:01.250 --> 00:28:03.569 remind him that he is an immortal soul whose 00:28:03.569 --> 00:28:06.329 true home is with God. She starts with the famous 00:28:06.329 --> 00:28:08.190 image of the Wheel of Fortune. This is probably 00:28:08.190 --> 00:28:10.349 the most enduring metaphor from the entire book. 00:28:10.529 --> 00:28:12.970 Yes, it's the central image of the first half. 00:28:13.170 --> 00:28:15.380 She says to him, essentially, You are crying 00:28:15.380 --> 00:28:17.440 because Fortune has changed her face to you, 00:28:17.480 --> 00:28:19.599 but that is what Fortune does. She is a wheel. 00:28:19.680 --> 00:28:21.799 She is constantly spinning. One moment you're 00:28:21.799 --> 00:28:23.960 at the top, the next you're at the bottom. If 00:28:23.960 --> 00:28:26.079 you willingly choose to get on her wheel, you 00:28:26.079 --> 00:28:28.500 have no right to complain when it turns. It's 00:28:28.500 --> 00:28:30.599 a very harsh truth. You knew the rules of the 00:28:30.599 --> 00:28:34.220 game when you decided to play. Exactly. She relentlessly 00:28:34.220 --> 00:28:37.000 argues that all the things he lost... Wealth, 00:28:37.000 --> 00:28:40.920 power, fame, honor are not true goods. They are 00:28:40.920 --> 00:28:43.819 gifts of fortune. They are external to him. And 00:28:43.819 --> 00:28:45.519 because they can be taken away at any moment, 00:28:45.599 --> 00:28:48.619 they cannot possibly provide true lasting happiness 00:28:48.619 --> 00:28:50.859 or security. She does this brilliant takedown 00:28:50.859 --> 00:28:53.180 of fame. I love this part. Oh, the astronomy 00:28:53.180 --> 00:28:56.289 argument. It's so good. She says. You're so worried 00:28:56.289 --> 00:28:58.369 about your reputation. Look up at the stars. 00:28:58.609 --> 00:29:01.470 The entire Earth is just a tiny, insignificant 00:29:01.470 --> 00:29:04.690 pinprick in the vastness of the universe. And 00:29:04.690 --> 00:29:07.130 your fame is confined to one tiny corner of that 00:29:07.130 --> 00:29:09.150 pinprick. And even if you are famous across the 00:29:09.150 --> 00:29:12.269 whole globe, time will erase it. In 10 ,000 years, 00:29:12.549 --> 00:29:14.890 who will even know or care who the consul was 00:29:14.890 --> 00:29:17.890 in the year 522 AD? It's the pale blue dot speech. 00:29:18.559 --> 00:29:21.559 1 ,500 years before Carl Sagan, it's a radical 00:29:21.559 --> 00:29:24.059 perspective shift. So if happiness isn't money 00:29:24.059 --> 00:29:26.980 or power or fame, what is it? She leads him through 00:29:26.980 --> 00:29:29.900 this beautiful, tight, logical chain. She argues 00:29:29.900 --> 00:29:32.460 that all humans, by their very nature, desire 00:29:32.460 --> 00:29:35.519 to be happy. True happiness must be a state of 00:29:35.519 --> 00:29:38.099 perfect self -sufficiency, a state where you 00:29:38.099 --> 00:29:41.240 lack nothing. The only being that truly lacks 00:29:41.240 --> 00:29:43.279 nothing, that is perfectly self -sufficient, 00:29:43.380 --> 00:29:45.880 is the supreme good itself. And the supreme good 00:29:45.880 --> 00:29:49.740 is, by another name, God. Therefore, to be truly 00:29:49.740 --> 00:29:52.259 happy is to participate in the divine nature, 00:29:52.359 --> 00:29:55.690 to become godlike through virtue. But then Boethius, 00:29:55.809 --> 00:29:57.690 quite reasonably, hits back with the hardest 00:29:57.690 --> 00:30:00.569 question of all, theodicy, the problem of evil. 00:30:00.710 --> 00:30:03.470 He asked, okay, fine, but if God is the supreme 00:30:03.470 --> 00:30:06.430 good and he is running the universe, why am I, 00:30:06.450 --> 00:30:09.009 a good man in chains while the wicked Kunigas 00:30:09.009 --> 00:30:10.829 is living in luxury and running the country? 00:30:11.289 --> 00:30:14.029 Why does evil exist and why do the wicked prosper? 00:30:14.670 --> 00:30:16.910 This is where the book gets incredibly deep and 00:30:16.910 --> 00:30:19.170 challenging. Lady Philosophy's answer is that 00:30:19.170 --> 00:30:21.430 the wicked are actually, in reality, powerless. 00:30:21.869 --> 00:30:24.130 That sounds absolutely insane to a guy who's 00:30:24.130 --> 00:30:25.809 about to be executed by those wicked people. 00:30:25.950 --> 00:30:27.769 They seem pretty powerful from his perspective. 00:30:28.170 --> 00:30:30.670 Of course. But her argument is a philosophical 00:30:30.670 --> 00:30:34.289 one, she says. Power is the ability to achieve 00:30:34.289 --> 00:30:37.470 your will to get what you want. What does everyone, 00:30:37.710 --> 00:30:40.609 even the wicked, ultimately want? They want happiness. 00:30:40.710 --> 00:30:43.900 The good. The righteous seek that good through 00:30:43.900 --> 00:30:46.980 virtue and they attain it. The wicked seek that 00:30:46.980 --> 00:30:49.660 good through vice, through wealth, pleasure, 00:30:49.940 --> 00:30:52.920 power, and they fail to find it. They constantly 00:30:52.920 --> 00:30:55.359 miss the mark. She says they're like a drunk 00:30:55.359 --> 00:30:58.059 man trying to find his way home. He has the will 00:30:58.059 --> 00:31:00.200 to get home, but he's too incompetent to achieve 00:31:00.200 --> 00:31:02.960 it. He stumbles into a ditch instead. So they're 00:31:02.960 --> 00:31:05.319 not evil. They're just incompetent at being happy. 00:31:05.500 --> 00:31:08.119 They are impotent. They are spiritually dead. 00:31:08.779 --> 00:31:11.099 She argues that the wicked are like walking corpses. 00:31:11.279 --> 00:31:13.180 They might be moving and making noise, but they 00:31:13.180 --> 00:31:15.940 aren't truly existing in the fullest sense because 00:31:15.940 --> 00:31:18.220 they have cut themselves off from the source 00:31:18.220 --> 00:31:20.960 of all existence, which is the good, which is 00:31:20.960 --> 00:31:23.339 God. And she goes even further. She argues that 00:31:23.339 --> 00:31:25.380 the wicked are actually more miserable when they 00:31:25.380 --> 00:31:28.539 get away with their crimes. Yes. She compares 00:31:28.539 --> 00:31:31.880 vice to a disease of the soul. Punishment, then, 00:31:31.980 --> 00:31:35.319 is the medicine, the painful surgery. If a criminal 00:31:35.319 --> 00:31:37.480 is justly punished, he is being given a chance 00:31:37.480 --> 00:31:41.220 to be cured. If he escapes punishment, his soul 00:31:41.220 --> 00:31:43.740 is left to fester and decay in its sickness. 00:31:44.319 --> 00:31:47.059 So Boethius shouldn't envy his persecutors. He 00:31:47.059 --> 00:31:49.500 should pity them. They are the ones who are truly 00:31:49.500 --> 00:31:52.559 imprisoned, truly sick. It's such a radical inversion 00:31:52.559 --> 00:31:54.680 of how we normally see the world. It's deeply 00:31:54.680 --> 00:31:57.539 stoic. It's deeply platonic. But it brings us 00:31:57.539 --> 00:31:59.200 to what you've called the religious mystery of 00:31:59.200 --> 00:32:01.470 the book. The elephant in the room. Boethius 00:32:01.470 --> 00:32:03.730 is a Christian. He's written theological treatises. 00:32:03.849 --> 00:32:06.109 He's facing his own death, the ultimate test 00:32:06.109 --> 00:32:10.390 of faith. But in this entire long, profound book, 00:32:10.589 --> 00:32:13.369 he never once mentions Jesus Christ. He never 00:32:13.369 --> 00:32:15.630 quotes the Bible. He never prays to the saints 00:32:15.630 --> 00:32:18.210 or the Virgin Mary. Why? It is the great puzzle 00:32:18.210 --> 00:32:19.930 of Boethian scholarship, and people have thought 00:32:19.930 --> 00:32:22.349 about it for centuries. Is he secretly a pagan 00:32:22.349 --> 00:32:25.109 who just paid lip service to Christianity for 00:32:25.109 --> 00:32:27.430 his career? That was a theory for a while, wasn't 00:32:27.430 --> 00:32:30.809 it? The historian Arnaldo Momiliano. famously 00:32:30.809 --> 00:32:33.630 argued that Boethius' Christianity just collapsed 00:32:33.630 --> 00:32:36.430 in the face of death, and he reverted to his 00:32:36.430 --> 00:32:38.869 first and truest love, which was Greek philosophy. 00:32:39.400 --> 00:32:42.319 That was the dominant view for a time. But most 00:32:42.319 --> 00:32:45.059 modern scholars, people like C .S. Lewis or Arthur 00:32:45.059 --> 00:32:47.819 Herman, strongly disagree. They argue that Boethius 00:32:47.819 --> 00:32:50.839 was performing a very specific intellectual exercise. 00:32:50.980 --> 00:32:53.240 He was deliberately writing a work of philosophy, 00:32:53.500 --> 00:32:56.200 not theology. He wanted to see how far reason 00:32:56.200 --> 00:32:58.259 alone, without the aid of divine revelation, 00:32:58.579 --> 00:33:01.640 could take a person in distress. So he was intentionally 00:33:01.640 --> 00:33:03.940 sticking to the rules of the genre he chose. 00:33:04.259 --> 00:33:06.440 Exactly. He was trying to build a bridge, not 00:33:06.440 --> 00:33:08.730 choose a side. He wanted to show that the God 00:33:08.730 --> 00:33:10.869 of Plato and Aristotle and the God of Abraham 00:33:10.869 --> 00:33:13.690 and St. Paul were the same God. It's a work of 00:33:13.690 --> 00:33:16.269 Christian apologetics, in a way proving the reasonableness 00:33:16.269 --> 00:33:18.890 of the faith through pure logic. And clearly 00:33:18.890 --> 00:33:21.069 the medieval church saw it that way. They revered 00:33:21.069 --> 00:33:23.309 the book. They just saw lady philosophy as a 00:33:23.309 --> 00:33:25.670 handmaiden to Christian wisdom. There is one 00:33:25.670 --> 00:33:27.329 last argument in the book we have to touch on 00:33:27.329 --> 00:33:29.309 because it solves one of the biggest theological 00:33:29.309 --> 00:33:33.210 problems there is. The conflict between free 00:33:33.210 --> 00:33:36.369 will and God's foreknowledge. Yes, book five. 00:33:36.799 --> 00:33:39.839 The climax of the argument. The problem is simple 00:33:39.839 --> 00:33:43.400 to state, but incredibly hard to solve. If God 00:33:43.400 --> 00:33:45.059 knows everything that will happen, including 00:33:45.059 --> 00:33:47.700 every choice I will make tomorrow, then my choices 00:33:47.700 --> 00:33:49.980 seem to be fixed and necessary. And if they're 00:33:49.980 --> 00:33:51.940 fixed, I don't really have free will. And if 00:33:51.940 --> 00:33:53.880 you don't have free will, it's unjust for God 00:33:53.880 --> 00:33:55.960 to reward or punish you for your actions. It's 00:33:55.960 --> 00:33:58.680 a huge problem. So how does Boethius, through 00:33:58.680 --> 00:34:01.619 Lady Philosophy, solve it? He introduces a mind 00:34:01.619 --> 00:34:05.150 -bending concept, the eternal present. He argues 00:34:05.150 --> 00:34:07.009 that we are making a fundamental mistake when 00:34:07.009 --> 00:34:09.190 we think about God's knowledge. We are creatures 00:34:09.190 --> 00:34:11.889 who live in time. We experience life as a sequence, 00:34:12.150 --> 00:34:15.409 past, present, future. But God does not live 00:34:15.409 --> 00:34:18.190 in time. God lives in eternity. And eternity 00:34:18.190 --> 00:34:20.570 for Boethius isn't just a really, really long 00:34:20.570 --> 00:34:23.630 time. It is the state of possessing all of life 00:34:23.630 --> 00:34:26.590 all at once in a single, complete, and perfect 00:34:26.590 --> 00:34:29.250 moment. So God doesn't foresee the future? No. 00:34:29.670 --> 00:34:32.829 He sees it. He sees the past, the present, and 00:34:32.829 --> 00:34:35.130 the future all at once in a single, timeless 00:34:35.130 --> 00:34:38.769 glance. The analogy Boethius uses is of a man 00:34:38.769 --> 00:34:40.989 standing on a high mountain looking down at a 00:34:40.989 --> 00:34:43.429 road below. He sees a traveler coming, he sees 00:34:43.429 --> 00:34:45.010 the traveler at the midpoint, and he sees the 00:34:45.010 --> 00:34:47.309 traveler arriving at the end all in his single 00:34:47.309 --> 00:34:50.150 field of vision. His seeing the traveler arrive 00:34:50.150 --> 00:34:52.690 doesn't force the traveler to walk. He is simply 00:34:52.690 --> 00:34:55.630 an observer of a free act. God sees my future 00:34:55.630 --> 00:34:57.909 choice not as something that will happen, but 00:34:57.909 --> 00:35:00.099 as something that is happening. from his eternal 00:35:00.099 --> 00:35:02.440 perspective. Exactly. My choice remains free, 00:35:02.579 --> 00:35:06.300 but his knowledge remains perfect. It brilliantly 00:35:06.300 --> 00:35:09.380 saves both free will and God's omniscience. And 00:35:09.380 --> 00:35:11.219 this argument was picked up by Thomas Aquinas, 00:35:11.380 --> 00:35:14.219 by Dante, by C .S. Lewis. It became the standard 00:35:14.219 --> 00:35:16.199 Christian philosophical answer to the problem 00:35:16.199 --> 00:35:18.820 for more than a thousand years. So Boethius finishes 00:35:18.820 --> 00:35:21.780 his masterpiece. He has found his consolation, 00:35:21.780 --> 00:35:24.980 his peace, but he can't stop the clock. Which 00:35:24.980 --> 00:35:27.460 brings us to part seven, execution and legacy. 00:35:27.960 --> 00:35:31.360 The end came in the year 524 A .D., and it was 00:35:31.360 --> 00:35:33.380 horrific. Yeah, we should give a warning to our 00:35:33.380 --> 00:35:35.219 listeners. The historical accounts are extremely 00:35:35.219 --> 00:35:37.880 graphic. They are. The most common account says 00:35:37.880 --> 00:35:40.519 that the executioners tied a cord or a rope around 00:35:40.519 --> 00:35:43.219 his head, put a stick through it, and then twisted 00:35:43.219 --> 00:35:45.440 it like a pernique until the pressure forced 00:35:45.440 --> 00:35:47.980 his eyes to bulge out of their sockets. My God. 00:35:48.300 --> 00:35:51.280 And then, while he was in that state of unimaginable 00:35:51.280 --> 00:35:53.760 agony, they bludgeoned or clubbed him to death. 00:35:54.000 --> 00:35:56.559 It was a terror killing. It was designed to send 00:35:56.559 --> 00:35:59.500 a message to the rest of the Roman Senate. Don't 00:35:59.500 --> 00:36:02.400 cross me. It was, but it seems to have backfired. 00:36:02.659 --> 00:36:05.239 Theodoric himself died just two years later in 00:36:05.239 --> 00:36:08.159 526. And the legend that grew up around his death 00:36:08.159 --> 00:36:11.559 was that he died of guilt and terror. The historian 00:36:11.559 --> 00:36:13.739 Procopius tells a story that Theodoric was at 00:36:13.739 --> 00:36:16.960 dinner and a huge fish head was served on a platter. 00:36:17.320 --> 00:36:19.639 And Theodoric hallucinated that the fish head 00:36:19.639 --> 00:36:23.199 was the face of Symmachus. Boethius' father -in 00:36:23.199 --> 00:36:25.400 -law, who Theodoric also had executed shortly 00:36:25.400 --> 00:36:28.739 after Boethius. Yes. He saw Symmachus' face glaring 00:36:28.739 --> 00:36:30.880 at him, and the king went into a state of shock 00:36:30.880 --> 00:36:33.380 and died a few days later, consumed by remorse. 00:36:33.420 --> 00:36:36.260 Meanwhile, Boethius became an instant hero. An 00:36:36.260 --> 00:36:38.559 instant martyr. He was immediately venerated 00:36:38.559 --> 00:36:42.199 by the local church in Pavia as a Saint Severinus 00:36:42.199 --> 00:36:45.690 Boethius. His bones are buried in the crypt of 00:36:45.690 --> 00:36:48.230 the Church of San Pietro in Sildoro in Pavia. 00:36:48.550 --> 00:36:50.829 And St. Augustine's bones are buried in the main 00:36:50.829 --> 00:36:53.070 altar of the very same church. So you have the 00:36:53.070 --> 00:36:55.469 two great giants of the late antique Western 00:36:55.469 --> 00:36:57.710 mind resting together. It's incredibly fitting. 00:36:57.889 --> 00:37:00.750 And his book, The Consolation, it became a medieval 00:37:00.750 --> 00:37:03.329 bestseller for a millennium. It was the book 00:37:03.329 --> 00:37:06.739 after the Bible. King Alfred the Great translated 00:37:06.739 --> 00:37:09.639 it into Old English to educate his people. Geoffrey 00:37:09.639 --> 00:37:13.019 Chaucer translated it. Queen Elizabeth I translated 00:37:13.019 --> 00:37:15.920 it. It was the book that noblemen and women would 00:37:15.920 --> 00:37:18.039 read when they were thrown into the Tower of 00:37:18.039 --> 00:37:20.579 London. It was the ultimate prison literature. 00:37:20.980 --> 00:37:23.500 And Dante Alighieri places him in heaven in The 00:37:23.500 --> 00:37:25.500 Divine Comedy. He does. In the heaven of the 00:37:25.500 --> 00:37:27.760 sun, among the wise theologians and philosophers, 00:37:28.260 --> 00:37:30.179 Thomas Aquinas is the one who points him out 00:37:30.179 --> 00:37:32.980 and says, Now if thy mental eye thou turn to 00:37:32.980 --> 00:37:35.889 it. That sainted soul, which the world so darkly 00:37:35.889 --> 00:37:38.829 drove away, lays bare to him who will but listen 00:37:38.829 --> 00:37:42.030 well the world's deceit. What about his scientific 00:37:42.030 --> 00:37:45.670 and logical legacy? It survived. Because he translated 00:37:45.670 --> 00:37:49.090 those few key logic texts, the lights of reason 00:37:49.090 --> 00:37:51.670 stayed on in the monasteries of Europe. When 00:37:51.670 --> 00:37:53.690 the Vikings were raiding and civilization seemed 00:37:53.690 --> 00:37:56.769 to be ending, monks in isolated scriptoriums 00:37:56.769 --> 00:37:58.929 were reading Boethius to remember how to think 00:37:58.929 --> 00:38:02.559 clearly. He gave the Middle Ages its philosophical 00:38:02.559 --> 00:38:06.539 vocabulary. He defined words like person, substance, 00:38:06.880 --> 00:38:09.579 nature that became the building blocks for all 00:38:09.579 --> 00:38:12.480 of scholastic theology. He built the intellectual 00:38:12.480 --> 00:38:15.579 scaffolding for the next thousand years. There 00:38:15.579 --> 00:38:18.619 is even a crater on the moon named Boethius, 00:38:18.619 --> 00:38:21.710 which feels... Kind of perfect for the guy who 00:38:21.710 --> 00:38:23.530 wrote about the music of the spheres. It really 00:38:23.530 --> 00:38:26.070 does. He bridged the gap. He took the profound 00:38:26.070 --> 00:38:28.710 wisdom of the classical world, packed it into 00:38:28.710 --> 00:38:31.590 a kind of intellectual survival kit, and floated 00:38:31.590 --> 00:38:33.530 it across the dark waters of history so that 00:38:33.530 --> 00:38:35.630 it could reach us on the other side. So as we 00:38:35.630 --> 00:38:37.570 wrap up this deep dive, I want to leave our listener 00:38:37.570 --> 00:38:39.829 with a final provocative thought. And it comes 00:38:39.829 --> 00:38:42.550 from Boethius' definition of power. We live in 00:38:42.550 --> 00:38:45.750 a world that is obsessed with power, right? Political 00:38:45.750 --> 00:38:47.929 power, financial power, social media influence. 00:38:48.230 --> 00:38:52.199 It's what everyone seems to be chasing. Boethius, 00:38:52.340 --> 00:38:55.460 writing from that dungeon, argued that all of 00:38:55.460 --> 00:38:58.420 that is an illusion. It's fake power. He said 00:38:58.420 --> 00:39:00.860 the true power is only the ability to do good, 00:39:00.960 --> 00:39:03.840 to obtain the good. And if you are doing evil, 00:39:04.039 --> 00:39:06.960 you are not powerful. You are weak. You are failing 00:39:06.960 --> 00:39:08.940 at the one thing you actually want, which is 00:39:08.940 --> 00:39:11.800 true happiness. You are impotent. It completely 00:39:11.800 --> 00:39:14.340 redefines everything. The tyrant on his throne 00:39:14.340 --> 00:39:17.019 isn't the winner. He's the ultimate loser. The 00:39:17.019 --> 00:39:18.940 corrupt billionaire isn't successful. He's a 00:39:18.940 --> 00:39:22.840 failure. True power is the power to rule yourself, 00:39:23.139 --> 00:39:25.579 to maintain your own virtue, to keep your eyes 00:39:25.579 --> 00:39:28.019 fixed on the highest good, regardless of what 00:39:28.019 --> 00:39:29.780 the wheel of fortune is doing to your external 00:39:29.780 --> 00:39:32.420 circumstances. Wickedness is its own punishment. 00:39:32.639 --> 00:39:34.340 It's a thought that can fundamentally change 00:39:34.340 --> 00:39:36.800 how you navigate your own life, your own successes, 00:39:36.900 --> 00:39:38.800 and your own failures. Thank you for listening 00:39:38.800 --> 00:39:41.539 to The Deep Dive. We hope this journey into the 00:39:41.539 --> 00:39:44.000 mind of the last Roman was as consoling for you 00:39:44.000 --> 00:39:46.199 as it was for us. Keep thinking. And we'll see 00:39:46.199 --> 00:39:46.739 you on the next one.