The Consolation of Philosophy Glossary

Glossary of Terms

Aestival

Of, relating to, or appearing in summer.

Amity

Friendship; peaceful harmony.

Augments

Makes something already developed, or well under way, greater, as in size, extent, or quantity.

Benificent

All good

Consul

One of the two chief magistrates in Ancient Rome.

Corrollary

An immediate consequence or easily drawn conclusion. A natural consequence or result.

Diatribe

The forms of popular discourse on morality in Ancient Greece and Rome.

Gelid

Very cold; icy.

Gens

A Ancient Roman family or clan, which could be either patrician or plebeian in origin, but usually based on land and wealth to some degree. It was usually a group of families in claiming descent from a common ancestor, and united by a common name and common ancestral religious rites. Public service was a very important component of the history of a gens. It was traced patrilineally.

Homer

Greek epic poet of the eighth century B.C. His poems The Iliad and The Odyssey are often referred to in The Consolation of Philosophy.

Maculate

Archaic. To sully or pollute.

Maxim

A principle or rule of conduct.

Menippean Satire

The literary term "satire" has come to mean a work that mocks or attacks political or social mores, but satire in Boethius's day simply meant a work of literature which contained a variety of forms in its whole (verse, prose, dialogue, etc.)

Omnipotent

All powerful

Omniscient

All knowing

Ostrogoths

The eastern group of the Germanic peoples called Goths, settled in the third century A.D. in the steppelands between the Crimea and the rivers Don and Dniester. The sudden irruption of the Asiatic Huns caused the Ostrogoths to move and eventually settle in the Po valley in Italy. They were Arian Christians. The Emperor Theodoric was an Ostrogoth king.

Promulgates

Makes known by open declaration; publish; proclaim formally or put into operation (a law, decree of a court, etc.)

Prosimetrical

Consisting of both prose and verse.

Providence

Boethius's term for the foreknowledge of God.

Querulous

Full of complaints; complaining.

Sublunary

Situated beneath the moon or between the earth and the moon. Characteristic of or pertaining to the earth; terrestrial. Mundane or worldly: fleeting, "a sublunary pleasure."

Sybarite

A person devoted to luxury and pleasure.

Theodicy

"Justifying the ways of God to men". Various theories of theology which attempt to reconcile the existence of evil in the world with a good and just God.

Theorem

An idea that has been demonstrated as true or is assumed to be so demonstrable. This is usually referring to mathematics, but the term can be used in philosophical logic as well.

Touchwood

Wood converted into an easily ignitible substance by the action of certain fungi, and used as tinder.

Triform

Formed of three parts; in three divisions. Existing or appearing in three different forms, or combining three different forms.

Wanton

Done, shown, or used maliciously or unjustifiably.