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.
