Note (return) — Chapter XIII

This seems to be all that can now be done towards re-writing the lost indictment under which Boëthius was accused. The trial was conducted with an outrageous disregard of the forms of justice. It took place in the Senate-house at Rome; Boëthius was apparently languishing in prison at Pavia, where he had been arrested along with Albinus. 131 Thus at a distance of more than four hundred miles from his accusers and his judges was the life of this noble Roman, unheard and undefended, sworn away on obscure and preposterous charges by a process which was the mere mockery of a trial. He was sentenced to death and the confiscation of his property; and the judges whose trembling lips pronounced the monstrous sentence were the very senators whose cause he had tried to serve. This thought, the remembrance of this base ingratitude, planted the sharpest sting of all in the breast of the condemned patriot. It is evident that the Senate themselves were in desperate fear of the newly awakened wrath of Theodoric, and the fact that they found Boëthius guilty cannot be considered as in any degree increasing the probability of the truth of the charges made against him. But it does perhaps somewhat lessen his reputation for far-seeing statesmanship, since it shows how thoroughly base and worthless was the body for whose sake he sacrificed his loyalty to the new dynasty, how utterly unfit the Senate would have been to take its old place as ruler of Italy, if Byzantine Emperor and Ostrogothic King could have been blotted out of the political firmament.