There was no doubt that Boethius was influenced by someone but by whom for sure it was hard to say. Some historians noticed the lines of Patricius in his introduction to The Commentary on Cicero’s Topics.
In XI century one more representative from Vatic tried to prove that he saw the works. In this time it was Usener. He said about the similarity with Euclid’s works. But Cassiodorus was the most original as he pointed that Boethius finished his quadrivium and there were all above mentioned names and even some more, such as Nicomachus and Archimedes.
One of the most popular works for that period of time surely was The Consolation of Philosophy. The main character was named Philosophy, a woman with such eyes which could show that her powers were so great, above the possibility of person. There was also something special in her cloth. There were two Greek letters (phi and theta) which were the symbols of the philosophy: practical and theoretical. This story tells about the meeting of Boethius and Philosophy. She retold the words spoken to him by God. Also they covered such topic as freedom and fate.
Such organization of the work was not new one for Rome literature. There was great number of consolations of whose who were in prison, died or exiled. The form of dialogue was already used by some writers so it was not very difficult to create. More interesting was the point of personification. It was really fresh idea to create the dialogue between the characters: the author and the imaginary character. But the main idea lied in the fact that the image of the author was present in both whose characters.
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