Boethius

Born around 480 AD into the Anicii family just after the last Western Roman emperor fell, Boethius was orphaned young and raised by a consul who saw to his education in Greek and Latin. He climbed swiftly through Ostrogothic power - senator by 25, consul by 33, then advisor to Theodoric the Great - while undertaking a vast project to translate the Greek classics for a Latin world losing touch with its sources. His commentaries on Nicomachus, Porphyry, and Cicero, and his work on music, mathematics, and theology, aimed to reconcile Plato and Aristotle with Christian thought; though unfinished, his translations are why much of Aristotle survived to the Renaissance. His denunciations of court corruption made him enemies, and after defending a fellow consul accused of conspiracy, he was imprisoned around 523. In that cell he wrote On the Consolation of Philosophy, a treatise on fortune and death that became one of the most copied works of the Middle Ages. He was tortured and executed in 524.