SOURCE: "The Scholar and His Public," in Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence, edited by Margaret Gibson, Basil Blackwell, 1981, pp. 44-69.

[In the following essay, Kirkby details the social and intellectual milieu of Boethius, describing him as "a man writing and acting consciously in the Roman tradition of

Boethius protecting Paulinus, from a verse revision of the Consolation of Philosophy (ca. 1380).

I

Sometime in the mid-530s, Cassiodorus Senator embarked on a project to found a Christian school in Rome in cooperation with the pope, Agapitus. 'I strove with the most holy Agapitus, pope of the city of Rome, to collect subscriptions and to have Christian rather than secular schools...