Metron 7 (from Sam)

Poem 7 was a beautiful conclusion to Book I--I've never actually seen anything written entirely in adonics (as opposed to their ending a Sapphic), and the effect is simultaneously brisk and soothing. "Officinias sceleratorum" also caught my eye--while Boethius' tone is almost uniformly serene and elevated, phrases like this and "scenicas meritriculas" lend a certain credence to the satirical/Menippean reading of the De Consolatione. The closest model for his narrative style, however, seems to be Plato rather than any Roman writer. The gentle comedy of the narrator's repeated confusion about (what Philosophia seems to think are) fairly basic ideas reminded me of Socrates' conversation with Meno, where the latter repeatedly has to backtrack to have something clarified. Whereas an Aristotle, by way of laying out his ideas, would calmly proceed from bullet point to bullet point, Plato and Boethius are just as concerned with the aporic process of coming to know something as with the object of knowledge itself.