674 THE SURVIVAL OF CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY
A VOICE FROM THE END OF CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY
Boethius (524-480 B.C.) wrote his Consolation of Philosophy during the last year of his
life, while he lay in prison in Pavia awaiting execution. Writing in classical Latin, he
imagines a woman who personifies Philosophy instructing him, prose dialogue alter-
nating with poems in a variety of meters. Boethius uses mythology to confirm philo-
sophical doctrine. Orpheus (3. 12) is an example of one who disobeyed through love
the laws of moderation. Boethius describes the traditional features of the Underworld,
yet "Orpheus saw, lost, killed his own Eurydice." Those who seek the higher good
will lose it if they look back to Tartarus. Again, Odysseus was saved by Hermes from
the power of Circe (4. 3.), unlike his men. Her herbs cannot change the hearts of hu-
man beings, but such poisons "drag a human being down from himself.... They flow
in insidiously: not harming the body they rage in the wounded mind."
Finally, after Philosophy has told Boethius that human beings must shape their
own fortunes (4. 6), the following poem (4. 7) uses Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Her-
acles as examples of heroes who overcame great adversity to achieve their goals (al-
though Agamemnon and Iphigenia paid a heavy price). "Go on, brave human beings,"
sings Philosophy, "where the high road of heroic examples leads.... Earth, if you rise
above her, rewards you with the stars."
Boethius found in classical mythology examples to instruct and encourage human
beings in adversity. Whether or not he was a Christian (and he almost certainly was),
for him the ancient legends still had a power to illuminate the precepts of reason.tine, Jerome, and other Christian Fathers actually helped to prolong the life of
the classical legends. The myths survived not only in classical literary texts but
also in Christian literature and works of art. The process of absorption and min-
gling during late antiquity and the Middle Ages reached its climax in the work
of Dante, who used, criticized, and, in the process, vindicated the classical myths.
The mythological figures, then, did indeed survive, despite the passing of
the religion that created them. In Western literature they were used as symbols
or as allegories; they became vehicles for romantic storytelling or were identi-
fied with constellations. They traveled to the East, to be depicted in Arab man-
uscripts in forms very different from their Greek originals. However changed
they were, the important fact is that they survived, and at the end of the Mid-
dle Ages they took out a new lease on life that still endures.LITERARY USES OF THE MYTHS
OVID IN THE LATER MIDDLE AGES
A new age in European literature, beginning toward the end of the eleventh cen-
tury, has rightly been called an Ovidian Age, since Ovid's Métamorphoses were