Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (born: circa 475–7 CE, died: 526? CE) ...
... was born into the Roman aristocracy ... about the same time as the last Roman Emperor, Romulus Augustulus was deposed ... He was able to spend most of his life in learned leisure, pursuing his vast project of translating and commenting philosophical texts. The Roman aristocracy was, by his day, thoroughly Christianized, and Boethius also became involved in some of the ecclesiastical disputes of his time, centring mainly around a schism between the Latin and the Greek Churches ... He agreed to become Theoderic's ‘Master of Offices’, one of the most senior officials, but he quickly fell out with many others at court, probably because he attacked their corruption. Accused of treason and of engaging in magic, he was imprisoned and (probably in 526) executed ... Besides writing text-books on arithmetic and geometry, closely based on Greek models, Boethius devoted himself to translating Aristotle's logic and commenting on it; he produced a commentary on the Categories and two each on On Interpretation and on the Isagoge (‘Introduction’) by Porphyry, which had become a standard part of the logical curriculum. He also composed logical text-books on division, categorical syllogisms, and on two branches of logic which will require further explanation (see below, Section 3): hypothetical syllogisms and topical reasoning (along with a commentary on Cicero's Topics) ...
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/boethius/
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