ONT Re: Excisions, Excuses, Exercises, Exergues, Exorabilities, Exordia, Experiments, Exquisitions

[Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>]

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| While I was thinking these thoughts to myself in silence,
| and set my pen to record this tearful complaint, there seemed
| to stand above my head a woman.  Her look filled me with awe;
| her burning eyes penetrated more deeply than those of ordinary men;
| her complexion was fresh with an ever-lively bloom, yet she seemed
| so ancient that none would think her of our time.  It was difficult
| to say how tall she might be, for at one time she seemed to confine
| herself to the ordinary measure of man, and at another the crown of
| her head touched the heavens;  and when she lifted her head higher
| yet, she penetrated the heavens themselves, and was lost to the
| sight of men.  Her dress was made of very fine, imperishable thread,
| of delicate workmanship:  she herself wove it, as I learned later,
| for she told me.  Its form was shrouded by a kind of darkness of
| forgotten years, like a smoke-blackened family statue in the atrium.
| On its lower border was woven the Greek letter Pi, and on the upper,
| Theta, and between the two letters steps were marked like a ladder,
| by which one might climb from the lower letter to the higher.
| But violent hands had ripped this dress and torn away what
| bits they could.  In her right hand she carried a book,
| and in her left, a sceptre.
|
| Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boetius, c.480-524 A.D.),
|'The Consolation of Philosophy', Translation by S.J. Tester,
| New Edition, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard/Heinemann, 1973.

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