Letter 1045: VARIAE, BOOK 1, LETTER 45

45. King Theoderic to Boethius, Illustrious Patrician. [1] Those things are not to be despised which are requested by neighboring kings out of a desire to presume upon us, since for the most part small things prevail to provide more than great riches are able to obtain. For frequently what arms cannot accomplish, the delights of refinement impose. Let it therefore be for the sake of the commonwealth even when we seem to be at play. For we seek out pleasurable things precisely so that through them we may accomplish serious matters. [2] And so the lord of the Burgundians has earnestly requested of us that we should send him, together with masters skilled in such things, a clock that is regulated by water flowing beneath a measured device, and another that is marked off by the grasped illumination of the boundless sun: so that, enjoying to the full the delights he has obtained, what is for us an everyday thing may seem to them a miracle. And deservedly indeed do they desire to behold what astounds them in the reports of their own envoys. [3] We have learned that you, fattened on much erudition, know this so well that you have drunk in at the very fountain of the disciplines the arts which others practice in common ignorance. For you entered, though placed far away, the schools of the Athenians, and you so mingled the toga among the choirs of those who wear the pallium [Greek philosophers] that you have made the teachings of the Greeks to be Roman doctrine. For you have learned with what profundity the speculative branch with its parts is thought through, by what method the active branch with its division is learned: bringing to the senators of Romulus whatever the sons of Cecrops [the Athenians] had produced as unique for the world. [4] For by your translations Pythagoras the musician and Ptolemy the astronomer are read as Italians: Nicomachus the arithmetician and Euclid the geometer are heard as Ausonians [Italians]: Plato the theologian and Aristotle the logician dispute in the voice of Quirinus [in Latin]: you have also given back the mechanician Archimedes in Latin to the Sicilians. And whatever disciplines or arts eloquent Greece has put forth through individual men, Rome has received in her ancestral tongue with you as its sole author. You have rendered them so illustrious by such brilliance of words, so conspicuous by such propriety of language, that even those men could have preferred your work, had they learned both languages. [5] You have entered the aforesaid art [mechanics], known among the noble disciplines, through the fourfold gates of mathematics. You have come to know by the light of your heart that art, seated in the inner chambers of nature, with the books of the authorities inviting you, an art whose practice is to know difficult things and whose purpose is to display marvels. It strives to show what men are amazed has come to pass, and in a wondrous manner, with natures turned about, it withdraws belief from a thing accomplished, even while it displays the sight to the very eyes. It makes waters rising from the depths fall headlong, fire run with weights, instruments resound with voices not their own, and it fills reeds with foreign breaths, so that small things may be able to sing by art. [6] We see through it the defenses of cities now tottering rise up suddenly with such firmness that he who is found despaired of in his own strength is rendered superior by the aid of contrivances. Structures soaked in sea water are dried out: when they have hardened, they are dissolved by ingenious arrangement. Metals bellow, Diomedes trumpets the more deeply in bronze, the brazen serpent hisses, imitation birds twitter, and things which know not how to have a voice of their own are proved to send forth the sweetness of a song. [7] We report small matters concerning that art to which it is permitted to imitate heaven. This art made the sun run its course in the sphere of Archimedes: this fashioned another circle of the zodiac by human design: this displayed the moon, restorable from its eclipse, by the illumination of art, and set rolling, with an imperceptible motion, a small machine pregnant with the world, a portable heaven, a compendium of things, a mirror of nature, after the likeness of the upper air. Thus the stars, although we know their course, we do not perceive going forth, since our eyes deceive us: there is in them a certain standing transit, and those which by true reasoning you know to run swiftly, you do not see move themselves. [8] What a thing it is for a man even to make this, which it can be marvelous merely to have understood! Therefore, since the praiseworthy knowledge of such things adorns you, send us clocks at the public expense, without any cost to yourself. Let the first be one where the pointer, the indicator of the day, by means of a slight shadow is accustomed to show the hours. And so the immobile and small ray, performing what the so wondrous magnitude of the sun runs through, equals the flight of the sun, since it is always ignorant of motion. [9] The stars would envy such things, if they had perception, and would perhaps turn aside their own course, lest they should be subject to such mockery. Where is that singular miracle of the hours coming from light, if a shadow too points these out? Where is the praiseworthy unfailing rotation, if metals too accomplish this, which are held in perpetual position? O the inestimable power of an art which, while it says it is playing, prevails to make public the secrets of nature! [10] Let the second be one where, apart from the rays of the sun, the hour is discerned, dividing the nights into parts: which, that it might owe nothing to the stars, turned the reckoning of heaven rather to the flowing of waters, by whose motions it shows what is revolved in the heaven, and the art, conceived in bold presumption, confers upon the elements what the condition of their origin denied them. All the disciplines, the entire labor of the wise, seek to know the power of nature, only so far as they are able: mechanics alone is that which seeks to imitate it from opposites, and, if it is permitted to say so, in certain matters even strives to wish to surpass it. For this art is known to have made Daedalus fly: this to have made the iron Cupid hang in the temple of Diana without any binding: this today makes mute things sing, senseless things live, immovable things move. [11] The mechanician, if it is permitted to say so, is almost a partner of nature, unlocking hidden things, transforming manifest things, playing with miracles, imitating so beautifully that what is not doubted to be artificially composed is reckoned to be the truth. Because we have learned that you have read these things rather diligently, you shall hasten to send us the aforesaid clocks as quickly as possible, so that you may make yourself known in that part of the world to which you could not otherwise have reached. [12] Let foreign nations recognize through you that we possess nobles such as those who are read of as authors. How often will they refuse to believe what they have seen? How often will they suppose this truth to be deceptive dreams? And when they have been turned from their amazement, they will not dare to call themselves our equals, since they know that among us wise men have devised such things.

XLV. BOETHIO V. I. PATRICIO THEODERICUS REX. [1] Spernenda non sunt quae a vicinis regibus praesumptionis gratia postulantur, dum plerumque res parvae plus praevalent praestare quam magnae possunt optinere divitiae. frequenter enim quod arma explere nequeunt, oblectamenta suavitatis imponunt. sit ergo pro re publica et cum ludere videmur. nam ideo voluptuosa quaerimus, ut per ipsa seria compleamus. [2] Burgundionum itaque dominus a nobis magnopere postulavit, ut horologium, quod aquis sub modulo fluentibus temperatur et quod solis immensi comprehensa illuminatione distinguitur, cum magistris rerum ei transmittere deberemus: quatenus impetratis delectationibus perfruendo, quod nobis cottidianum, illis videatur esse miraculum. merito siquidem respicere cupiunt, quod legatorum suorum relationibus obstupescunt. [3] Hoc te multa eruditione saginatum ita nosse didicimus, ut artes, quas exercent vulgariter nescientes, in ipso disciplinarum fonte potaveris. sic enim Atheniensium scholas longe positus introisti, sic palliatorum choris miscuisti togam, ut Graecorum dogmata doctrinam feceris esse Romanam. didicisti enim, qua profunditate cum suis partibus speculativa cogitetur, qua ratione activa cum sua divisione discatur: deducens ad Romuleos senatores quicquid Cecropidae mundo fecerant singulare. [4] Translationibus enim tuis Pythagoras musicus, Ptolemaeus astronomus leguntur Itali: Nicomachus arithmeticus, geometricus Euclides audiuntur Ausonii: Plato theologus, Aristoteles logicus Quirinali voce disceptant: mechanicum etiam Archimedem Latialem Siculis reddidisti. et quascumque disciplinas vel artes facunda Graecia per singulos viros edidit, te uno auctore patrio sermone Roma suscepit. quos tanta verborum luculentia reddidisti claros, tanta linguae proprietate conspicuos, ut potuissent et illi opus tuum praeferre, si utrumque didicissent. [5] Tu artem praedictam ex disciplinis nobilibus notam per quadrifarias mathesis ianuas introisti. tu illam in naturae penetralibus considentem, auctorum libris invitantibus, cordis lumine cognovisti, cui ardua nosse usus, miracula monstrare propositum est. molitur ostendere, quod obstupescant homines evenisse miroque modo naturis conversis facti detrahit fidem, cum ostentet et oculis visionem. facit aquas ex imo surgentes praecipites cadere, ignem ponderibus currere, organa extraneis vocibus insonare, et peregrinis flatibus calamos complet, ut minuta possint arte cantare. [6] Videmus per eam defensiones iam nutantium civitatum subito tali firmitate consurgere, ut machinamentorum auxiliis superior reddatur, qui desperatus viribus invenitur. madentes fabricae in aqua marina siccantur: dura cum fuerint, ingeniosa dispositione solvuntur. metalla mugiunt, Diomedes in aere gravius bucinat, aeneus anguis insibilat, aves simulatae fritinniunt et quae vocem propriam nesciunt habere, dulcedinem probantur emittere cantilenae. [7] Parva de illa referimus, cui caelum imitari fas est. haec fecit secundum solem in Archimedis sphaera decurrere: haec alterum zodiacum circulum humano consilio fabricavit: haec lunam defectu suo reparabilem artis illuminatione monstravit parvamque machinam gravidam mundo, caelum gestabile, compendium rerum, speculum naturae ad speciem aetheris indeprehensibili mobilitate volutavit. sic astra, quorum licet cursum sciamus, fallentibus tamen oculis prodire non cernimus: stans quidam in illis transitus est et quae velociter currere vera ratione cognoscis, se movere non respicis. [8] Quale est hoc homini etiam facere, quod vel intellexisse potest esse mirabile? quare cum vos ornet talium rerum praedicanda notitia, horologia nobis publicis expensis sine vestro dispendio destinate. primum sit, ubi stilus diei index per umbram exiguam horas consuevit ostendere. radius itaque immobilis et parvus, peragens quod tam miranda solis magnitudo discurrit, et fugam solis aequiperat, quod motum semper ignorat. [9] Inviderent talibus, si astra sentirent, et meatum suum fortasse deflecterent, ne tali ludibrio subiacerent. ubi est illud horarum de lumine venientium singulare miraculum, si has et umbra demonstrat? ubi praedicabilis indefecta rotatio, si hoc et metalla peragunt, quae situ perpetuo continentur? o artis inaestimabilis virtus, quae dum se dicit ludere, naturae praevalet secreta vulgare! [10] Secundum sit, ubi praeter solis radios hora dinoscitur, noctes in partes dividens: quod ut nihil deberet astris, rationem caeli ad aquarum potius fluenta convertit, quarum motibus ostendit, quod caelo volvitur et audaci praesumptione concepta ars elementia confert, quod originis condicio denegavit. universae disciplinae, cunctus prudentium labor naturae potentiam, ut tantum possint, nosse perquirunt: mechanisma solum est, quod illam ex contrariis appetit imitari et, si fas est dicere, in quibusdam etiam nititur velle superare. haec enim fecisse dinoscitur Daedalum volare: haec ferreum Cupidinem in Dianae templo sine aliqua illigatione pendere: haec hodie facit muta cantare, insensata vivere, immobilia moveri. [11] Mechanicus, si fas est dicere, paene socius est naturae, occulta reserans, manifesta convertens, miraculis ludens, ita pulchre simulans, ut quod compositum non ambigitur, veritas aestimetur. haec quia te studiosius legisse cognovimus, praedicta nobis horologia quantocius transmittere maturabis, ut te notum in illa mundi parte facias, ubi aliter pervenire non poteras. [12] Agnoscant per te exterae gentes tales nos habere nobiles, quales leguntur auctores. quotiens non sunt credituri quae viderint? quotiens hanc veritatem lusoria somnia putabunt? et quando fuerint ab stupore conversi, non audebunt se aequales nobis dicere, apud quos sciunt sapientes talia cogitasse.