[73]. It mot nedes be so: 'Ita, inquam, necesse est; nec beatum regimen esse uideretur, si quidem detrectantium iugum foret, non obtemperantium salus.' The translation has here gone wrong.
[87]. softely, gently, pleasurably: 'suauiter.'
[91]. so at the laste: 'ut tandem aliquando stultitiam magna lacerantem sui pudeat.' Another common reading is latrantem, but this was evidently not the reading in Chaucer's copy; MS. C. has lacerantem.
[97]. the poetes. See Ovid, Met. i. 151-162; Vergil, Georg. i. 277-283.
[116]. Scornest thou me: 'Ludisne, inquam, me, inextricabilem labyrinthum rationibus texens, quae nunc quidem, qua egrediaris, introeas; nunc uerò qua introieris, egrediare; an mirabilem quemdam diuinae simplicitatis orbem complicas?'
[117]. the hous of Dedalus; used to translate 'labyrinthum.' See Vergil, Aen. vi. 24-30, v. 588. No doubt Boethius borrowed the word inextricabilis from Aen. vi. 27.
[125]. for which: 'ex quo neminem beatum fore, nisi qui pariter Deus esset, quasi munusculum dabas.' Here munusculum refers to corollarium, which Chaucer translates by 'a mede of coroune'; see above, Pr. x. 101.
[132]. by the governements: 'bonitatis gubernaculis.'
[135]. by proeves in cercles and hoomlich knowen: 'atque haec nullis extrinsecus sumptis, sed altero ex altero fidem trahente insitis domesticisque probationibus.' Chaucer inserts in cercles and, by way of reference to arguments drawn from circles; but the chief argument of this character really occurs later, viz. in Bk. iv. Pr. vi. 81.
[143]. Parmenides, a Greek philosopher who, according to Plato, accompanied Zeno to Athens, where he became acquainted with Socrates, who was then but a young man. Plato, in his Sophistes, quotes the line of Parmenides which is here referred to: πάντοθεν ἐυκύκλου σφαίρας ἐναλίγκιον ὄγκῳ. This the MSS. explain to mean: 'rerum orbem mobilem rotat, dum se immobilem ipsa conseruat.' The Greek quotation is corruptly given in the MSS., but is restored by consulting Plato's text (244 E); hence we do not know what reading Boethius adopted. It can hardly have been the one here given, which signifies that God is 'like the mass of a sphere that is well-rounded on all sides.' Perhaps he took the idea of God's immobility from the next two verses:—