While Boethius, oppressed with fetters, expected each moment the sentence or the stroke of death, he composed, in the tower of Pavia, the Consolation Of Philosophy; a golden volume not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or Tully, but which claims incomparable merit from the barbarism of the times and the situation of the author.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "While Boethius, oppressed with fetters, expected each moment the sentence or the stroke of death, he composed, in the tower of Pavia, the Consolation Of Philosophy; a golden volume not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or Tully, but which claims incomparable merit from the barbarism of the times and the situation of the author." in the context of "Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Ed. H.H. Milman. Vol. III. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1845. p. 405." to mean that wisdom is timeless.