King Alfred, who ruled the West Saxons from 870 to 899, is chiefly remembered for two accomplishments, either of which would have been sufficient to earn him his epithet "the Great": he stopped the advance of the vikings in England, inaugurating a century of relative peace and stability, and he instituted and led a programme of educational reform, initiating a tradition of vernacular literary prose that lasted until the Conquest. As part of this reform, Alfred himself translated several works: the Pastoral Care of Pope Gregory the Great (in the preface to which, edited in the Guide to Old English, he outlines his educational programme), The Consolation of Philosophy by the sixth-century philosopher Boethius, the Soliloquies of St Augustine, and the first fifty psalms.

Alfred generally treated the text of Boethius quite freely; you may wish to consult either the Latin text or one of the numerous available translations to spot the passages that he added or altered. He renders the allegorical figure Philosophia as Wīsdōm 'Wisdom' or Ġesceādwīsnes 'Reason'; the figure which in the source is understood to be Boethius himself is here allegorized as Mōd 'Mind'. The present selection, corresponding to Book II, Prose vii and Metre vii of the source, follows the discourse of Philosophia/Wīsdōm on temporal power, which closes with a metre on the disastrous reign of Nero.

The standard edition of King Alfred's Boethius is by Walter John Sedgefield, King Alfred's Old English Version of Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiae (Oxford, 1899); the metres have been edited separately in George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (New York, 1931-1953), vol. 5, and, with commentary and glossary, in Bill Griffiths, Alfred's Metres of Boethius (Pinner, Middlesex, 1994).