Boethius was a Roman senator who fell from the top of public life to a prison cell on charges he denied. Awaiting execution, he wrote a dialogue in which Philosophy visits him and, patiently, takes apart his despair.
Much of it turns on the difference between what fortune gives and what it can take back. It was one of the most widely read books in Europe for a thousand years, which is a strange thing to say about something written by a condemned man for no audience but himself.
Free, carefully produced edition from Standard Ebooks, translated by H. R. James.