Nar. Manlius Boethius was a Roman aristocrat, who was appointed consul

Roman consul

A consul served in the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic.Each year, two consuls were elected together, to serve for a one-year term. Each consul was given veto power over his colleague and the officials would alternate each month...

 for 487.

Life

He was probably the son of the Boethius who was the Praetorian prefect of Italy put to death by emperor Valentinian III

Valentinian III

-Family:Valentinian was born in the western capital of Ravenna, the only son of Galla Placidia and Flavius Constantius. The former was the younger half-sister of the western emperor Honorius, and the latter was at the time Patrician and the power behind the throne....

 in 454, and probably the father of the famous philosopher Boethius; if this identification is correct, he died not long after 487, for Boethius is known to have been orphaned as a young boy and adopted by the aristocrat Quintus Aurelius Memmius Symmachus

Quintus Aurelius Memmius Symmachus

Quintus Aurelius Memmius Symmachus was a Roman aristocrat and a historian of the 6th century. Prominent during his lifetime for as a patron of secular learning, consul for the year 485, and for his support of Pope Symmachus in the schism over his election, Memmius Symmachus was executed with his...

.

Boethius' career can be derived from a consular diptych

Consular diptych

In Late Antiquity a consular diptych was a particular type of diptych which could function as a writing tablet but was also intended as a deluxe commemorative object, commissioned by a consul ordinarius and then distributed to reward those who had supported his candidature as...

 preserved in Brescia

Brescia

Brescia is a city and comune in the region of Lombardy in northern Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, between the Mella and the Naviglio, with a population of around 197,000. It is the second largest city in Lombardy, after the capital, Milan...

. He was praefectus urbi

Praefectus urbi

The praefectus urbanus or praefectus urbi, in English the urban prefect, was prefect of the city of Rome, and later also of Constantinople. The office originated under the Roman kings, continued during the Republic and Empire, and held high importance in late Antiquity...

of Rome (date unknown), then Praetorian prefect of Italy at some point between 480 and 487, when he was appointed consul (not recognised in the East), praefectus urbi for the second time and patricius.

This diptych records his second name abbreviated NAR. E. Weigand explained this abbreviation to mean N(onius) AR(rius). Although Nonius

Nonius

Nonius can refer to:Persons* Pedro Nunes , Portuguese astronomer and mathematician.* Nonius Marcellus, Latin grammarian and lexicographer, lived at the end of the 3rd or the beginning of the 4th century AD....

 is a common name under the early Empire, Alan Cameron has pointed out the combination "Nonius Arrius" has been attested only twice in the 300 years prior to Boethius. He further notes the abbreviation "N. Ar." is unattested except for this consular diptych. Based on these considerations, he believes this explanation is untenable, and proposes NAR should be read as an abbreviation for one of two names: either "Narius", "a securely if sparsely attested Italian name"; or as an engraving error for MAR, an abbreviation for "Marius", a far more common name.

Further reading

• "Fl. Nar. Man(lius) Boethius 4", Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire
  Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire
  Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire is a set of three volumes collectively describing every person attested or claimed to have lived in the Roman world from AD 260, the date of the beginning of Gallienus' sole rule, to 641, the date of the death of Heraclius, which is commonly held to mark the...
  
  , Volume 2, Cambridge University Press, 1992, ISBN 0521201594, pp. 232-233.