 The long, second commentary on On Interpretation is very probably based, as explained above, on Porphyry’s lost commentary. It thus provides a full account of Porphyry’s semantics—a semantics based on Aristotle, because he takes ordinary language to be concerned with material things rather than with the intelligible world. There is also an extended discussion of the sea-battle passage in Chapter 9. According to the principle of bivalence, ‘There will be a sea-battle tomorrow’ is either true or false. But, if it is true, then there will be a sea-battle tomorrow; if false, there will not be one. Either way, is it not therefore a matter of necessity? Boethius’s strategy is to say that ‘There will be a sea-battle tomorrow’ is indeed either true or false, but, because the sea-battle is a contingent event, its truth or falsehood is only indefinite. What does this position amount to? There are various interpretations of how it should be understood. Perhaps the most plausible is that Boethius holds that, if an event e is contingent, then the sentence ‘e will take place’ is false, even if it turns out that e does in fact happen, because ‘e will take place’ implies that e will take place necessarily. But a qualified sentence such as ‘e will take place contingently’ is true just in case it is not necessary that e happens, and e actually happens.