Only five Anglo-Saxon kingdoms are known to have survived to 800, and several British kingdoms in the west of the country had disappeared as well. The major kingdoms had grown through absorbing smaller principalities, and the means through which they did it and the character their kingdoms acquired as a result are one of the major themes of the Middle Saxon period. Beowulf, for all its heroic content, clearly makes the point that economic and military success were intimately linked. A 'good' king was a generous king who through his wealth won the support which would ensure his supremacy over other kingdoms. King Alfred's digressions in his translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, provided these observations about the resources which every king needed: