Questions about Macrobius
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Who was Macrobius and when did he live?
Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius was a Roman provincial who flourished around AD 400, during the early fifth century and the period of the Later Roman Empire. He is best known for two surviving major works: a commentary on Cicero's Dream of Scipio and the Saturnalia, a seven-book compendium of Roman religious and antiquarian learning. His works identify him as a pagan, and he states that he was "born under a foreign sky," though his exact birthplace remains debated.
What is Macrobius's Commentary on the Dream of Scipio about?
Macrobius's Commentary on the Dream of Scipio is a detailed exposition of a passage at the end of Cicero's Republic, in which the elder Scipio appears to his adopted grandson and describes the life of the virtuous after death and the structure of the cosmos from Stoic and Neoplatonic perspectives. The work transmitted significant classical philosophy to the Latin West throughout the Middle Ages. It is notable for stating that the diameter of the Sun is twice the diameter of the Earth, a ratio that medieval scholars widely cited.
What is the Saturnalia by Macrobius?
The Saturnalia, whose full title is Saturnaliorum Libri Septem, is a seven-book work by Macrobius structured as fictional dialogues among learned men at a banquet held at the house of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus during the Roman festival of the Saturnalia. It covers a wide range of topics including mythology, grammar, literary criticism, and Roman religious and antiquarian lore, with particular attention paid to the poet Vergil.
Why was Macrobius important to medieval European learning?
Macrobius's Commentary on the Dream of Scipio became one of the most widely copied books of the Middle Ages because it conveyed Neoplatonic and classical cosmological ideas to Latin readers who lacked access to Greek sources. Early medieval manuscripts of the Commentary included maps and diagrams, among them zonal maps derived from the Ptolemaic concept of a spherical Earth and a diagram showing the Earth at the center of hierarchically ordered planetary spheres.
Where was Macrobius born?
Macrobius's exact birthplace is unknown. He states only that he was "born under a foreign sky." Some scholars, including Terrot Glover and J. E. Sandys, have proposed a Greek-speaking region such as Egypt or one of the Greek provinces, based on his knowledge of Greek literature. Others, starting with Ludwig van Jan, favor North Africa because Macrobius showed a stronger familiarity with Latin authors, particularly Vergil and Cicero.
What happened to Macrobius's lost grammatical work?
Macrobius's grammatical treatise De differentiis et societatibus graeci latinique verbi, which compared the Greek and Latin verb, is lost. Only an abstract survives, compiled by a scholar identified in manuscripts as Johannes, tentatively but doubtfully identified as the 9th-century Johannes Scotus Eriugena. What remains of the text is preserved in Ludwig van Jan's edition and in Heinrich Keil's collection Grammatici latini.