MACROBIUS
the saturnalla [Book One]
TRANSLATED WITH AN
INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
by Percival Vaughan Davies
a
NEW YORK AND LONDON COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1969
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Macrobius, 5th-century author. Macrobius' Saturnalia (written after 431).
Saturnalia, the Roman festival.
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RECORDS OF CIVILIZATION: SOURCES AND STUDIES
7 Edited under the Auspices of the Department of History | Columbia University GENERAL EDITOR W. T. H. Jackson, Professor of German and History PAST EDITORS 1915-1926 James T. Shotwell, Bryce Professor Emeritus of the History of International Relations 1926-1953 Austin P. Evans, Professor of History 1953-1962 Jacques Barzun, Seth Low Professor of History EDITOR: EUROPEAN RECORDS _ W. T. H. Jackson, Professor of German and History CONSULTING EDITORS: EUROPEAN RECORDS Gerson D. Cohen, Associate Professor of History Gilbert Highet, Anthon Professor of Latin Language and Literature Gerhart B. Ladner, Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles Paul O. Kristeller, Professor of Philosophy John H. Mundy, Professor of History on the Mathews Foundation Jacob W. Smit, Queen Wilhelmina Lecturer and Associate Professor of Germanic Languages EDITOR: ORIENTAL RECORDS Wm. Theodore de Bary, Horace Walpole Carpentier Professor of Oriental Studies CONSULTING EDITORS: EUROPEAN RECORDS Ainslie T. Embree, Associate Professor of Indian History Chih-tsing Hsia, Associate Professor of Chinese Donald Keene, Professor of Japanese Ivan Morris, Professor of Japanese Burton Watson, Associate Professor of Chinese C. Martin Wilbur, Professor of Chinese History SPECIAL EDITOR FOR THIS VOLUME Thomas A. Suits, Associate Professor of Classics, University of Connecticut
TO THE MEMORY OF ROBINSON ELLIS
SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF THE LATIN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Nolis dicere nil valere nisum
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
THIS TRANSLATION of the Saturnalia of Macrobius was made from the text of Eyssenhardt’s second edition (Teubner, Leipzig, 1893). By the time that the new Teubner text had been published, in 1963, the translation had been completed; but two readings proposed by its Editor have been adopted, and each has been duly acknowledged in a footnote.
The rest of the footnotes are of three kinds:
(1) Brief explanatory notes. (Two additional notes, too long for inclusion as footnotes, have been placed, as Appendix A and Ap- pendix B, at the end of the translation.)
(2) References to passages in Greek and Latin authors and to certain books, to some of which an amateur of the classics might perhaps care to turn. These references are not meant to be anything like a full list of sources and parallels: for such information a reader should turn to Jan’s edition and to the new Teubner text.
(3) References (a) to the medieval authors Bede and John of Salisbury, made because both writers used the Saturnalia, and (b) to Isidore of Seville, for his place as a connecting link between ancient and medieval scholarship.
A third appendix (Appendix C) contains references to lines in Homer, Lucretius, and Vergil, wherein the reading cited by Macro- bius differs from that of the Oxford Classical Text.
In seeking to render into English the excerpts from Homer and Vergil the translator has chosen stare super antiquas vias, never- theless he is not unaware that there are some who may well prefer versions in a modern idiom, and they have their remedy. The renderings here offered of these excerpts have little, if any, claim to originality, being for the most part recollections of earlier reading and borrowings from or adaptations of translations to be found in well-known works.
Columbia University Press has had the index compiled in ac-
x TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
cordance with its usual indexing standards and practices, utilizing material of a lengthier manuscript index prepared by the translator. The Editors of the series and the Press have determined, in accord- ance with the practice of other volumes in the series and with the requirements of space and expense, how much of the text of the original could be included in the translation.
In addition to a due recognition of the books named in the bibliography and notes, grateful acknowledgment is made of the help given throughout by Dr. Thomas A. Suits, who undertook the exacting task of “Special Editor” in the project and whose scholarship and taste have, time and again, come to the rescue.
P. V.D. Tunbridge Wells, Kent January, 1968
contents
Introduction
The Author and His Writings .
The Saturnalia . i : The Characters in the Dialogue : The Dialogue
The Vergilian Criticism . ‘ The Saturnalia in the Middle Aves :
Macrobius: The Saturnalia Book ı. Book 2. Book 3. Book 4. Book 5 . Book 6. Book 7.
Appendix A: Doctors and Dons . Appendix B: Originality, Imitation, and Plagiarism
Appendix C: Lines from Homer, Lucretius, and Vergil Where the Text of Macrobius Differs from the Oxford Classical Text
Selected Bibliography . Index of Citations: Homer, Lucretius, Vergil .
General Index .
159
254 282
519
529
541
Introduction
THE AUTHOR AND HIS WRITINGS
ALL THAT is known for certain of Macrobius is that he had a son, Eustachius, to whom he dedicated two of the works which pass under his name, and that he was not a native of Italy but had been “born under an alien sky”!—the many references to Egypt in his Saturnalia suggesting that he may perhaps have been a native of that country.
In most of the manuscripts he is called Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius (the order of the names varies), vir clarissimus et illustris, and the official titles lend some probability to an identification of the man with the Macrobius to whom reference is made in the Theodosian Code as Vicar of Spain, 399 A.D., Proconsul of Africa, 410 A.D., and Grand Chamberlain (praepositus sacri cubiculi), 422 A.D? It is not unlikely that he is the scholarly Theodosius to whom the fabulist Avianus (or Avienus) dedicated his work.*
Although the works of Macrobius contain no reference to Chris- tianity, he may have been a Christian; and a holder of the office of praepositus sacri cubiculi would have had, officially, to accept the new State religion. But such official acceptance of Christianity by Macrobius would not necessarily be inconsistent with the genuine sympathy with the old religion, which his apparent connection with staunch supporters of paganism would seem to imply.
Three works attributed to Macrobius are extant: excerpts from a
1 Saturnalia, preface, 11. Stahl (pp. 4-5) summarizes the conjectures which have been made about Macrobius’ birthplace.
2 Codex Theodosianus 16. 10. 15; 11. 28. 6; 6. 8. 1. The Code also mentions a Macrobius who was fined in 400 a.p. for making unauthorized use of the public posting service (8. 5. 61), an abuse which the Macrobius of 16. 10. 15 was re- quired, in 399, to check. ` 8 Robinson Ellis, ed., The Fables of Avianus, pp. xvii-xix, xxx.
4 Stahl, pp. 6-9. In this connection it may be noted that there are no traces of Christianity in the Fables of Avianus.
2 INTRODUCTION
grammatical treatise (dedicated to a certain Symmachus) on the differences and affinities of the Greek and Latin verb; a Neoplato- nist commentary on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis; and a considerable part of a longer work, the Saturnalia.
THE SATURNALIA
The causes of the decline of Latin literature were many and by interaction would be cumulative in their effects. Perhaps the two most potent causes were the growing gap between the spoken and the written word (as Latin gradually developed into the Romance languages and dialects) and the discouraging of original creation by the retention of rhetoric, with its stock themes, as the staple of edu- cation long after such training had ceased to have much practical value.5
Certainly education under the Empire, so far from fostering original work, tended rather to stereotype literature and to produce that “cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators” which, in Gibbon’s view, at that time “darkened the face of learning”. Nettle- ship, too, in a lecture on Aulus Gellius, with whose Noctes Atticae Macrobius would have been acquainted, has referred to “the passion for making epitomes, selections, florilegia, and miscellanies of all kinds” which “arose among the Romans in the first century after Christ, and continued in activity for a long subsequent period”; and the Saturnalia, it must be confessed, is one of the results of this activity.
The work is in the form of an imaginary dialogue. In the preface to it the author says that his aim is to put his wide and varied read- ing at the disposal of his son and so to provide him with a store of
5 See H. Bardon, La Littérature Latine Inconnue, Il, Chap. 6, who refers also to the absence of imperial or private patronage of letters, to the effects of the barbarian invasions, to the supersession of Rome as the administrative capital of the Empire, and to the hostility of Christianity to pagan literature. See also F. H. Dudden. The Life and Times of St. Ambrose, 1, 10-11.
€ E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chap. 2.
i Nettleship, Essays in Latin Literature, p. 248.
INTRODUCTION | 3
useful information. He expressly disclaims any literary merit for the work, since it is intended to be no more than a collection of things which he considers to be worth knowing; and it would seem in fact to consist of extracts from notebooks containing excerpts from writers whom he had read.§ Like the Noctes Atticae, then, the Saturnalia has preserved much anonymous and other material which would otherwise have been lost; and, in addition to its value on this account, there is also the intrinsic interest of the Vergilian criticism and of the varied antiquarian lore which the book contains.®
THE CHARACTERS IN THE DIALOGUE
Of the twelve chief characters most, and—although there is no compelling evidence of this—quite possibly all, are real persons. Macrobius indeed admits that it is doubtful, in view of their ages, whether the interlocutors could actually have met, but he claims that in taking leave to make them meet for his dialogue, no less than in his use of the dialogue form, he is following the example of Plato (1. 1. 3. 5, and 6). He would seem, too, to have been at some pains to make the speakers fit their parts and to suggest in- dividual characteristics, but there are also times when he forgets that he is writing a dialogue and would appear to be transcribing
8 Cf. the elder Pliny who mihil ... legit quod non excerperet (Pliny the Younger Epistulae 3. 5. 10). It is clear from his preface that Macrobius was not concerned to give chapter and verse for his borrowings; nor would such refer- ences have been of any great use to the young Eustachius. The criticism by Muretus (Jan, p. lviii), which compares Macrobius with plagiarists “qui ita humani a se nihil alienum putant ut alienis aeque utantur ac suis,” is witty but irrelevant.
® In the excerpts from Greek and Latin authors the text as cited in the Satur- nalia often differs from the received text; and sometimes, too, the same pas- sage from an author is cited differently at different points in the Saturnalia. This may be explained by the fact that the more popular the author, the greater was the number of manuscript copies of his work in circulation, and, consequently, the greater the number of variant readings. There is the further possibility that Macrobius at times may have been quoting from memory; (e.g., at 6. 6. 13, where, citing Aeneid 6. 405, he has Aeneid 4. 272 in mind). See Appendix C.
4 INTRODUCTION
from notebooks for the benefit of his son.
Of these twelve characters, half are prominent members of the Roman nobility (1. 1. 1)—three of them (Praetextatus, Symmachus, and Flavianus) being leaders of the “anti-Christian Fronde”—and the remaining six are men of learning, interested in the topics which they severally discuss; but, although Sidonius—in Gaul— could say, a hundred years or so later (Epistulae 8. 2), that culture was the sole criterion of nobility and, although, for the purpose of the dialogue, Macrobius refers to Flavianus and Eustathius as par insigne amicitiae (1. 6. 4; cf. 1. 5. 13) and represents Praetextatus as having invited Eusebius to take the place of Postumianus (1. 6. 2), it may be doubted whether—in Rome—all of these remaining six would have been on quite such intimate terms with the others as the dialogue might suggest."
Praetextatus
Vettius Agorius Praetextatus was a worthy representative of the last generation of paganism in the latter half of the fourth cen- tury. He is described by Ammianus Marcellinus as “a senator of noble character and old-time dignity”;!? and by the same writer mention is made of the high distinction with which he discharged the office Prefect of the City (367 a.p.). It was as Perfect of the City that he put an end to the sanguinary dispute between Damasus and Ursinus for the papacy by banishing the latter.
Reference is made in the Saturnalia to his serenity and strength
10 There are many references to a “reader,” but all are not necessarily in- compatible with the dialogue, and the occasional use of the second person singular may often be accounted for by supposing that the speaker is addressing his host or his questioner. Nevertheless, in 1. 20. 6 and 16 and in 1. 23. 17 Macrobius would seem to be addressing his son; and inserui in 5. 4. 4, tran- scribere in 6. 2. 30, and the use, by a Greek speaker, of moster in 5. 21. 7 and nos in 5. 21. 17 can hardly be explained otherwise than as slips.
44 Servius, as a grammarian, Eusebius, as a rhetorician, and Eustathius, as a philosopher, are introduced into the dialogue because so much of the Satur- nalia is taken up with these aspects of Vergil’s works, and the contents of the seventh Book would account for the inclusion of the physician Disarius. See Appendix A: Doctors and Dons.
12 Ammianus Marcellinus 22. 7. 6. Cf. Symmachus, who, writing of Praetex- tatus, says: gaudia corporis ut caduca calcavit (Epistulae 10. 12. 2).
13 Ammianus Marcellinus 27. 3. 12 and 9. 8-9.
INTRODUCTION 5
of character (1. 5. 4)—a quality, however, sometimes accompanied in a Roman by a certain priggish self-consciousness and Jack of humor —traits which Praetextatus is made to show, for example, in his rebuke to the young Avienus for seeming to disparage Socrates (2. 1. 4) and perhaps rather more certainly in his remark that his household gods would not approve of any entertainment that sug- gested a cabaret (2. 1. 7). His antiquarian interests are well illustrated by his discussion of the origins of the festival of the Saturnalia (1. 7-10) and of the Roman calendar (1. 12-16). His intimate knowledge of pagan religious observances—he is said to be sacrorum omnium unice conscius (1. 7. 17)—is illustrated both by his dis- courses on Vergil’s acquaintance with pontifical law (3. 4-12) and by the long speech in which he explains that all the gods of Greek and Roman mythology represent the attributes of one supreme divine power—the sun (1. 17-23).14 A sepulchral monument’ records the sacred offices which he had held; and the same monu- ment testifies also to his scholarship, for it tells of his services to letters in revising and emending the texts of Greek and Latin authors. Nevertheless, as presented in the Saturnalia, he gives the impression of being something of a pedant, and Evangelus has some grounds for taunting him with making a parade of his learning
(I. II. 1).
Symmachus
Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, statesman, orator, and man of letters, was a younger contemporary and a close friend of Prae- textatus. An inscription to his memory records the offices which he held! and refers also to his oratory, which was said by Prudentius to be more than a match even for Cicero’s.17 His cor- respondence, drastically edited by his son, shows the remarkably wide circle of friends, both pagan and Christian, with whom he was intimate. He must have been a much pleasanter person than
14 On the monument referred to in the following note his wife, addressing him, says: divumque numen multiplex doctus colis.
15 CIL VI. 1779. See Ellis, Avianus, p. xxxii, and Glover, pp. 162-64. To Jerome, of course, Praetextatus was miserabilis Praetextatus ... homo sacrilegus et idolorum cultor (Contra loannem Hierosolymitanum 8).
16 CIL VI, 1699.
17 Prudentius Contra orationem Symmachi 1. 632-34 (cf. 2. 55-58).
6 INTRODUCTION
Praetextatus and the difference between the two is well exhibited 1* by the difference between the tone of the famous third Relatio, addressed by Symmachus, as Prefect of the City in 384, to Theo- dosius for the restoration of the Altar of Victory (which had been removed from the Senate House by Gratian in 382) and that of the sarcastic reply of Praetextatus to Damasus:—“Make me bishop of Rome, and I will be a Christian straightaway.” 1
In the Saturnalia the oratorical style of Symmachus is described as rich and ornate (5. 1. 7), and it is he who undertakes to discuss the most striking examples of Vergil’s use of rhetorical devices (1. 14. 14, and Book 4). Macrobius presents him as meeting the some- what dull decorum of Praetextatus with a proposal that the com- pany should amuse themselves after dinner by recalling witty and humorous sayings of men of old times (2. 1. 8); and he is in- troduced, appropriately, as relating a number of Cicero’s jests (2. 3). Later (7. 1. 2) he views with some apprehension a sugges- tion by Praetextatus that the conversation inter pocula should be in no lighter vein than that which had preceded the dinner.
A subscriptio to a manuscript of the first Book of the Com- mentary records that one Aurelius Memmius Symmachus amended and punctuated his copy of the text with the help of one Macro- bius Plotinus Eudoxius (i.e. the latter acting as the “counter- reader”); and this suggests the duration in a later generation of a friendship between the families of the Symmachus and the Macro- bius of the Saturnalia.
Flavianus
Virius Nicomachus Flavianus, who too held a number of public offices, was a kinsman of Symmachus and the families were also connected by marriage. An inscription in which he is styled historicus disertissimus is evidence of literary tastes.2° Like Prae-
18 As Ellis has remarked (The Fables of Avianus, p. xx).
19 Jerome Contra loannem Hierosolymitanum 8: “Facite me Romanae urbis episcopum et ero protinus Christianus.” And yet it would be less than fair to Praetextatus to overlook the evidence (CIL VI, 1779) of his happy union with his wife Paulina: coniuncti simul vixerunt annos XL.
20 CIL Vi, 1782. He may have been the author of the work De vestigiis et dogmatibus philosophorum (now lost) referred to by John of Salisbury in Poli- craticus 2. 26 (460b), 8. 11 (749a and 755a) and 8. 12 (758a and 7614). See Webb,
INTRODUCTION 7
textatus and Symmachus he was a staunch supporter of the old Roman religion and gave his life for it at the battle on the Frigidus (394 A.D.) .?4
He is said by Macrobius to have surpassed even his father Venustus” in the distinction of his character, the dignity of his life, and in the abundance and depth of his learning (1. 5. 13). In the proposed discussion on Vergil he promises to speak of the poet’s knowledge of augural law” (1. 24. 17), but his contribution to that discussion (it probably formed part of the now incomplete third Book) has not survived. He is referred to in the dialogue as a friend of Eustathius, another character in the dialogue (1. 6. 4), and in the seventh Book he counters certain remarks made by his friend about the natural properties of wine (7. 6).
The Albini
Of the two Albini, politely described by Praetextatus as by far the most learned men of the time (6. 1. 1), Caecina is a contempo- rary of Symmachus (1. 2. 15) and is thought by Jan to be the Albinus mentioned in the prologue as the father of the Decius who is represented there as asking Postumianus for an account of the symposium—an account which, Decius says, but for his father’s departure for Naples as soon as the holidays of the Saturnalia were over, he could have had from him (1. 2. 2-3). He is iden- tified by Dill and Glover with the Publilius Caeonius Albinus, the pontiff who had a Christian wife and of whom Jerome speaks with respect,”
I, 141; H, 294, 304, 309, and 314. He also wrote Annales, which were used by Ammianus Marcellinus; see Dill, p. 155.
21 “Nearly forty years after the battle on the Frigidus the Emperors Valen- tinian and Theodosius did justice to the virtues and distinction of Flavianus in a monument which is still extant” CJL VI, 1783; Dill. p. 20. For an account of the battle and a description of the terrain, see T. Hodgkin, Jéaly and Her In- vaders (Oxford, 1885-99), I (2d ed.), 569ff. and Dudden, Life and Times of St. Ambrose, II, 429ff.
22 Perhaps the Vicar of Spain mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus (23. 1. 4 and 28. 1. 24).
23 In the anonymus Carmen contra paganos the object of the attack (who, although not named, is generally supposed to be Flavianus) is called Etruscis semper amicus. See Dudden, II, 4272; H. Bloch, The Last Pagan Revival in the West, p. 230,268; and, for the text, Riese, Anthologia Latina, supplementum, pars prior (carmina in codibus scripta), p. 13.
24 Dill, p. 14; Glover, p. 171; Jerome Epistulae 107. 1.
8 INTRODUCTION
Both Caecina Albinus and Furius Albinus—the latter’s name ap- pears twice% in the manuscripts as Rufius—may perhaps be con- nected with the family of Albini mentioned by Rutilius Namatianus (C.416 A.D.) .26
In the Saturnalia Caecina’s contribution to the conversation is to discuss the reckoning of the civil day at Rome (1. 3), substituted sacrifice (1. 7. 34), “sweetmeats” (2. 8. 3), and the luxury preva- lent in Rome under the Republic (3. 13). This last topic is sub- sequently dealt with at greater length by Furius (3. 14-17). Both Caecina and Furius, in fulfillment of their undertakings (1. 13. 19), illustrate by quotations Vergil’s debt to earlier Latin writers (6. 1-5); and in the seventh Book they put a number of questions of a physiological or physical nature to the physician Disarius (7. 8). In the seventh Book, too, Caecina recalls an account given by an authority on pontifical law of the origin of wearing a ring on the fourth finger of the left hand (7. 13. 11-16).
Avienus
Avienus cannot be identified with any certainty, but he may perhaps be the fabulist Avianus or Avienus—an identification which becomes more probable if the Theodosius to whom the Fables are dedicated may, as has been suggested, be taken to be the author of the Saturnalia?"
He is represented in the dialogue as a worthy and modest young man (6. 7. 1; 7. 3..23), with a fund of anecdotes (2. 4-7), but given to making impetuous interruptions (1. 6. 3; 2. 3. 14; 7. 2. 1) and whispered asides (1. 4. 1; 5. 7. 1)—a device which enables Macro- bius to extend at need the scope of a discussion or to introduce a new topic (1. 5. 1-3; I. 17. 1; 5. 1. 2 and 6; 5. 3. 16; 7. 3. 1). And
25 Saturnalia 1. 2. 16 and 1. 4. 1.
26 De reditu suo 1. 167-76, 466-74.
27 See above, note 3. Referring to the fact that much of the Saturnalia is taken up with a discussion of Vergil’s poetry. Ellis observes (p. xiv) that “no remnant of Roman literature is more informed with the diction of Vergil than the Fables” [of Avianus], adding (p. xxxiv) that every fable has echoes or actual imitations of the Aeneid.
28 A good example of this device is the neat touch by which in 7. 3. 1. Avienus puts to Eustathius the very kind of leading question which the latter had recommended in the previous chapter.
INTRODUCTION 9
so it is that, when, at the end of the first day of the festival, some of the company undertake to discourse on various aspects of Vergil’s genius, Avienus is made to say that he will not take it upon himself to speak about any of the poet’s merits but rather will listen to what the others have to say and then offer such ob- servations as it may occur to him to make (1. 14. 20; cf. 6. 7-9).
Servius
Servius, the famous commentator on Vergil (fl. 390), is intro- duced as a young man who has recently joined the ranks of the professional “grammarians” (1. 2. 15), remarkable for his learning (1. 24. 8; 6. 7. 2), and lovable for his modesty. His modesty and shyness are referred to elsewhere in the dialogue (2. 2. 12; 7. 11.1), and so too are his lectures on Vergil (6. 6. 1). A discussion of certain linguistic forms (1. 4) and an explanation of Vergil’s use of certain words, phrases, and grammatical constructions (6. 7-9) are naturally put into his mouth by Macrobius, together (less obviously) with the lengthy lists of fruits in the concluding chapters of the third Book. Nettleship has shown that Macrobius did not draw on Servius for his Vergilian criticism but that both Macrobius and the real Servius drew from the works of earlier commentators and critics.”
Eustathius
Eustathius, who, Jan suggests, may perhaps be the Greek Neo- platonist Eustathius of Cappadocia, is described as a friend of Flavianus (1. 6. 4) and a learned philosopher (1. 5. 13; 7. 1. 8). His exposition of Vergil’s knowledge of philosophy and astronomy, which was to open the proceedings of the second day of the Saturnalia (1. 24. 18 and 21), has not survived; but in the fifth Book of the dialogue he gives instances of lines and passages which Vergil has taken or adapted from Homer (5. 2-14) and makes a number of comparisons between the two poets (5. 15-17. 6). He also compares Vergil, to his disadvantage, with Pindar (5. 17. 7-14)
29 In his essay, “The Ancient Commentators on Virgil.”
I0 INTRODUCTION
and illustrates further the Roman poet’s debt not only to Homer but also to many other Greek writers (5, 17. 15-5. 22. 15). He remarks too on Caesar’s debt to the Egyptians and to the Greeks for the development of the Roman calendar (1. 16. 38-44); in the second Book, in connection with the use of wine and touching the pleasures of the senses, he refers to Plato, Aristotle, and Hippo- crates (2. 8. 5-16); and, in the seventh Book, argues in favor of the discussion of questions of philosophy at table (7. 1. 5-24). The seventh Book also contains his observations on tact in conversation at dinner (7. 2 and 3) and his arguments with his fellow Greek, the physician Disarius, on a number of physiological subjects
(7. 14-16). Eusebius
Eusebius is an elderly (7. 10. 1) Greek rhetorician, who takes the place of the lawyer Postumianus at the symposium and later tells him what passed at it (1. 2. 7; 1. 6. 2). His discourse on Vergil’s knowledge of oratory (to which reference is made in 1. 24. 14) may have formed part of the missing chapters at the end of the fragmentary fourth Book, for at the beginning of the fifth Book he is found discussing styles of oratory. In the seventh Book he considers certain concomitants of old age with the physician Disarius (7. 10). Jan suggests that he may be the Alexandrian rhetorician of that name.
Disarius
Disarius (who may be the medicus mentioned by Symmachus in the forty-third letter of the ninth Book of his Letters) was also a Greek (7. 5. 2; 7. 5. 4) and, like Eusebius, getting on in years (7. 10. 1). He is said to be the best of the medical profession in Rome (1. 7. 1), and Praetextatus, on whom he called in company with Evangelus and Horus (1. 7. 1), makes his presence the ground for proposing that the conversation after dinner on the last day of the Saturnalia shall touch on topics of medical interest (7. 4. 1-3). It is in the course of this conversation that the others in turn put to him the miscellaneous questions that make up the greater part of the seventh Book. As a follower of the physician and anatomist
INTRODUCTION II
Erasistratus, he sharply criticizes incursions by philosophy into the field of medicine (7. 15. 1) and thereby provokes a retort from the philosopher Eustathius (7. 15. 14).
Horus
Horus may possibly be the Orus referred to in a letter of Sym- machus (2. 39) as “philosophus ritu atque eruditione praecipuus.” He was, as his name would suggest, an Egyptian (1. 15. 4; 1. 16. 37; 7. 13. 9). After a successful career as a professional boxer he had, like Cleanthes, turned to philosophy (1. 7. 3) and, now a man of dignity and distinction (1. 16. 38), practiced the asceticism of a Cynic (7. 13. 17). In the first Book a question from him serves to introduce accounts by Praetextatus of the origins of the worship of Saturn (1. 7. 14) and of the Roman calendar (1. 15. 1); and it is some criticism by him (now lost) of the luxury of the time that leads to Caecina’s reference to luxurious living under the Republic (3. 13. 16). In the seventh Book he makes the interesting remark that the practice of cremation had fallen into disuse (7. 7. 5).
Evangelus
Evangelus, who with Disarius and Horus called on Praetextatus after the other guests had assembled, is described as an impudent fellow with a bitter wit and a shamelessly caustic tongue, whose presence was likely to accord ill with a quiet gathering (1. 7. 2).3° Finding himself in the presence of a large company who courte- ously rise as he enters, he greets Praetextatus with clumsy jocular- ity; but he is mollified by a polite invitation to join the party, with his two companions, and he takes no part in the conversation which immediately follows until references by Praetextatus to honors paid to slaves and to the origin of the festival of the Sigil- laria make him charge his host with superstition and with seeking to show off his learning (1. 11. 1). Later, his call for more wine (2. 8. 4) serves to enable Macrobius to refer to Plato’s remarks on
"80 Glover (p. 175) suggests that Evangelus may be the man of that name referred to in a letter of Symmachus (6. 7) as having an animus incautus.
12 INTRODUCTION
the beneficial effect of wine at a dinner party and to what Aristotle and Hippocrates had to say about intemperance (2. 8. 5-16). In the seventh Book, Evangelus intervenes with a question about the human brain, designed to trap Disarius (7. 9), and after- ward rudely interrupts an argument between Eustathius and Disa- rius with a mocking request to be told which came first, the egg or the hen (7. 16. 1). Disarius, however, in all seriousness puts the case for either proposition, and Evangelus then, referring to an incident which had occurred on his country estate at Tibur, asks why game goes bad more quickly in moonlight than in sunlight and why the insertion of copper nails checks such decomposition (7. 16. 15). But his chief role in the dialogue is to lead up to the criticism of Vergil and then to intervene from time to time (e.g. 3- 10-12; 5. 2. 1) with disparaging remarks. Thus it is that, when Praetextatus has come to the end of the long exposition (1. 17-23) which had been prompted by a reference to a line in the Georgics, he objects to Vergil’s being called on to corroborate theological theories; and he objects, too, to an uncritical admiration of the poet, worthy only of a schoolboy. For Vergil, as he reminds his audience, thought so little of his Aeneid that he directed his execu- tors to burn it, for fear, Evangelus suggests, of being blamed not only on moral grounds—for representing Venus begging from her lawful husband a gift of armor for her illegitimate son—but also on artistic grounds—for offenses against literary taste in the awk- ward arrangement of the poem and in his use of Greek words and outlandish expressions (1. 14. 1-7). However, the others present will have none of this. For them Vergil had taken all knowledge to be his province (1. 16. 12), and the conversation before dinner on the last two days of the Saturnalia is concerned with the poet’s merits as they see them.
It appears that, in spite of his name, Evangelus is not a Greek, for, unlike the Greeks present on the occasion, he speaks of Vergil as “our poet” (1. 24. 2). The question, arising from his name, whether or not he was a Christian, cannot be answered with any probability one way or the other. But the name may have had associations with Christianity; and, if Evangelus was in fact a Christian,?! he would have been distasteful to an admirer of the
31 The charge of superstition which he brings against Praetextatus (1. 11. 1) may be of significance in this connection.
INTRODUCTION 13
old religion. It is tempting therefore, and perhaps not unduly fanciful, to see in this unprepossessing character a reflection of Macrobius’s own opinion of the Christians of his time.*?
THE DIALOGUE
After the preface and the explanatory chapter which follows it, the scene opens (1. 2. 15-20) on the eve of the festival of the Saturnalia, at the house of Praetextatus, who is at home to his friends and is discussing with Furius Albinus and Avienus the ques- tion of when, exactly, the festival is due to begin. Then Sym- machus, Caecina Albinus, and Servius call, and a discourse by Caecina on the divisions of the civil day follows (1. 3), the rest of the evening being spent in the examination of certain grammatical usages (1. 4 and 5) .38
On the next day, the first day of the festival, Nicomachus Flavia- nus, Eustathius, and Eusebius join the company (1. 6. 4); and later, after Praetextatus has explained the origin of his own and certain other family names and of the custom of the wearing of the toga praetexta by boys (1. 6. 5-30), Evangelus, Disarius, and Horus arrive (1. 7. 1-13). The conversation now turns to the origin of the
32 Although there are examples of happy mixed marriages (see, e.g., Glover, p. 172), the positive principles of Christianity were, in the fourth century, much less evident than a narrow intransigence. The old religion, on the other hand, stood for disciplined tolerance and tradition and the maintenance of the Pax Deorum. The Senatorial opposition to Christianity had a firm regard for the legacy of the past—in the words of Furius Albinus (3. 14. 2), vetustas nobis semper, si sapimus, adoranda est—and no less firmly believed that departure from traditional observances would call down the wrath of the gods. It is not surprising, then, that Julian could refer to Constantine as novator turbatorque priscarum legum et moris antiquitus recepti (Ammianus Marcellinus 21. 10. 8).
33 Great importance was attached to a correct use of the Latin language and the avoidance of any unusual word. Hence this discussion of grammatical forms and the reference in it to Caesar’s insistence on “analogy” (1. 5. 2). See W. R. Hardie, Lectures on Classical Subjects, p. 279; and Aulus Gellius 19. 8; and cf. Quintilian 8. 3. Hence, too, Macrobius apology in the preface (11) for any possible failure by him, as one “born under an alien sky,” to do justice to the Latin idiom; although, if the Theodosius to whom the Fables of Avianus are dedicated is in fact the author of the Saturnalia, the apology was unneces- sary, for in the preface to the Fables Theodosius is complimented on his mas- tery of Latin.
14 INTRODUCTION
festivals of the Saturnalia and Sigillaria (1. 7. 14-1. 11), with the legends of Saturn and Janus, and with a long digression on the treatment and behavior of slaves. The chief speaker is Praetextatus, who continues with an account of the development of the Roman calendar (1. 12-16) and a detailed exposition of the theological doctrine of syncretism, which makes all the gods of the pagan pantheon manifestations of a single divine power, the sun (1. 17- 23)—a doctrine which conveniently enables its holder to combine a profession of monotheism with the practice of polytheism.
A slighting remark by Evangelus (1. 24. 2) serves to introduce the main theme of the Saturnalia: Vergil’s many-sided erudition. The poet had already been described as an authority on every branch of learning (1. 16. 12), and Symmachus and others now undertake to illustrate his knowledge of philosophy and astrono- my, of augural and pontifical law, and of rhetoric and oratory; and, further, to exemplify his use of the works of earlier Greek and Latin writers (1. 24. 10-21). At this point the company go in to dinner.
The second Book records the conversation which follows, inter pocula. Symmachus suggests (2. 1. 15) that each of the diners in turn repeat a witty saying of some famous man of old; and, when the others have made their contributions (2. 2), he proceeds him- self to relate a number of Cicero’s jests (2. 3). Avienus then recalls certain bons mots attributed to Augustus and his daughter Julia and to certain others (2. 4-6), going on to tell the story of Caesar and Laberius and of the latter’s professional rival Publilius Syrus, and referring also (in connection with the Roman stage of those days) to the rivalry of the actors Pylades and Hylas (2. 7). In the last chapter of the Book, the arrival of the dessert prompts some remarks by Flavianus and Caecina on “sweetmeats,” and there follow references by Eustathius to Plato on the use of wine and to Aristotle and Hippocrates on indulgence in sensual pleas- ures—a discourse (2. 8) which ends abruptly, since the last part of the Book has been lost.
The third Book relates to proceedings at the house of Flavianus on the second day of the festival. The exposition by Eustathius on the scholarly Vergil’s knowledge of philosophy and astronomy*
34 Knowledge which Quintilian (1. 4. 4) holds to be necessary for the under- standing of poetry.
INTRODUCTION I5
has not survived, nor has the account by Flavianus—which would have followed it—of the poet’s knowledge of augural law (1. 24. 17 and 18); but the first twelve chapters of what is left of the third Book are devoted to the illustration of Vergil’s acquaintance with the details of pontifical law.** In these chapters the speaker (Praetextatus) cites lines which refer, for example, to ceremonial purification by running water or by aspersion (3. 1) and shows (sometimes with etymological explanations) ** the exactness with which Vergil brings out the ritual significance of a word or ex- pression. The care with which he marks the ceremonial distinction made between the classes of sacrificial victims is also noted (3. 5), and the fact that he assigns to a god not only the sacrifice ap- propriate to that god but also the god’s special style of address (3. 6). Moreover, such knowledge of the pontifical law is not obtruded but (with docta elegantia) is often indirectly and al- lusively revealed.87 There is a gap after the twelfth chapter, for in the thirteenth the second course of the dinner is in progress, and Caecina Albinus, in reply to some comment by Horus on the luxury of their times (3. 13. 16), is arguing that earlier generations took much more thought for such pleasures. Furius Albinus then emphasizes Caecina’s point by reference to the regard had under the Republic for skill in dancing (3. 14), to the high prices paid in those days for certain fish (3. 15-16), and to a long series of sumptuary laws (3. 17). Servius follows with a disquisition (which reads rather like a nurseryman’s catalogue) on the various kinds of nuts, apples, pears, figs, olives, and grapes (3. 18-20); but this is _ brought to an end by Praetextatus, who remarks on the lateness of the hour and reminds the guests that the party will reassemble on the morrow, the third and last day of the festival, at the house of Symmachus (3. 20. 8).
Both the beginning and the end of the fourth Book have been lost, and what remains treats of the use made by Vergil of the rules of rhetoric.8* The speaker would seem to Symmachus who enumer-
35 Cf. W. Y. Sellar, The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil, p. 374- 36 E.g., religiosus (3. 3. 8), delubrum (3. 4. 2). 37 E.g., cum faciam vitula pro frugibus (Eclogues 3. 77), where the word vitula suggests the terms vitulari and vitulatio. : 8 Cf, Butlers Hudibras (Part I, Canto 1, line 89): For all a Rhetorician’s Rules Teach nothing but to name his Tools.
16 INTRODUCTION
ates the devices employed by the poet to depict or evoke emotions (ráðn). By way of illustration a speech is analyzed (4. 2. 4-8),*° and examples are given of rhetorical “figures” (4. 6. 9-24).
From the opening words of the fifth Book it appears that Sym- machus was followed by Eusebius, and it is probable therefore that the fourth Book ended with the discourse which the latter had undertaken to give on Vergil as an orator (1. 24. 14). At any rate, at the beginning of the fifth Book, Eusebius is represented as having just ceased from speaking and, after refusing to be drawn into making a comparison between Vergil and Cicero‘! as models for an orator, as going on to refer to four kinds of oratorical style, all of which (he maintains) are to be found in the poems of Vergil, who may be said to unite in himself the distinctive eloquence of each of the ten Attic orators (5. 1. 20). Evangelus, however, scoffingly takes leave to doubt whether Vergil, “a Venetian of peasant parentage,” could have had any acquaintance with the liter- ature of Greece (5. 2. 1) and so enables Macrobius, in the rest of the fifth Book and in the sixth, to illustrate at some length Vergil’s knowledge of both Greek and Latin authors and the use which he made of it. The contents of these two books will be considered below, in the section dealing with the Vergilian criticism in the Saturnalia.
The seventh and last Book of the Saturnalia, like the second Book and chapters thirteen to twenty of the third, purports to record the after-dinner conversation of the company, and many of the topics discussed are taken from the Quaestiones Convivales of Plutarch.” The first question posed is whether philosophy is suited to a convivial gathering (7. 1), and this is followed by a talk, by Eustathius, on tact at table (7. 2-3). The rest of the Book is devoted to the consideration of a wide variety of subjects, many of a nature which may be described, loosely, as “scientific”: for example, whether a simple or a mixed diet is more easily digested
89 Cf. Quintilian 6. 2. 8: nd00¢, quod nos vertentes recte ac proprie adfectum dicimus.
40 The speech of Juno in Aeneid 7. 293-320.
41 Cicero was to be considered on some future occasion (1. 24. 5)—possibly an indication that the Saturnalia is an earlier work than the Commentary.
42 According to Archbishop Trench in Plutarch: His Life, His Lives, and His Morals, etc. (London, 1873), these “questions” record actual conversations. See Glover, p. 1737.
INTRODUCTION 17
(7. 4-5); why women rarely become drunk but old men readily (7. 6); why women feel the cold less than men (7. 7); what causes gray hair and baldness (7. 10), blushing and pallor (7. 11); why a ring is worn usually on the fourth finger of the left hand (7. 13); why fresh water is a better cleansing agent than sea water (7. 13); the nature of the nervous system (7. 9) and of vision (7. 14); which came first, the egg or the hen (7. 16); and some observations on the curative property of copper (7. 16). The abrupt ending of the Book suggests that the conclusion of the work has been lost.‘
THE VERGILIAN CRITICISM
The central topic in the Saturnalia is an appreciation of Vergil. A close acquaintance with the poet’s works was part of the intellec- tual equipment of an educated Roman, and these works are dis- cussed in three (4, 5, and 6) books and in certain chapters of two more (1 and 3) books of the seven of which the Saturnalia, as we have it, consists. .
Suetonius in his Vita Vergili (s.43) says that Vergil had never lacked hostile critics, adding (no doubt with the Homeromastix of Zoilus in mind) that this was not surprising, since Homer too had had his detractors. Thus Carvilius Pictor wrote an Aeneido- mastix, Vipsanius Agrippa censured Vergil as the inventor of a new kind of affectation in language (novae cacozeliae repertor); and Herennius published a list of his Faults (Vitia), Perellius Faustus of his Thefts (Furta) and Octavius Avitus of his Resem- blances (‘Opoidtytés), i.e., passages in Vergil reminiscent of pas- sages in the works of other authors. On the other hand a Reply to the Detractors of Vergil was written by Asconius, and the poet may have had other friendly critics whose names have been lost. Since Vergil’s poems, from the first, not only became a textbook for schools but also continued to supply teachers of grammar and rhetoric with material to illustrate their rules, these early critical
43 It is noteworthy that the conversation in the Saturnalia never touches on contemporary politics.
18 INTRODUCTION
works were for long current, and Nettleship has shown that Macrobius drew freely from them.4
Literary criticism at Rome was essentially practical and regarded its objects from the outside; it would be unreasonable therefore to find fault with Macrobius for failing, as a critic, to do full justice to Vergil as a poet. Moreover, a critic after all is by way of being, as it were, a signpost, pointing only to those qualities in the object of his criticism to which he wishes to direct attention, and he may fairly be allowed to point to matter of his own choosing. It is clear, from the preface to the work, that the purpose of the Saturnalia was educational; and the aspects of Vergil’s poems which interested Macrobius are those which are set out in the last chapter of the first Book.4* With Vergil’s poetry as such Macrobius was not primarily concerned, since he was deliberately dealing with the poet’s tech- nique and with the undertones of learning in the poems and not with subtle overtones of poetry. Nevertheless, much of what he, or the earlier critics whose works he has excerpted, has to say, and in particular the examination of passages which illustrate Vergil’s debt to other writers, contain valuable criticism and often show considerable judgment.
But the emphasis throughout is on Vergil’s erudition and skills; and this is what might be expected, since literary criticism at Rome, whatever the nationality of the critic, did not attempt (as Greek criticism) to consider the ultimate nature and aim of poetry but reflected rather the utilitarian bent of the Roman character.47 And indeed nearly all extant Latin poetry is written with a purpose— Catullus being, perhaps, the only Latin poet who could truly say, “I do but sing because I must”—nor could anything well be more utilitarian and prosaic than the very origin of existing Latin litera- ture, which begins with a translation of the Odyssey written to serve as a textbook. Thus, except from time to time in literary coteries, achievement in letters was not held in any very great regard at Rome, and it is significant that Vergil does not even
44 “On Some of the Early Criticisms of Virgil’s Poetry.”
45 See, above, p. 3.
46 See Appendix B: Originality, Imitation, and Plagiarism.
47 Eg, Horace Epistles 2. 1. 162-63: “In the peace which followed the Punic wars the Roman began to ask himself whether Sophocles and Thespis and Aeschylus had anything to offer that was of use.” Cf. the remark of the elder Pliny, that the Roman was “obstinately attached to virtue and utility.”
INTRODUCTION 19
include such excellence among the accomplishments which, if beneath the high calling of the Roman people, might yet be cultivated by “lesser breeds without the Law.” 48 Not unconnected with this “practicalism” was the close connec- tion of Latin poetry with scholarship, for what in Greece came to pass naturally was at Rome, to a great extent, consciously contrived. That is why to call a poet doctus was to pay him a high compli- ment; and, just as Servius begins his commentary on the sixth Book of the Aeneid with the words totus quidem Vergilius scientia plenus est, so for Macrobius Vergil is omnium disciplinarum peritus (1. 16. 12) and poeta aeque in rebus doctrinae et in verbis sectator elegantiae (3. 11. 9)—an authority in every branch of learning, whose aim it was to combine erudite subject matter with elegant diction. The literary criticism in the Saturnalia begins with the fourth Book, which illustrates Vergil’s command of the technique of rhet- oric, and, since rhetoric played so important a part in Roman educa- tion, these illustrations would be of particular interest to the young Eustachius. In one of his minor poems*® Vergil had bidden farewell to “the worthless paintpots of the rhetoricians and the tinkling cymbals of idle youth,” but, although it is necessary always to bear in mind that, like much other Latin poetry, the poems of Vergil were written for reading aloud, the Aeneid leaves a reader today in no doubt but that the poet had remembered all that Epidius had taught him. This fragmentary fourth Book may, indeed, reason- ably be held to be the least readable part of the literary criticism, and yet among the quotations chosen to illustrate the devices of the rhetoricians are many of Vergil’s best known and best loved lines. The fifth Book opens with some remarks by Eusebius on the different kinds of oratorical style, with examples taken from Vergil’s poems (5. 1). But in the rest of the Book the speaker is Eustathius, who had undertaken earlier to discuss Vergil’s use of Greek models—a use of which he had then described as a cautious use and one which might even have the appearance of being ac- cidental, since Vergil sometimes skillfully concealed the debt, al- through at other times he imitated his model openly (1. 24. 18). 48 Aeneid 6. 847-53. 49 Catalepton 5. 50 Cf. H. W. Garrod, The Oxford Book of Latin Verse (Oxford, 1952), p.
xxxvii: “How much of the Aeneid was written ultimately by Epidius I hardly like to inquire.”
20 INTRODUCTION
After suggesting that the Aeneid in effect may be regarded as a mirrored reflection of the Iliad and Odyssey (5. 2. 13), Eustathius goes on to quote a number of parallel passages, taken haphazard, in some of which Vergil’s lines so closely resemble their Homeric originals that they merely show (in Professor Saintsbury’s words) ** “that Vergil was an excellent translator, and was, rather more frequently than becomes a great poet, content simply to translate.” The speaker then proceeds, book by book of the Aeneid, to make, without comments, a systematic survey of passages which are imita- tions of or translations from Homer (5. 4-10)—material which may have come from the Resemblances of Avitus to which Suetonius refers or from some similar critical work. This section of the Book is followed by three chapters of parallel passages, cited, with brief comments, to suggest that Vergil sometimes improves on his model (5. 11), sometimes equals it (5. 12), and sometimes falls short of it (5. 13). Thus, in the similes of the bees (5. 11. 2-4) Vergil is said to have shown a more careful observation of nature; and elsewhere (e.g., 5. 11. 10-13 and 23) it is suggested that his renderings contain a greater wealth of detail and are closer to reality. On the other hand, there are times when his verse seems to be somewhat meager in comparison with Homer’s (e.g, 5. 13. 1 and 26) or to lack his model’s vivid touches, as in the descriptions of the chariot races (5. 13. 3) and the foot races (5. 13. 4 and 5) and in the similes of the waves (5. 13. 20 and 21). Moreover, in the incident of the eagle and the serpent (5. 13. 28-30) Vergil has omitted details which, in the speaker’s submission, are the very soul of Homer’s description, with the result that in the Latin “only a lifeless body is left.” Vergil is censured, too, for inaptly describing the spreading of a rumor in terms which Homer had applied to the growth of strife, since strife and rumor are not comparable and Vergil’s comparison is therefore inappropriate (5. 13. 31 and 32).
After a somewhat technical discussion, reminiscent of the lecture room, of apparently unmetrical lines (5. 14. 1-4), examples are cited from Homer and Vergil of lines which would seem to differ in no way from the language of everyday speech (5. 14. 5) and of the effective use made by each poet of a repeated phrase (5. 14. 6),
51 Saintsbury, A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe, I, 332; see also his A Second Scrap Book, p. 250, and A Last Scrap Book, p. 71 (London, 1923 and 1924).
` INTRODUCTION 21
a compound epithet (5. 14. 7-8), and a narrative of past events (5. 11-15).
When the “catalogues” are considered, Homer’s geographical arrangement is preferred to Vergil’s disregard of any such me- thodical order, and the former’s consistency in his references to individual persons to the latter’s not infrequent inconsistency (5. 15. 1-13); but no attempt is made to excuse Vergil’s inconsistencies on the ground that the Aeneid lacked its author’s revision. Credit is given to Vergil for varying the form of words with which he introduces his Italian chieftains,®* but it is submitted that, although Homer too can show a comparable variety, his normally simpler technique well becomes a poet of an earlier age (5. 15. 14-19).
Proverbial sayings are met with both in Homer and in Vergil (5. 16. 6-7); and Vergil, like Homer, will sometimes, by way of relief, introduce a narrative or some other matter calculated to please the mind or the ear (5. 16. 1-5)—although there are times, too, when each poet treats the same story or myth in different ways (5. 16. 9-14).
The unrealistic account, in the seventh Book of the Aeneid, of the beginnings of the war in Italy is attributed to a need to im- provise for lack of a model in Homer or some other Greek (5. 17. 1-4); and the reference to “some other Greek” serves to introduce comments on Vergil’s debt both to Apollonius Rhodius—from whose story of Medea he adapted the story of Dido (5. 17. 4-6)— and to Pindar, for a description of Etna in eruption—a description which (in a detailed criticism also to be found in Aulus Gellius) *? is condemned as clumsy and “unnatural” (5. 17. 7-14).
Examples are then given of Vergil’s use of proper names from the Greek and of Greek inflexions to illustrate his devotion to the Greek language (5. 17. 15-20), the book ending with instances of recondite allusions, cited by Macrobius to show that the poet’s learning embraced all the literature of Greece (5. 18-22).
The sixth Book begins with an account by Furius Albinus of Vergil’s debt to the earlier writers of Rome, the speaker quoting,
52 For a criticism of the style of Vergil’s catalogue, see E. Fraenkel, “Some Aspects of the Structure of Aeneid vu, Journal of Roman Studies, XXXV (1945), 1-14.
-53 Aulus Gellius 17. 10. Common subject matter is not necessarily an indica- tion that Macrobius has borrowed from Aulus Gellius; each may have drawn from a common source. See Nettleship, Essays in Latin Literature, pp. 264ff.
22 INTRODUCTION
first, lines taken wholly or in part from these writers (6. 1) and then comparing whole passages (6. 2). Furius explains that his aim is to show the good use which Vergil has made of his reading of the works of his predecessors; but he is aware, he says, that he may be affording hostile critics an excuse to accuse Vergil of plagiar- ism," and he therefore carries the war into the enemy’s country by referring to the reply made by Afranius when he was charged with having borrowed too freely from Menander, and by suggesting that in fact it is the old writers who are in Vergil’s debt, since his use of their works has enabled those works to survive. Moreover, he continues, Vergil has shown such nice judgment and skill in his borrowings that to read the originals is to realize that their words sound better in their new than in their former context (6. 1. 2-6). Furius Albinus then goes on to point out that Vergil has sometimes borrowed from Homer at one remove by imitating lines of Ennius or of some other of his predecessors who had taken them from the Greek. And he ends by begging his hearers not to underestimate the writings of these early Latin poets on account of the rough- ness of the versification, for, thanks to the labors of succeeding ages, it is from them that the later, more smoothly woven, verse derives (5. 3. 9).
Caecina Albinus follows Furius. First, he illustrates Vergil’s debt to the old poets for single words which, from a neglect of these old writers, were sometimes thought to be Vergil’s own invention, drawing attention also to the poet’s use of even foreign words (peregrina verba); and he concludes by citing a number of picturesque epithets which also have been borrowed by Vergil from earlier Latin authors (6. 4-5).
The conversation is then carried on by Servius, with comments on certain unusual expressions and constructions. These are for the most part Vergil’s own and may perhaps be examples of the “affec- tation” criticized by Agrippa and of the “faults” censured by Herennius: among them are examples of “figures,” which by a more careful arrangement of this Vergilian section of the Saturnalia might have been included in the fourth Book (6. 6).55 The section
54 Macrobius here is probably excerpting from a reply to the Furta of Perel- lius Faustus or to a similar work by a hostile critic. See also Appendix B.
55 Probably Macrobius was transcribing notes taken by him from the works of two separate authors.
INTRODUCTION 23
ends with an explanation by Servius (largely etymological)5* of some words and constructions the meaning of which was often misunderstood (6. 7-9) .57
THE SATURNALIA IN THE MIDDLE AGES
In the fourth century the hostility of a Christian “Establishment” at first provoked in the pagan opposition a revival of interest in the classical writers of Rome. Then the growing pressure of the bar- barian invasions brought home to Christian and pagan alike the need to safeguard a common cultural inheritance in the face of a com- mon enemy and so led to a measure of that peaceful coexistence for which Symmachus had pleaded. Later, ironically enough, it was the Christian monasteries—scornfully referred to by Rutilius as slave-barracks (ergastula)**§—that preserved many of the precious relics of Latin literature through the long “Gothic night” of the Middle Ages until their rediscovery, for the most part by laymen, at the dawn of the Italian5® Renaissance.
The influence of the works of Macrobius upon the writers of the Middle Ages is discussed at length by Stahl in the introduction to his translation of the Commentary on the Dream of Scipio. It is proposed therefore to mention here only three names—writers who were concerned more with the Saturnalia than with the Commentary.
Isidore of Seville
Isidore of Seville (c.560-636), a link between the learning of antiquity and the Middle Ages, in the fifth Book of his Etymo-
56 A combination of grammatical with literary exposition is characteristic of Latin literary criticism. See W. R. Hardie, Lectures on Classical Subjects. p. 280, and note 33, above.
51 The same material is also discussed by Aulus Gellius (2. 6; 5. 8; 10. 11; 16. 5 and 6; 18. 5. The rest of Book 6 has been lost.
58 Rutilius Namatianus De reditu suo 1. 447.
59 Of the countries of Europe, only Italy had always had an educated laity—a legacy from educated paganism. See F. W. Hall, Companion to Classical Texts (Oxford, 1913), p. 96; and Momigliano, ed., The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, pp. 213-17.
60 Stahl, pp. 42-55.
24 INTRODUCTION
logiae may be making use of the accounts given by Macrobius in the Saturnalia of the divisions of the civil day at Rome (1. 3), of the magnus annus (1. 14), and of the Kalends, Nones, Ides, and other days of the Roman calendar (1. 15-16). There are references in Isidore’s eleventh Book to the ring finger (the digitus medicinalis) and to the derivation of the word pollex, which are comparable with what Macrobius has to say (7. 13. 7 and 14); and, in the thirteenth Book (13. 16. 4), to the fresh waters of the Black Sea, which are referred to by Macrobius (7. 12. 34). Again, passages in the nine- teenth and twentieth Books of the Etymologiae (19. 1 and 2; 20. 5) suggest acquaintance with the chapter in the Saturnalia (5. 21) in which the names of various kinds of drinking vessels are discussed. Nevertheless, the possibility that Macrobius and Isidore have drawn from a common source—e.g., Athenaeus in the case of the drinking vessels—cannot be overlooked.
Bede
Bede (673-735) is said to have had access to an abridgment of the Saturnalia known as the Disputatio Hori et Praetextati, of which traces may be found in the references in chapters 7, 9, 12 and 13 of his De temporum ratione to the Roman day, the Roman month, and the Kalends, Nones, and Ides (Saturnalia 1. 3 and 12-15). There is, however, no evidence, in chapter 28 of Bede’s work, that he had read what Macrobius (7. 16), following Plutarch, has to say about the influences of the moon.
Jobn of Salisbury
In the Policraticus (sive De Nugis Curialium et Vestigiis Philoso- phorum) ® of John of Salisbury (d.1180) there are numerous excerpts from the Saturnalia often reproduced verbatim,® although words or passages in Greek are omitted. As Jan and Webb have re-
61 See Bedae opera de temporibus, ed. C. W. Jones.
6 See Webb. With the subtitle cf. the De nugis curialium of Walter Map.
6 References, by book and chapter (and by the column in Migne) are given in the footnotes in the translation.
INTRODUCTION 25
marked,® John appears to have had a more complete text of the Saturnalia than that which we have today; for in Book 8 (chapters 6, 7, and 16) of the Policraticus there are references to statements made by one ‘“‘Portunianus”—now generally taken to be the Postu- mianus who reports to Decius the account given to him by Eusebius of what had been said at the symposium (Saturnalia 1. 2. 1-14)— which must have been taken from parts of the text of the Saturnalia no longer extant,® as well as a sentence (described as a quotation from Macrobius) which would seem to fit into the lacuna at the end of the second Book.*
64 Jan, I, l-li, Webb, I, xxxviii, see also Webb’s article, “On Some Fragments of Macrobius’ Saturnalia.”
85 See Webb, II, 254, 27; 256, 212; 257, 173 263, n13 and 721); 264, 73; 268,
NI4, 270, 13. 86 Webb, I, 341, n11.
the saturnalia - BOOK 1
PREFACE
[1] Many and various, Eustachius my son, are the things on which in this life of ours Nature has led us to set our affections; but of all Nature’s ties the strongest is our love for our children, and it is her will that we should take such pains to train and instruct them that nothing else could give a parent so much pleasure as to succeed in these aims and nothing so much distress as to fail. [2] That is why I too regard your education as my chief care. In seeking to make it complete I have preferred the short cut to the roundabout route and, impatient of all delay, instead of waiting for you to make your own way forward through those studies, and only those, on which you are yourself diligently engaged, I purpose to put my own reading as well at your disposal. In this way the whole of the material carefully gathered by my labors, after your birth and before it, from a number of different works in Greek or Latin will furnish you with knowledge; and, if ever you have occasion to call to mind some historical fact, buried in a mass of books and generally unknown, or some memorable word or deed, it will be easy for you to find it and produce it, as it were, from a literary storehouse. [3] Moreover, things worth remembering have not been heaped together in confusion, but a variety of sub- jects of different authorship and divers dates have been arranged to form, so to speak, a body, in such a way that the notes which I had made without any plan or order, as aids to memory, came together like the parts of a coherent whole.
[4] You should not count it a fault if I shall often set out the borrowings from a miscellaneous reading in the authors’ own words (for the present work undertakes to be a collection of mat- ters worth knowing, not a display of my command of language), but be content with information of things of ancient times,
BOOK I, PREFACE 27
sometimes set out plainly in my own words and sometimes faith- fully recorded in the actual words of the old writers, as each sub- ject has seemed to call for an exposition or a transcript.
[5] We ought in some sort to imitate the bees;! and just as they, in their wanderings to and fro, sip the flowers, then arrange their spoil and distribute it among the combs, and transform the various juices to a single flavor by in some way mixing with them a proper- ty of their own being, [6] so I too shall put into writing all that I have acquired in the varied course of my reading, to reduce it thereby to order and to give it coherence. For not only does arrangement help the memory, but the actual process of arrange- ment, accompanied by a kind of mental fermentation which serves to season the whole, blends the diverse extracts to make a single flavor; with the result that, even if the sources are evident, what we get in the end is still something clearly different from those known sources.
[7] We see nature acting in this way in our own bodies without any effort on our part, since the food we take is a heavy burden to the stomach for as long as it remains in its original state and floats there in a solid mass, but when it has been transmuted, then, and not until then, it passes into the blood and strengthens us. And so it is with the food of the mind: we must see to it that we do not allow what we have absorbed to remain unchanged and thus fail to assimilate it, but we must, as it were, digest it. To do otherwise is to feed the memory, not the mind.
[8] Let us gather then from all sources and from them form one whole, as single numbers combine to form one number. Let our minds aim at showing the finished product, but conceal all that has helped to produce it; just as the makers of scented un- guents take special care to ensure that their preparations have the property of no one scent but blend the essence of all the odors into a single perfume. [9] Or take a choir: it consists, as you see, of many voices and yetall those voices form a unity; for in a choir one voice is high, another low, another of the middle register; there are men’s voices and the voices of women, and among them the notes of the pipe; and yet, although individual voices do not emerge, the voices of all are heard and from a number of different sounds there comes a harmony.
1 Seneca Epistulae 84; John of Salisbury 7. 10 (660a-b).
28 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
[10] This, then, is what I would have this present work be: a repository of much to teach and much to guide you, examples drawn from many ages but informed by a single spirit, wherein— if you refrain from rejecting what you already know and from shunning what you do not—you will find much that it would be a pleasure to read, an education to have read, and of use to remember; [11] for, to the best of my belief, the work contains nothing that it is either useless to know or difficult to comprehend, but every- thing in it is calculated to quicken your understanding, to strength- en your memory, to give more dexterity to your discourse, and to make your speech more correct—except in so far as the genius of the Latin language may in places prove to be a stumbling block to me born under an alien sky. [12] And so, if after all there happen at times to be some with the leisure and the will to make the acquaintance of my work, from them I would seek, and would hope to win, a reasonable indulgence, should my words lack the elegance of the native Roman tongue?
[13] But here I am indeed imprudent, and I have incurred that neat rebuke which Marcus Cato® gave to the Aulus Albinus who was consul with Lucullus. [14] This Albinus composed a History of Rome in Greek and wrote in the preface to the effect that no one ought to criticize him for any lack of arrangement, or faults of style, “for,” said he, “I am a Roman, born in Latium, and the Greek language is altogether foreign to me”; and on that ground he claimed the privilege of being excused from censure for any mistakes he might have made. [15] After reading this, Marcus Cato said: “Upon my word, Aulus, you carry your trifling too far in choosing to apologize for a fault instead of refraining from com- mitting it. As a rule, one asks for pardon after making a mistake through inadvertence or after doing wrong under compulsion; but who, pray, compelled you to do that for which you would ask pardon in advance?”
[16] And I shall now proceed to indicate the theme of the work in the form, as it were, of a prologue.
2 Cf. the apology to the reader in the preface to the Metamorphoses of Apu- leius. 3 Aulus Cellius 11. 8. See also Cicero Brutus 81.
CHAPTER 1
[1] During the festival of the Saturnalia leading Roman nobles, and some scholars with them, meet at the house of Vettius Praetex- tatus and devote the annual celebration to conversation on matters relating to the liberal arts, inviting each other in turn to dinner, in friendly hospitality, and separating only for repose at night. [2] For the whole of the rest days! the better part of the day is devoted to serious discussions, but at dinner their talk is on topics that become the festive board. In this way there is always some subject under review the whole day long, for learned treatment or light, although the conversation at table will of course take a more jovial turn, as having pleasure for its aim rather than some earnest purpose. [3] Certainly in Plato’s well-known Symposium (as in the works of other writers who have described such banquets) the conversation of the guests does not touch on any matter of graver import, but the theme is love, treated with diversity and charm; and Socrates indeed here, so far from seeking as usual to press his opponent hard and to tie him up in tighter and tighter knots, seems to be engaging in a sham fight rather than a battle and all but giving his victims the chance to slip away and escape.
[4] Now the table talk, while decent and above reproach, must also be attractive and pleasant, but the morning discussions will be of sterner stuff, as befitting men of learning and distinction. And, if in the writers of old a Cotta, a Laelius, and a Scipio? shall con- tinue to discuss matters of the highest importance for as long as Roman literature shall endure, surely a Praetextatus, a Flavianus, an Albinus, a Symmachus, and a Eustathius, men of like distinction
1 Fowler, Essays, p. 79. 2 See Cicero De natura deorum, De re publica, De amicitia, De senectute.
30 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
and no less worth, may be permitted to express themselves in the same way.
[5] I trust too that no one will think that I am acting unfairly if one or two of the characters who meet reached maturity a gener- ation later than Praetextatus, for the dialogues of Plato prove that this license is permissible.2 Thus Parmenides, for example, lived so long before Socrates that the latter as a boy could hardly have met the former in his old age, and yet they are represented discussing certain abstruse problems together; and a famous dialogue is wholly taken up with a discussion between Socrates and Timaeus, although it is well known that the two men did not belong to the same generation. [6] Again, Plato makes Paralus and Xanthippus, the sons of Pericles, converse with Protagoras on his second visit to Athens, notwithstanding the fact that long before that time, the two had been carried off by the disastrous plague at Athens. Thus, with the example of Plato to support me, it has seemed inap- propriate to go to the length of reckoning on my fingers the ages of the persons whom I have brought together.
[7] To enable the words of each speaker to be more easily recognized and distinguished, I have introduced Decius questioning Postumianus about the talks and the participants in them. But now, not to keep the reader any longer from what he is waiting for, the conversation between Decius and Postumianus will explain how the colloquy began and how it progressed.
8 Cf. Athenaeus 11. 5o5f.
CHAPTER 2
[1] The rest days, said Decius, which we enjoy for much of the month of January have come conveniently; for I have been looking for a chance to meet you, Postumianus, and for the most favorable opportunity of questioning you, since on pretty well every other day, as being a day for legal business, it is impossible to find a single hour in which you are not engaged, either speaking on behalf of your clients’ cases in court or considering them at home. But now—for I know that you devote this leisure to serious matters and not to trifles—if you will be so good as to answer the questions which I have come to ask, you will have done something which will not only, I think, give you = but will certainly win my warmest thanks.
[2] The first thing that I want to know is whether you were present at the dinner party which a succession of hosts hospitably prolonged for several days, and whether you took part in a con- versation to which, so I hear, you give the highest praise and commend to everybody in the most complimentary terms. I should have heard of that conversation from my father but for the fact that, when those famous parties were over, he left Rome for Naples, where he is now staying. However, I have lately met others, who have spoken with admiration of that powerful memory of yours, which has enabled you more than once to recount in order everything that was said on that occasion.
[3] My dear Decius, said Postumianus, all my life~as you can have seen for yourself, so far as your age permits, and can have heard from your father Albinus—all my life, the one thing to my mind most worth while has been to devote such leisure as I may have had from my work at the bar to meeting men of learning, like yourself, and to talking with them; [4] for nowhere can the
32 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALTIA
educated mind find more useful or more seemly relaxation than in taking some opportunity for learned and polite conversation and friendly discussion. [5] But as for this dinner party of which you speak, you refer, no doubt, to the occasion on which the most learned of our nobility and the others who were with them recently met at the house of Vettius Praetextatus, and, by parting only to meet again at the house of another of the guests, gave a pleasant variety to their proceedings?
That, replied Decius, is just what I am here to ask about. Please describe the party, for all the guests are such close friends of yours that I am sure that you were there.
[6] I should have been glad to be there, said Postumianus, and indeed I do not think that my presence would have been unwel- come. But at the time I had a number of cases to examine which concerned friends of mine, and so, when I was asked to the dinner, I replied that I should have to spend the holidays in study rather than in dining, and I suggested that another, with no business cares to engage and occupy him, should be invited instead. That is what was done; [7] for Praetextatus gave instructions for an invitation to be sent to the rhetorician Eusebius in my place—a ready speaker and an accomplished man, one who, among the Greeks, is superior to all practicing rhetoric to-day and one who is well versed in Latin studies too.
[8] How then, said Decius, do you come to know what passed— those topics which, they tell me, were propounded and discussed in so pleasant and friendly a fashion, with abundant illustrations of value for the conduct of life and with a wealth of many-sided learning?
[9] The day of the winter solstice, replied Postumianus, that is to say, the day which followed the festival of the Saturnalia when those dinner parties were held, I was spending at home, all the more pleasantly since I had no legal business in court. Eusebius called, accompanied by a few of his pupils, and said at once, with a smile: [ro] “I confess, Postumianus, that I have much to thank you for, and not least for this, that in begging to be excused by Praetextatus you made room for me at his table; so that I find not only your kindness but fortune herself too combining in my favor to win for me a benefit from you.” [11] “Well,” said I, “won’t you repay the debt you have so kindly and generously acknowledged
BOOK I, CHAPTER 2 33
and enable me to spend this all too rare leisure of mine in such a way as to imagine that I am one of the company now in which you found yourself then?” [12] “Indeed I will,” said he, “I shall not tell of the food and the wine—both were plentiful without being extrav- agant—but I shall recall to the best of my ability what was said by the guests when they met, and especially what they said when not at dinner, in the course of those days. [13] When I listened to that conversation, I thought that I was entering the life of those whom philosophers speak of as the Blessed. And I learnt too of what had passed on the day before I joined the company, from Avienus, who told me of it. I have put all into writing, that nothing be forgotten and omitted; but, if you wish to hear my account of it, you must not suppose that a single day will be enough to recall what it took so many days to say.” [14] What then, said Decius, was the con- versation which Eusebius reported? Who took part in it, and how did it begin? Here I am, all attention, a listener who will not grow tired.
[15] Toward evening on the day before the festival of the Saturnalia, replied Postumianus, Aurelius Symmachus and Caecina Albinus, closest of friends by reason of their age, their habits, and their pursuits, called on Vettius Praetextatus, who was at home to all who wished to meet at his house; and Servius, who had recently joined the ranks of the professional grammarians, a man as remarkable for his learning as he is lovable for his modesty, was close behind them, walking with his eyes fixed on the ground after the manner of one who wished to pass unnoticed. [16] As soon as he saw his visitors, Praetextatus went forward to meet them and greeted them warmly; then, turning to Furius Albinus who, to- gether with Avienus, happened to be in the house, he said: What do you say, Albinus? Our friends, whom we shall do right to call the leading lights of Rome, have come, as you see, at just the right time. Shall we tell them of the matter which we had begun to discuss? [17] Why not? replied Albinus. There is nothing that I should like better, for nothing could give them or us greater pleas- ure than to debate some learned topics.
[18] My dear Praetextatus, said Caecina, when all were seated, I am as yet unaware of the matter to which you refer; but I am quite sure that it is well worth knowing, since the rest of you have been discussing it and you refuse to leave us out of the discussion.
34 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
[19] You must know, then, replied Praetextatus, that the subject of our talk was this. Tomorrow will be the first of the days dedi- cated to Saturn. But when are we to say that the festival of the Saturnalia begins? or, in other words, when are we to suppose that tomorrow begins? [20] We have indeed touched lightly on some small points that bear on the question; but your researches in the written authorities are too well known for your modesty to deny, and so I would have you proceed to set out for the benefit of us all everything that you have learned and know about the subject of our inquiry.
CHAPTER 3!
[1] There is, I see, said Caecina, no need for me to tell people what they know already, for you have yourselves learned every- thing and forgotten nothing of all the work of our predecessors on the matter which you invite me to speak about. But I should be sorry if anybody were to think that I felt the honor of being asked for my opinion to be a burden, and so I will briefly recount what- ever my all too poor memory shall bring to mind. Then, as soon as he saw that all were ready and eager to hear him, he began as follows.
[2] Marcus Varro in his work on Human Antiquities? writing of days, says: “Persons who are born in the course of the twenty- four hours between one midnight and the next are said to have been born on one and the same day.” [3] These words suggest that he so divided the reckoning of a day that the birthday of a man born after sunset but before midnight is the day which preceded the night, but that, on the other hand, the birthday of one born during the last six hours of the night is held to be the day which dawned after that night. [4] Varro also wrote in the same book that the Athenians have a different method of reckoning and say that the whole interval of time between one sunset and the next is a single day; and that the Babylonians have yet another rule, for they call the period from one sunrise to the beginning of the next sunrise a day; and, as for the Umbrians, they say that the interval between one midday and the next is one and the same day; [5] “but this,” says Varro, “is too absurd, for the birthday of an Umbrian born at
-1 In connection with this chapter see Isidore of Seville 5. 30-31 and Bede De temporum ratione 7. 2 Aulus Gellius 3. 2.
36 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
the sixth hour on the Kalends of a month will have to be regarded? as comprising half of the first day of the month and up to the sixth hour of the second.”
[6] There is plenty of evidence to show that the Romans, as Varro said, reckoned each day as running from one midnight to the next; for of the religious ceremonies held at Rome, some are “diurnal,” others “nocturnal”—the term “diurnal” being taken to cover any ceremonies held between the beginning of a day and midnight, but any which begin after the sixth hour of the night being taken to belong to the “nocturnal” ceremonies of the follow- ing day.*
[7] Moreover, the ritual practice in connection with the taking of auspices also points to the same method of reckoning; for, since the magistrates must, on one and the same day, both take the auspices and perform the act touching which the auspices have previously been taken, they take the auspices after midnight and perform the act after sunrise; and thus they are said to have taken the auspices and performed the act on the same day.
[8] Again, if the tribunes of the people, who may not be absent from Rome for a whole day, leave the city after midnight and return after “first torchlight” but before the midnight following, they are not regarded as having been away for a day, because by returning before the sixth hour of the night they spend a part of that day in Rome.
` [9] Furthermore, I have read that the jurist Quintus Mucius used to say that a woman who began to cohabit with a husband on the first of January and left him on the twenty-seventh of December following,’ in order to interrupt the husband’s possession, had not interrupted it, because the three nights’ absence from her husband, required by the Twelve Tables to effect the interruption,® could
è Le., by Roman reckoning.
4 Reading (with Bornecque) et ea quae diurna sunt ab initio diei ad medium noctis protenduntur; ab bora sexta noctis, sequentis [sc. diei] nocturnis sacris tempus impenditur. The text is corrupt. The distinction would seem to be between acts which have to be performed in the course of a day of twenty- four hours (running from midnight to midnight) and acts performed at night between midnight and the following daybreak.
ë A.d. iv Kal. lan, December then having only twenty-nine days.
6 One of the ways in which a marriage could be contracted at Rome in early times was by usus, ie., by the continuous cohabitation of a man and woman as husband and wife. If the usus lasted without interruption for a year,
BOOK 1, CHAPTER 3 37
not be completed, since the last six hours of the third night belonged to the following year, which would begin on the first of January.
[10] Vergil, too, suggests the same method of reckoning, but (as became a poet) by means of an indirect and veiled allusion to an old established practice, in the lines:
The dank night wheels her course midway, and now I feel the breath of the cruel steeds of dawn [Aeneid 5. 738] for with these words he reminds us that what at Rome is called the
civil day begins to run from the sixth hour of the night. [11] In the sixth Book of the Aeneid too the poet has described the time when the night begins, for he says:
Dawn with her rose-red car even now had passed in her
heavenly course the middle of the sky? [Aeneid 6. 535] and a few lines later the sibyl added:
Aeneas, night comes on apace, and we but spend the hours in weeping. [Aeneid 6. 539] Thus Vergil’s description of the beginnings of the day and the night is in the closest conformity with the definitions of the civil
law.
[12] The divisions of the civil day are these: first, “the middle turning point of the night”; then “cock crow”; after that, “the silence”, when the cocks are silent and men are still asleep; then “first light”, when day becomes discernible; after that, “morning” (mane), when the light of day is clear. [13] Now we use the word mane either because daylight begins to rise from the world below, that is to say, from the abode of the Manes, or departed spirits, or (and this to my mind is more likely to be the true meaning of the word) because it is a word of good omen; for at Lanuvium the word mane means “good”—just as we too use its opposite immane
the woman passed into the man’s manus [hand], and so passed from her own agnatic family to come under the potestas of the head of her husband’s family. The Twelve Tables, however, enacted (Warmington, III, 462) that the ab- sence by a wife from her husband’s home for three consecutive nights in any one year (trinoctii absentia) broke the period of prescription and manus did not then arise. Gaius (1. 111) remarks that the law regarding usus and the trinoctii absentia had become obsolete by his time (i.e., in the time of Marcus Aurelius).
7 Le., it is past midday in the world above.
8 Isidore of Seville 8. 100; 10. 139.
38 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
in the sense “not good,” as, for example, in such expressions as immanis belua [a monstrous beast] or immane facinus [an abomin- able deed] and in all other like phrases.
[14] Then comes the period “from morning to midday” (meridiem), that is to say to the middle of the day (medium diei); after midday comes the time called “the day’s decline”, and then “the end of the day,” namely, the very last time of day [for legal business]—just as in the Twelve Tables we read: “Let sunset end proceedings.” 19 [15] “Evening” (vespera) follows, a word bor- rowed from the Greeks, who speak of Eonépa, from Hesperus, the evening star; and it is for this reason too that Italy is called “Hesperia,” because it lies toward the setting sun. Afterward come the divisions “first torchlight,” “bedtime,” and “the dead of night”— this last being the period unsuitable for the transaction of any business. These are the divisions of the civil day observed at Rome. [16] It follows therefore that the beginning of the Saturnalia (Saturnaliorum) will be midnight in the night which is about to come (noctu futura), although it is customary not to begin the festivities until tomorrow (die crastini).
® Varro (De lingua Latina 6. 2. 4) refers to an adjective manus, used in early Latin with the meaning “good”; and probably it is from this adjective that
the name Manes was given, as a euphemism, to the spirits of the dead. 10 Warmington, IIT, 430.
CHAPTER 4
[1] Hereupon all praised Caecina Albinus for a memory which might well be likened to a storehouse of ancient lore. And then Praetextatus, seeing Avienus whispering to Furius Albinus, said: Come, Avienus, what have you been confiding to Albinus, as some- thing which you would not wish the rest of us to hear?
[2] I am much impressed, replied Avienus, by the authority with which Caecina has spoken, and I am aware that such profound learning cannot be mistaken. Nevertheless, the expressions noctu futura and die crastini which he has used in preference to the reg- ular forms futura nocte and die crastino struck my ear as strange. [3] For noctu is not a noun but an adverb; and, moreover, futura as a declinable word cannot agree with an adverb: surely, too, noctu is related to nocte as diu is to die. Again die and crastini are not in the same case, and yet in such an expression only identity of case enables declinable words to be joined. And then I wish to know what is the difference between the forms Saturnaliorum and Satur- nalium and why we should prefer to use the former.
[4] Caecina smiled but did not reply, and Symmachus then asked Servius for his opinion. In a company such as this, said Servius, a company of men whose learning no Jess than their noble birth commands respect, my place should be to learn rather than to teach. Nevertheless, I shall comply with your wishes, sir, and do as you bid, explaining first the declension of the word Saturnalia and afterwards the origins of those other expressions which are old-fashioned rather than new. [5] To say Saturnalium is to follow the rule: for declinable words with a dative plural ending in -bus never have more syllables in the genitive plural than in the dative, - but the genitive has either the same number of syllables as the
40 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
dative (for example: monilibus, monilium, sedilibus, sedilium) or one syllable less (for example: carminibus, carminum; liminibus, liminum), and therefore, given Saturnalibus, Saturnalium rather than Saturnaliorum is the regular form of the genitive. [6] But those who say Saturnaliorum have the support of distinguished authorities; for Sallust, in the third book of his Histories, speaks of Bacchanaliorum; and Masurius in the second book of his Calendar says: “The day of the Wine Festival (Vinaliorum) is sacred to Jupiter and not, as some suppose, to Venus.” [7] Moreover, to summon the grammarians as witnesses, Verrius Flaccus in his little book entitled Saturn says: “The days of the Saturnalia (Saturna- liorum) are regarded as festivals by the Greeks also”; and again, in the same work: “I think that I have written a clear account of the arrangement of the Saturnalia (Saturnaliorum).” So, too, Julius Modestus in his treatise On Rest Days speaks of “the rest days of the Saturnalia (Saturnaliorum) ,” and in the same book says: “Antias relates that Numa Pompilius was the founder of the Agonalia (Agonaliorum).”
[8] But you will say that the question is whether there are any grounds to support the usage of these authorities. To be sure, there are; and, since it is not unfitting that a grammarian should be con- fronted with points of grammatical analogy, which are after all his business, I shall try to discover, by inference, what it is that has led these men to turn aside from the regular form of the word and to say Saturnaliorum rather than Saturnalium.
[9] In the first place, then, I think that they wished to mark the difference between these names, which are names of festivals and are neuter in gender and have no singular number, and names which are declined in the singular as well as in the plural; for such words as Compitalia, Bacchanalia, Agonalia, Vinalia, and the others like them are names of festivals and are not used in the singular; or, if you do use the singular form, it will have a different meaning unless you add “festum,” and say Bacchanale festum, Agonale festum, and so on—the word Bacchanale or Agonale being now not a substantive but an adjective, or what is called in Greek an “epithet.”
[10] They were minded, therefore, to use a distinctive form for the genitive in order to show by this method of declension that the word was the name of a festival. And they knew also that not
BOOK I, CHAPTER 4. 41
infrequently some declinable words with a dative plural ending in -bus have a genitive plural in -rum (for example: domibus, domo- rum; duobus, duorum, ambobus, amborum). [11] So too with the word viridia: when it is used as an epithet, the genitive ends in -um (thus viridia prata has viridium pratorum); but when we wish to indicate the essential greenness of a place we say viridiorum, as for example in the phrase “the beautiful appearance of the verdure (viridiorum) ,” for viridia is then used as a substantive and not as an adjective.
[12] However, such was the freedom with which the old writers used the genitive in -rum that Asinius Pollio frequently employs the form vectigaliorum, although the singular vectigal is found no less often than the plural vectigalia, and although we read: “And in his Jeft hand held the sacred shield (ancile),”1 we nevertheless come across the form anciliorum for the genitive plural. [13] We must therefore ask ourselves if it is absolutely true to say that this form of the genitive is confined to names of festivals or if the truth is rather that the old writers took pleasure in variety. For you see that we find other words than those which stand for the names of festivals declined in this way, as is clear from the reference that I have made to the existence of such forms as viridiorum, vectigalio- rum, and anciliorum. [14] What is more, I find even the names of festivals declined according to rule in old writers; for Varro says that the day of the Feralia (Feralium) takes its name from the prac- tice of carrying (ferendis) dishes of food to the tombs—he did not say Feraliorum—and elsewhere he uses the form Floralium, not Floraliorum, in a passage referring not to the Floral Games (Ludi Florales) but to the festival of the Floralia itself. [15] Masurius, too, in the second Book of his Calendar says: “The day of the festival of Liber (Liberalium) is called by the pontiffs the day of the “Sacrifice in Honor of Mars”; and again, in the same book, he says: “That night and the day which immediately follows it, which is the day of the Festival of the Groves,” using the form Lucarium, not Lucariorum (just as many authors have said Liberalium, not Liberaliorum) .
[16] We must conclude, therefore, that the old writers allowed
a Vergil, Aeneid. 7. 188.
42 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
themselves freedom to vary inflections and would say, for example, both exanimos and exanimes, inermos and inermes, hilaros and hilares; so that it is certainly permissible to say both Saturnalium and Saturnaliorum, the former having the support of the grammat- ical rule as well as of precedent, the latter relying on precedent alone—although the precedents are many.
[17] As for the rest of the words which struck our friend Avienus as strange, we have the evidence of old writers to defend their use. Ennius—unless someone thinks that the more polished elegance of our age requires one to reject him—has combined the words noctu and concubia in the following lines:
And on that night, at the time of sleep (qua ... noctu ...
concubia), the Gauls by stealth attacked the citadel’s topmost
walls, surprised the sentries, and cut them down.? [18] And in this passage it should be observed that the poet has not only said noctu concubia, but he has used the expression qua noctu as well. This was in the seventh Book of the Annals; in the third Book the same usage appeared more clearly still, in the line:
This night (bac noctu) the fate of all Etruria will hang by a
thread.3 Claudius Quadrigarius, too, in the third Book of his Annals writes: “The Senate, however, met by night (de nocte), but it was late at night (noctu multa) that they broke up and went home.” [19] Nor is it irrelevant, I think, at this point to remind you also that in the Twelve Tables the decemvirs, clean contrary to the accepted usage, said nox for noctu. The words are as follows: If a theft shall have been committed at night (zox), and one shall have killed him (im) [the thief], let him be held to have been lawfully killed.t And here it should be noted further that the word used for “him”—for the accusative case of is—is not eum but im.
[20] Again, our learned friend has the authority of the old writers to support his use of the expression diecrastini, for it was their custom to say sometimes diequinti and sometimes diequinte, joining the words together to serve as an adverb,’ as is clear from
2 Warmington, I, 92.
3 Warmington, I, 56.
4 Warmington, III, 482. 5 Aulus Gellius 10. 24.
BOOK I, CHAPTER 4 43
the fact that the second syllable of the double word is short, al- though the “e” of die is long by nature when the word stands alone. [21] I have said that the last syllable of this adverbial expres- sion was sometimes written -e and sometimes -i, for it was generally the custom of the old writers to end with either letter indifferently, writing, for example, praefiscine and praefiscini, or proclive and proclivi. [22] And here I am reminded of that line of Pomponius, in the Atellan farce entitled Maevia, which runs:
For three days now I have eaten nothing: on the fourth day (diequarte) I shall die of hunger. [Ribbeck, II, 284] [23] In the same way diepristine was used with the meaning die pristino {on the day before], although we now transpose the com- ponent parts and use the word pridie, as though to say pristino die. [24] I do not deny that we find die quarto in our reading of the old authors, but this expression is used with reference to something which has happened in the past and not to something in the future; for that most learned man, Gnaeus Matius, in his Mimiambs, instead of saying as we do nudius quartus for “four days ago,” says die
quarto in the lines:
It was lately, four days ago, as I recall, and he certainly broke the only pitcher in the house. [Baehrens, p. 282] The distinction then will be this: that we say die quarto when we are referring to the past, but diequarte with reference to the future.
[25] However, I would not have you think that I have over- looked the expression diecrastini, and here is an example of such usage from the second Book of the Histories of Caelius: “If I might have the cavalry now and you are prepared to follow me with the rest of the army, on the fifth day (diequinti), I shall have dinner ready for you on the Capitol at Rome.”
[26] Your Caelius, remarked Symmachus, took both the story and the expression diequinti from the Origins of Marcus Cato, who wrote: “And so the commander of the cavalry gave the Carthagi- nian general this advice: ‘Send the cavalry with me to Rome and on the fifth day (diequinti) dinner shall be ready for you on the Capitol.’* [27] And I think, added Praetextatus, some further proof of the old usage is to be found in the words with which the praetor,
_® The reference is to the advice given to Hannibal by Maharbal, to march on Rome after the battle of Cannae (Livy 22. 51).
44 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
in accordance with the custom of our ancestors, regularly proclaims the rest day called the Compitalia. The words are these: “On the ninth day (dienoni) the Roman People, the Quirites, will celebrate the Compitalia.”
CHAPTER 5
[1] Curius, Fabricius, and Coruncanius of old, said Avienus, looking at Servius, and that famous triple band of brothers, too, the Horatii, who belong to a still earlier age, talked clearly and intelli- gibly with their fellows, using the language of their own day and not that of the Aurunci or Sicani or Pelasgi, who men say were the first inhabitants of Italy. But you, Servius, might as well be conversing now with Evander’s mother, in seeking to recall for our use words which became obsolete many generations ago; and, what is more, you have summoned in support of this medley of expres- sions a number of distinguished persons whose memories were stocked with the fruits of their constant reading. [2] You, my friends, all proclaim that you find pleasure in antiquity because of the honesty, sobriety, and moderation of those times. Very well then; let us show in our lives the manners of the past but speak in the language of our own day. For I always remember and take to heart what Gaius Caesar, that man of outstanding genius and wis- dom, wrote in the first Book of his treatise On Grammatical Anal- ogy: “I should avoid,” he said, “a rare and unusual word as I would a rock.”! [3] After all, continued Avienus, there is a thousand of such words (mille verborum talium est) which, although they were - used frequently, on good authority, long ago, have by later ages been, as it were, discharged from service and discarded.? I could give plenty of instances of these words now, were not the approach
1 Aulus Gellius 1. 10; John of Salisbury 8. 10 (748c).
2 For examples of such use by Macrobius of the genitive case after mille, see below: 5. 14. 7.(mille talium vocabulorum) and 5. 16. 7 (mille sententiarum talium) .
46 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
of night a warning that we must presently be going our several ways.
[4] Hush, pray, said Praetextatus with characteristic earnestness, let us not so far forget ourselves as to do harm to the respect that is due to antiquity, the mother of the arts. Indeed you go far to betray your love for what is old in your attempt to dissemble that love, for your expression “There is a thousand of words” has an odor of antiquity about it. [5] It is true that Cicero in his speech on behalf of Milo? has left us this passage: “Before Clodius’s estate, that estate on which, thanks to those extravagant basements, fully a thousand of able-bodied men was employed”—not “were em- ployed,” the usual reading in the inferior manuscripts—and in his sixth Philippic* he says: “Who was ever found in that Janus> who would credit Lucius Antonius with a thousand of sesterces?” And it is true that Varro too, a contemporary of Cicero, in the seven- teenth Book of his Human Antiquities has written: “It is more than a thousand and one hundred of years.” Nevertheless in using this construction Cicero and Varro have only relied on the authority of their predecessors, [6] for Quadrigarius in the third Book of his Annals wrote: “There a thousand of men is killed,” and Lucilius in the third Book of his Satires has the line:
From gate to harbor is a thousand [of paces], six thence to
Salernum.® [7] Indeed, in another passage Lucilius has even declined mille, for in the fifteenth Book he says:
No jolting Campanian steed, although it has beaten this horse
in a run of a thousand of paces, or two thousand (milli passum
atque duobus), will keep up with him over a longer distance but will look as if he were going the other way? and likewise in the ninth Book he says:
3 Pro Milone 20. 53. See also Aulus Gellius 1. 16.
46. 5. 15.
5 Cicero is referring to the medius [middle] lanus as the place, in or near the Forum, where banking and moneylending business was carried on at Rome. References are found, e.g., in Cicero, Horace, and Livy, to three lani (summus, medius, and imus). These are generally held to have been square archways, or “thoroughfares” (transitiones perviae), with rooms above, but they may have been three parts of a continuous arcade.
€ Warmington, III, 38. 7 Warmington, III, 162.
BOOK 1, CHAPTER 5 47
You with but one thousand of sesterces (milli nummum) can
gain a hundred [thousand].8 [8] In saying milli passum for mille passibus and milli nummum for mille nummis Lucilius has shown clearly that mille is a noun, is used in the singular number, has an ablative case, and that its plural is milia. [9] For mille does not stand for the Greek yidta but for Xia, and just as one can say one yiMàç and two yihMtáðeç, so the old writers, following a definite and regular principle, used to say unum mille and duo milia.®
[10] But tell me, Avienus, continued Praetextatus, when it comes to voting on the use of words, would you disfranchise those learned men whom Cicero and Varro were proud to imitate, and would you thrust them from the bridge*® as though they were old men in their sixties?
[11] Well, he added, we might go on to say more about this, did not the lateness of the hour require us to part—although I am as sorry to see you go as you are to go. But what are your wishes for tomorrow? Most people spend the day in games of backgammon and draughts. I suggest, however, that we spend it from early morning until dinnertime in such sober conversation as that in which we have been engaged. And at dinner, too, instead of indulging in heavy drinking and lavish dishes, I suggest that we pass the time decently in learned inquiries and in exchange of informa- tion from our place at table. [12] If we do so, we shall find the rest days more productive of good than all our workaday business, for we shall not, as the saying goes, just be allowing our minds to unbend—Musonius, you know, says loosening (remittere) your mind is like losing (amittere) it—but the charm of pleasant and improving talk will afford our minds a measure of soothing relaxa-
3 Warmington, III, 112.
® Aulus Gellius 1. 16. 8.
10 The “bridges” (pontes) were the narrow gangways leading from the en- closures in which the tribes or centuries assembled to vote up to the tribunal of the presiding magistrate (cf. Cicero De legibus 3. 17. 38). There was, how- ever, a popular belief that, of old, men over sixty years of age used to be thrown from a bridge into the Tiber and drowned, whence the proverb sexagenarios de ponte and the application of the term depontani to men in their sixties.
11 Or: “in exchanging accounts of what we have read (ex lecto).”
48 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
tion.2 If such is your pleasure, you will win the warmest approval of my household gods by meeting here.
[13] No one, replied Symmachus, at any rate no one who regards himself as a not unworthy member of this company, will refuse to accept the proposed meeting or its president. But, to complete the party, I move that we invite these others to join us and dine with us: Flavianus, who has proved that he has surpassed that admirable man Venustus, his father, by the distinction of his character and the dignity of his life no less than by the abundance and depth of his learning; and with him Postumianus, who adds to the renown of the bar by the high reputation of his pleading, and Eustathius, a man so proficient in every branch of philosophy as by himself to take for us the place of those three gifted philosophers who were the boast of our predecessors. [14] And here I refer, of course, to those famous men whom the Athenians once sent as envoys to the Senate, to seek the remission of a fine of some five hundred talents which had been imposed on their city for the sack of Oropus.% [15] They were the philosophers Carneades of the Academy, Diogenes the Stoic, and Critolaus the Peripatetic, each of whom, we are told, lectured separately before a large crowd in the most frequented parts of Rome to display his ability. [16] The eloquence of Carneades is said to have been forcible and vehement, that of Critolaus adroit and well-turned, that of Diogenes restrained and sober; nevertheless, when they appeared before the Senate, they engaged the senator Caelius't to act as an interpreter. But our friend Eustathius, who has studied the doctrines of every schoo]— choosing to follow those that are most susceptible of proof—and combines in himself all the styles of speech that those Greeks dis- played, is so competent to act among us as his own interpreter that it would be impossible to say in which tongue he would discourse with the greater ease and elegance—in Greek or in Latin.
[17] The proposal made by Quintus Aurelius, to invite the companions suggested, met with general approval; and, this decision reached, the guests, all taking leave of Praetextatus first and then of each other, returned to their several homes.
12 Aulus Gellius 18. 2. 1.
18 Aulus Gellius 6. 14. See also Nettleship, Lectures and Essays, p. 50. 14 G. Acilius? See Aulus Gellius 6. 14.
CHAPTER 6
[1] On the next day, as they had agreed the day before, all came early in the morning to the house of Vettius Praetextatus, who was waiting for them in the library. [2] This, said he as he received them, I see will be a famous day for me; for you are here, and those whom we decided to ask to be of our company have also promised to come—ali except Postumianus, who felt that he ought rather to be getting up his briefs. But when he declined the invitation, I asked the rhetorician Eusebius in his place, a shining example of the learning and eloquence of Greece. And I have suggested to all that they should give us the pleasure of their company from daybreak; since no public business would properly be carried on today, a day on which you certainly will not see anybody wearing formal dress, whether civil dress or military (togatus, trabeatus, paludatus, prae- textatus) .
[3] You refer, Praetextatus, to the words used to describe dif- ferent kinds of dress, said Avienus, interrupting, as was his way, and you mention a name which Rome and I revere—your own. It occurs to me therefore to ask a question which will not, I think, seem absurd; for, since neither the toga nor the trabea nor the paludamentum has given rise to the formation of a proper name, why, pray, has the usage of old times led to such occurrence only in the case of the praetexta; or else what is the origin of your name?
[4] While Avienus was speaking, in came Flavianus and Eusta- thius, a pair well known for their friendship, and shortly afterward Eusebius. Their arrival added to the life of the gathering, and after an exchange of greetings they sat down, asking, as they did so, what the discussion on which they had chanced was about. [5] You have come in the nick of time, said Vettius, for I was looking for some-
1 Cf. Martial 6. 24.
50 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
one to take my part. Our friend Avienus is raising the question of my name and is demanding to know its origin—for all the world as if proof of parentage were required of it. No one bears the name “Togatus” or “Trabeatus or “Paludatus,” and so he asks us for an explanation why “Praetextatus” is used as a proper name. [6] The temple door at Delphi bore the inscription “Know Thyself,” and this is also a maxim of one of the Seven Sages. What an ignoramus then I must be thought to be, if I am ignorant of my own name! And so I must now tell of its origin and how I come to bear it.
[7] Tullus Hostilius, the third king of the Romans, was the first to introduce the use at Rome of the curule chair, lictors, and the toga picta, and toga praetexta: it was after his conquest of the Etruscans, for whose magistrates they were the insignia of office. At that time children used not to wear the praetexta? because, as the other attributes which I have mentioned, the dress marked the holding of a public office. [8] Afterward, however, Tarquinius Priscus (son of the Corinthian exile, Demaratus) who, some say, was called Lucumo—he was third4 after Hostilius and the fifth after Romulus to reign at Rome—celebrated a triumph over the Sabines; and, since in that war his son, a Jad of fourteen years, had killed one of the enemy with his own hand, he made a public speech in the boy’s honor and presented him with an amulet (bulla) of gold and a purple-bordered toga praetexta, to show by rewards indicative of manliness and office that the lad had displayed a courage beyond his years. [9] For just as the toga praetexta was worn by a magistrate, so it was the custom for a victorious general to wear on his breast at his triumph an amulet containing charms believed to be of the greatest potency against the evil eye. [10] This then is the origin of the custom by which boys of noble birth came to wear the praetexta and the bulla as a presage of, and a prayer for, manliness like that of him who first received these rewards while yet a boy.
[11] According to other authorities, when that same Priscus with the shrewdness of a farseeing ruler was organizing the citizens in
2 Originally the garb of royalty, later the embroidered toga worn by a vic- torious commander at his triumph (purple, embroidered with gold and inter- woven with golden stars; see Appian Romana Historia 8.66; Suetonius Nero 25).
3 Girls as well as boys wore the praetexta in childhood. See Propertius 4. 11. 33. See also Fowler, Essays, p. 42.
4 Reckoned inclusively.
BOOK I, CHAPTER 6 51
classes, he considered that the dress of the free-born boys was also a matter of first importance. And he therefore ordained that boys of patrician birth should wear a golden bulla with a purple-bordered toga, provided that their fathers had held a curule office, [12] the rest of these boys being allowed the use of the praetexta only, such use being subject to a provision that their fathers had served in the cavalry as prescribed by law. Sons of freedmen, however, had no right to the praetexta; still less had resident aliens, since these last had no relationship with the citizens of Rome. [13] But afterward the right to wear the praetexta was granted to the sons of freedmen also, for the following reason which Marcus Laelius, the augur, relates. He says that during the second Punic War, in consequence of a number of portents, the duumvirs [recte decemvirs],° pursuant to a decree of the Senate, consulted the Sibylline Books and, after inspection of the books, proclaimed a day of public prayer to be held on the Capitol and the provision of a feast for the gods from the proceeds of a collection of alms to which freedwomen with the right to wear the long robe® were also permitted to contribute. [14] Prayers were offered by boys, both free-born and sons of freedmen, and a hymn was sung by maidens who had both parents living. Subsequently, sons of freedmen, too, provided that they had been born of lawfully wedded mothers, were allowed to wear the toga praetexta, but in place of the honor of a golden amulet they wore a bulla of leather round their necks.
[15] Verrius Flaccus tells of a reply received from an oracle to the effect that a plague raging at Rome was due to the fact that men were “looking down on the gods.”? The reply caused dismay in the city, for it was not understood. But on the day of the Games in the Circus a boy happened to be looking down on the procession from an upper room and told his father the order in which he had seen the sacred and secret objects arranged in the coffer on the car. The father reported the incident to the Senate, and they resolved that the route along which the procession passed should be screened. So the plague ceased; and the boy who had solved the riddle of the oracle received the right to wear the toga praetexta as a reward.
5 See 1. 17. 29, below. Cf. Livy 22. 1 and 27. 37. See also Fraenkel, Horace, 807. i ê The “long robe” was a mark of a woman of good character; cf. Horace
Satires 1. 2. 29. 7 Cf. Aristophanes Nubes 226.
52 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
[16] Learned antiquaries relate that at the time of the rape of the Sabine women, one (named Hersilia) was carried off clinging to her daughter and was given by Romulus to be the wife of a certain Hostus, a man of outstanding valor who had come from Latium to the place of refuge set up by Romulus at Rome. She was the first of the Sabine women to give birth to a child, a son, to whom, as the first to be born in a foreign land (in hostico), she gave the name of Hostus Hostilius. Romulus, too, honored the boy with a golden bulla and the distinction of the praetexta; for the story goes that, when Romulus called the Sabine women together to console them for their capture, he promised to confer a signal honor on the child whose mother was the first to bear a citizen of his city of Rome.
[17] Some believe that free-born boys were allowed to wear the heart-shaped figure of the bulla on the breast, in order that the sight of this figure might remind them that excellence of heart was needed to make them men; and that the further gift of the toga praetexta was made to the end that the blush of the purple might teach them to order their lives with a modesty befitting their free birth.
[18] I have spoken of the origin of the praetexta, and I have also given the reasons for supposing that it was granted as a badge of childhood. I must now briefly explain how it came about that the name for this kind of dress passed into use as a proper name.® [19] It was formerly the custom for Senators, when they went to the House, to be accompanied by sons who were still wearing the praetexta. One day, when the discussion of a matter of considerable importance had been adjourned to the morrow, it was resolved that no one should refer to the subject of the debate until a decision had been reached. [20] The mother of a young Papirius, who had been with his father in the Senate, asked her son what business had come before the House, but the boy replied that the business was secret and might not be mentioned. This made the woman all the more eager to hear about it, for the secrecy of the matter and the boy’s silence provoked her curiosity, and she therefore questioned him more closely and more urgently. [21] Then, because of his mother’s insistence, the boy had recourse to a neat and humorous falsehood: the question debated was, he said, whether the advantage
8 Aulus Gellius 1. 23.
BOOK I, CHAPTER 6 53
and interest of the state would be better served by one man having two wives or one woman two husbands. [22] On hearing this, the woman was filled with alarm and hurriedly left the house to carry the news to the other wives. Next day the matrons of Rome flocked in great crowds to the Senate, begging with tears and entreaties that one woman should be married to two men rather than two women to one man. [23] The Senators, as they entered the House, were amazed at the unrestrained behavior of the women and were at a loss to know the meaning of their demand, for such a mad and unseemly departure from the natural modesty of the sex seemed to presage some disaster, and they were disquieted. [24] But the general dismay was relieved when the young Papirius stepped forward and told the House all that had happened—what his mother had insisted on hearing and his own fictitious reply. [25] The Senate warmly commended the lad’s loyalty and ingenuity but resolved that in the future boys should not be admitted to the House with their fathers, an exception being made in favor of the young Papirius alone, who was honored subsequently by decree with the surname “Praetextatus,” for the discretion he had shown, in silence and in speech, while still of age to wear the praetexta. [26] This surname afterwards remained in our family as the family name. >
- The Scipios, continued Vettius, got their name just because a Cornelius was given the surname “Scipio” [a staff] for acting as a staff to guide his blind father (another Cornelius), and from him this name passed as a surname to his descendants. So too with your friend Messala, Avienus: he derives his name from the surname which Valerius Maximus received after his capture of the famous city of Messana in Sicily. [27] And there is nothing surprising in the fact that surnames become family names, since the opposite also happens and surnames have been formed from family names— Aemilianus, for example, from Aemilius and Servilianus from Servilius.
[28] Messala and Scipio, interposed Eusebius, received their sur- names, as you say, the former for valor and the latter for filial piety, but what of Scropha and Asina? Tell us, please, the origin of these surnames, for they belong to men of no ordinary worth; and yet the names would seem to suggest an insult rather than a compliment.
54 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
[29] These names, replied Praetextatus, are neither complimen- tary nor insulting in their origin; they are the result of chance circumstances. The Cornelii were given the surname “Asina” be- cause a head of the Cornelian clan—buying some land or marrying a daughter—being required to produce the usual guarantors, brought a she-ass (asina) with a load of money to the Forum as a tangible security in their place. [30] As for Tremellius, he got the surname “Scropha” from the following incident. He was at his country estate with his children and household when his slaves stole and killed a sow (scropha) which was wandering away from a neighbor’s land. The neighbor summoned guards and surrounded the other’s whole estate, to prevent any possible removal of the animal, and then called on the master to return it to him. But Tremellius had heard from his bailiff what had happened, and so he put the dead body of the sow under some rugs on which his wife was lying and invited the neighbor to make a search. When they came to the bedroom, Tremellius swore that there was no sow in his house, “Except,” said he, pointing to the bed, “the one lying in those rugs.” And for this humorous oath he was given the surname Scropha.
CHAPTER 7
[1] While Praetextatus was recounting these anecdotes, one of the slaves, whose duty it was to admit callers, announced that Evangelus was at the door and with him Disarius, who at that time was regarded as the most distinguished of the medical profession at Rome. [2] Frowns on the faces of most of those present made it clear that they found the appearance of Evangelus disturbing and unpleasant, according ill with a quiet gathering; for he was an impudent fellow with a bitter wit and a shamelessly mordant tongue, who cared nothing for the dislike which his provocative language, directed against friend and foe alike, used to stir up against him everywhere. Praetextatus, however, with the unruffled kindliness which he showed to all alike, gave orders to admit the visitors and sent to meet them. [3] Horus too, who had been just behind, came in with them, a man whose mind matched his body in strength, for after countless victories as a boxer he had taken up the study of philosophy and, as a follower of Antisthenes, Crates, and Diogenes himself, was of no little repute among the Cynics.
[4] Finding himself in the. presence of a large and distinguished company who rose as he entered, Evangelus said: Is it just chance that has brought all these gentlemen to your house, Praetextatus, or have you met deliberately to consider some matter of impor- tance which called for the absence of witnesses? If that is so—and I think it is—I shall go away rather than meddle with your secrets; for I shall be glad to keep clear of them, although, as ill Juck will have it, I have blundered upon them.
[5] Vettius, who for all his unfailing forbearance, serenity, and strength of character was somewhat put out by this impudent ques- tion, replied: [6] If you had given a thought to the conspicuous integrity of these men, or to me, you would not suppose that we
5 6 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
were sharing any secret which could not be disclosed to you or, for that matter, to all the world. For I have not forgotten—and I am sure that all here know well—that hallowed precept of philoso- phy: “Speak with your fellow men as though in the hearing of the gods and with the gods as though in the hearing of your fellow men.”! The second half of this precept forbids us to ask anything of the gods, if it were unbecoming to admit to our fellows the wish to have it. [7] But as a matter of fact we have met in honor of the sacred rest days, and it is our intention to avoid idleness and to put the leisure afforded by them to good use by spending the whole day in learned conversation, to which each of us is to con- tribute his share. [8] For if, during the celebration of a sacred festival, no religious ordinance forbids us to scour a watercourse, and if the laws of gods and men allow us to dip our sheep then to keep them healthy,? surely we may be held to show respect for religion if we devote to the hallowed study of literature days that are appointed to be kept holy. [9] But since, by the grace of some god, you and your companions, Evangelus, have also come to be of our company, let us prevail upon you all, if it is your pleasure, to pass the day with us and share our talk and our table. In making this request I feel sure that I have the concurrence of all present here today.
[10] To be sure, replied Evangelus, it is not considered bad form to turn up uninvited at a discussion, but to gate-crash a dinner party prepared for others* is mentioned with disapproval by Homer,! although the offender then was a brother, and, if a great king received only one Menelaus, beware lest it be thought unduly presumptuous on your part to have three.
[11] Then all supported Praetextatus and begged and in a friend- ly manner invited the new arrivals to join them, addressing them- selves most often and most pressingly to Evangelus, but without overlooking those who had come in with him.
[12] I take it, said Evangelus, mollified by the unanimity of the request, I take it that you are all acquainted with the book by Varro—one of his Menippean satires—called You Never Can Tell
1 Cf. Seneca Epistulae to. 5.
2 Cf. 1. 16. 12 and 3. 3. 10-12.
3 John of Salisbury 8. 7 (731d).
4 Iliad 2. 408; cf. Plato Symposium 174c.
BOOK 1, CHAPTER 7 57
What the Evening Has in Store for You? In it he lays down the rule that the number of diners should not be less than the number of the Graces nor more than the number of the Muses.® But here, not counting the master of the feast, I see that there are as many of you as there are Muses.6 So why seek to add to a perfect number?
[13] Your presence will confer this benefit on us, replied Vettius, that our full member will then equal that of the Muses and the Graces together; and it is meet that the Graces attend a feast in honor of the chief of all the gods.
When all were seated, Horus turning to Avienus, with whom he was on the most friendly terms, said: [14] In this worship of Saturn, whom you call the chief of the gods, your ceremonies differ from those of that most devout of people, the Egyptians; for they had admitted neither Saturn nor Serapis himself to the secret places of their temples until after the death of Alexander of Mace- don, when pressure by their despotic rulers the Ptolemies com- pelled them to accept the cult of these gods, after the manner of the inhabitants of Alexandria, who used to hold them in special reverence. [15] Nevertheless, in obeying the royal command, the Egyptians were careful not altogether to violate their religious observances; for the law of their religion required them to propi- tiate the gods with prayers and incense only, never with the blood of beasts, whereas it was the custom to sacrifice victims to these two newcomers. They therefore placed the temples of Saturn and Serapis outside a city’s boundary, in order that they might worship them with the blood of the appointed sacrifice without defiling the city’s temples by the killing of beasts. That is why no town in Egypt has admitted a shrine of either of these two gods within its walls. [16] And I hear that you have accepted one of them with reservation and indeed with reluctance, although you worship the other, Saturn, with greater honors than are paid to any of the rest of the gods. If, then, there is nothing to prevent my knowing it, please let me hear why this is so.
[17] All here are equally competent and learned, Avienus replied and added (with intent to leave it to Praetextatus to answer the question asked): but Vettius has special knowledge of everything
5 Aulus Gellius 13. 11; John of Salisbury 8. 10 (7480). € The nine present include Praetextatus.
5 8 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
that relates to religious ceremonies and he can tell you the origin of the reverence paid to Saturn and reveal the reason for the customary festival.
Praetextatus at first tried to refer the question to the others but yielded to a general demand that he should deal with it himself, [18] and, as silence fell, he began as follows: The laws of religion, he said, allow me to disclose the origin of the festival of the Saturnalia so far as the account of its origin is a matter of myth- ology or is made known to all by the physicists. But of the secret nature of the deity I may not treat, for it is not permissible even at the sacred rites themselves to tell of the hidden principles which flow from the fountain of pure truth, and whoever attains to knowledge of them is bidden to keep such knowledge locked in his breast. Our friend Horus, then, may join with me in a survey of the origin of all that may properly be made known.
[19] According to Hyginus, who has followed Protarchus of Tralles, Janus ruled over the country now called Italy, and he and Cameses, who was also a native of it, held the land in joint sover- eignty, the country being called Camesene and the town Janiculum. [20] Later the kingdom passed to Janus alone.
Janus is believed to have had two faces and so could see before him and behind his back—a reference, no doubt, to the foresight and shrewdness of the king, as one who not only knew the past but would also foresee the future, just as Antevorta and Postvorta are worshipped at Rome as deities most fittingly associated with divina- tion.”
[21] When Saturn arrived by ship, Janus received him here as his guest and learned from him the art of husbandry, thereby im- proving a mode of life which, before men understood how to make use of the fruits of the earth, had been brutish and rude; and he rewarded Saturn by sharing his kingdom with him. [22] Janus was also the first to strike coins of bronze, and in this too he showed his high regard for Saturn; for on one side of a coin he stamped the image of his own head but on the other side a ship, that poster- ity might preserve the remembrance of Saturn, whose coming had
7 On the functions and nature of Janus see the review by E. Gierstad of L. A. Holland’s Janus and the Bridge in Journal of Roman Studies, LIM (1963), 229.
BOOK I, CHAPTER 7 59
been by ship. And that the bronze coinage was so marked is evident even today from the game of chance in which boys throw pennies in the air, calling “heads” or “ships,” for the game bears witness to the old usage.
[23] Janus and Saturn reigned together in harmony and built two neighboring towns by their joint endeavors, as is clear not only from the line in Vergil which runs:
This fortress town the name Janiculum, that Saturnia, bore
[Aeneid 8. 358] but also from the fact that later generations dedicated two suc- cessive months to these personages, December having in it the festival of Saturn and January embodying the name of Janus.
[24] It was during their reign that Saturn suddenly disappeared, and Janus then devised means to add to his honors. First he gave the name Saturnia to all the land which acknowledged his rule; and then he built an altar, instituting rites as to a god and calling these rites the Saturnalia—a fact which goes to show how very much older the festival is than the city of Rome. And it was because Saturn had improved the conditions of life that, by order of Janus, religious honors were paid to him, as his effigy indicates, which received the additional attribute of a sickle, the symbol of harvest.
[25] Saturn is credited with the invention of the art of grafting, with the cultivation of fruit trees, and with instructing men in every- thing that belongs to the fertilizing of the fields. Furthermore, at Cyrene his worshipers, when they offer sacrifice to him, crown themselves with fresh figs and present each other with cakes, for they hold that he discovered honey and fruits. Moreover, at Rome men call him “Sterculius,” as having been the first to fertilize the fields with dung (stercus). [26] His reign is said to have been a time of great happiness, both on account of the universal plenty that then prevailed and because as yet there was no division into bond and free—as one may gather from the complete license enjoyed by slaves at the Saturnalia.
[27] Another tradition accounts for the Saturnalia as follows. Hercules is said to have left men behind him in Italy, either (as certain authorities hold) because he was angry with them for neglecting to watch over his herds or (as some suppose), deliberate- ly, to protect his altar and temple from attacks. Harassed by brigands, these men occupied a high hill and called themselves
60 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
Saturnians, from the name which the hill too used previously to bear, and, conscious of the protection afforded to them by the name of Saturn and by the awe which the god inspired, they are said to have instituted the Saturnalia, to the end that the very observance of the festival thus proclaimed might bring the uncouth minds of their neighbors to show a greater respect for the worship of the god.
[28] I am aware too of the account given by Varro of the origin of the Saturnalia. The Pelasgians, he says, when they were driven from their homes, made for various lands, but most of them flocked to Dodona and, doubtful where to settle, consulted the oracle. They received this reply: “Go ye in search of the land of the Sicels and the Aborigines, a land, sacred to Saturn, even Cotyle, where floateth an island. Mingle with these people and then send a tenth to Phoebus and offer heads to Hades and a man to the Father.” 8 Such was the response which they received, and after many wanderings they came to Latium, where in the lake of Cutilia they found a floating? island, [29] for there was a large expanse of turf—perhaps solidified mud or perhaps an accumulation of marsh land with brushwood and trees forming a luxuriant wood—and it was drifting through the water by the movement of the waves in such a way as to win credence even for the tale of Delos, the island which, for all its lofty hills and wide plains, used to journey through the seas from place to place. [30] The discovery of this marvel showed the Pelasgians that here was the home foretold for them. And, after having driven out the Sicilian inhabitants, they took possession of the land, dedicating a tenth of the spoil to Apollo, in accordance with the response given by the oracle, and raising a little shrine to Dis and an altar to Saturn, whose festival they named the Saturnalia.
[31] For many years they thought to propitiate Dis with human heads and Saturn with the sacrifice of men, since the oracle had bidden them: “Offer heads to Hades and a man (@@ta) to the Father.” But later, the story goes, Hercules, returning through Italy with the herds of Geryon, persuaded their descendants to replace these unholy sacrifices with others of good omen, by offering to Dis little masks cleverly fashioned to represent the human face, instead of human heads, and by honoring the altars of
8 Dionysius of Halicarnassus Antiquitates Romanae 1. 15 and 19; Pliny Epistulae 8. 20. ® Reading enantem.
BOOK 1, CHAPTER 7 61
Saturn with lighted candles instead of with the blood of a man; for the word ọõta means “lights” as well as “a man.” [32] This is the origin of the custom of sending round wax tapers during the Saturnalia, although others think that the practice is derived simply from the fact that it was in the reign of Saturn that we made our way, as though to the light, from a rude and gloomy existence to a knowledge of the liberal arts. [33] I should add, however, that I have found it written that, since many through greed made the Saturnalia an excuse to solicit and demand gifts from their clients, a practice which bore heavily on those of more slender means, one Publicius, a tribune, proposed to the people that no one should send anything but wax tapers to one richer than himself.
[34] I find, Praetextatus, interposed Albinus Caecina, a substi- tuted sacrifice, such as that which you have just mentioned, made in later times at the rites of the Compitalia, when games used to be held at crossroads throughout the city, that is to say, on the restora- tion of these games by Tarquinius Superbus, in honor of the Lares and of Mania, in accordance with an oracle of Apollo. For that oracle ordained that offering should be made “for heads with heads,” [35] and for some time the ritual required the sacrifice of boys to the goddess Mania, the mother of the Lares, to insure the safety of the family. But after the expulsion of Tarquinius, Junius Brutus, as consul, determined to change the nature of the sacrificial rite. By his order heads of garlic and poppies were used at the rite, so that the oracle was obeyed, in so far as it had prescribed “heads,” and a criminal and unholy sacrifice was discarded.*° It also became the practice to avert any peril that threatened a particular family by hanging up woolen" images before the door of the house. As for the games themselves, they were customarily called “Compitalia” from the crossroads (compita) at which they were held. But I inter- rupted you. Pray go on.
[36] You have referred, said Praetextatus, to a parallel instance of a change for the better in the ritual of a sacrifice. The point is well taken and well timed. But from the reasons adduced touching
10 Cf. the story told by Ovid (Fasti 3. 339), how Numa cheated Jupiter of a human sacrifice. See also Plutarch Numa 15. So too Vulcan accepted an of- fering of fish in the place of human victims (pisciculi pro animis humanis); Festus, p. 276.
11 Reading laneae. Cf. Festus, p. 273: pilae et effigies viriles et muliebres ex lana Conpitalibus suspendebantur in conpitis.
62 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
the origin of the Saturnalia it appears that the festival is of greater antiquity than the city of Rome, for in fact Lucius Accius™ in his Annals says that its regular observance began in Greece before the foundation of Rome. [37] Here are the lines:
In most of Greece, and above all at Athens, men celebrate in honor of Saturn a festival which they always call the festival of Cronos. The day is kept a holiday, and in country and in town all usually hold joyful feasts, at which each man waits on his own slaves. And so it is with us. Thus from Greece that custom has been handed down, and slaves dine with their masters at that time.
12 Warmington, II, 590.
CHAPTER 8
[1] We must now say a few words about the temple of Saturn itself, I find it recorded that Tullus Hostilius, after two triumphs over the Albans and a third over the Sabines, consecrated a shrine to Saturn in fulfillment of a vow and that the festival of the Saturnalia was then first instituted at Rome; although Varro in his sixth book,! which deals with sacred buildings, writes that King Lucius Tarquinius contracted for the building of a temple of Saturn in the Forum, but that it was the dictator Titus Larcius who dedicated it during the Saturnalia. I am aware too that in the writings of Gellius? we are told that a temple of Saturn was built by decree of the Senate and that Lucius Furius, a military tribune, was put in charge of the work.
[2] The god also has an altar in front of the Senaculum, and the rites are performed there with head uncovered, in conformity with the Greek use, because it is thought that such was the original practice, first of the Pelasgians and afterwards of Hercules.
[3] The Romans made the temple of Saturn the public treasury; because it is said that, while the god lived in Italy, no theft was committed within his borders; or else because, under him, nobody held any private property, but
It was impious to mark out the ground or part the field with
boundary stone; men garnered for the common store,
[Vergil Georgics 1. 126] so that the common wealth of the people would properly be placed
1 Presumably of his Antiquitates rerum divinarum. . 2 Gnaeus Gellius, a contemporary of the Gracchi and the author of a his- tory of Rome.
64 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
in the temple of the god under whose rule all men had all things in common.
[4] Nor must I omit to mention the horn-blowing Tritons placed on the gable of the temple of Saturn, to show that from the time of this commemoration of the god up to our own day history is, as it were, to be seen by our eyes and heard by our ears; whereas before that time it was unheard, unseen, and unknown, as witness the Tritons’ tails, buried in the ground and hidden from view.
[5] Saturn, too, is represented with his feet tied together, and, although Verrius Flaccus says that he does not know the reason, my reading of Apollodorus suggests an explanation. Apollodorus says that throughout the year Saturn is bound with a bond of wool but is set free on the day of his festival, that is to say, in this present month of December. And he finds in this practice the origin of the proverb “The gods have feet of wool”—the story in fact signifying the growth to full life, in the tenth month, of the seed which has been kept alive in the womb and which, until it issues into the light of day, is confined in nature’s gentle bonds.
[6] Moreover, Saturn, as Cronus, is identified with Time (ypdovos). For just as the mythographers in their fables give divergent ac- counts of the god, so the physicists to some extent recall a true picture of him. Thus it is said that Saturn, having cut off the privy parts of his father, Heaven, threw them into the sea and that from them Venus was born and received the name Aphrodite from the foam [&ppdc] out of which she was formed—[7] a myth from which we are meant to understand that, while chaos lasted, times and seasons did not exist, since time has fixed measurements and those are determined by the revolution of the heavens. Cronus then is held to be the son of Heaven, and he, as we said a moment ago, is Time.® [8] And since the seeds of all things which were to be created after the heavens flowed from the heavens and since all the elements which could comprise the complete universe drew their origin from those seeds, it followed that, when the universe had been provided with all its parts and membérs, then, at a fixed point in time, the process whereby seeds from the heavens caused the elements of the universe to be conceived came to an end, inasmuch as the creation of those elements had now been com- pleted. However, the power of generating an everlasting succession
3 Cicero De natura deorum 2.25. 64.
BOOK 1, CHAPTER 8 65
of living creatures passed from the heavenly fluid to Venus, so that thereafter all things were created by the intercourse of male and female.
[9] It is the myth of his assault on his father that has also led our authorities to call the god Saturnus, deriving the name from the Greek word o40n, which means the male member, as though to say “Sathunnus”; and, since Satyrs are prone to lewdness, this name is thought to have the same derivation and to stand for “Sathuni.” As for the god’s attribute of a sickle,‘ it is held by some to indicate that time reaps, cuts off, and cuts short all things.
[10] It is said that Saturn used to swallow his children® and vomit them forth again, a myth likewise pointing to an identifica- tion of the god with time, by which all things in turn are created, destroyed, and brought to birth again. [11] His deposition by his son indicates, simply, that as times grow old they are superseded by the times that succeed them. His bonds point to the fact that all periods of time are by an immutable law of nature interconnected, or else to the fact that [the stalks of] all the fruits of the field are made up of cord-like substances and knots alternately arranged. [12] And the legends which relate that his sickle fell to earth in Sicily would suggest that this land is of all lands the most fertile.
4 See Hesiod Theogony 173-200; Ausonius Eclogarium 23. 36; Ovid Ibis 216. 5 See Hesiod Theogony 459.
CHAPTER 9
[1] I have reminded you that Janus reigned in company with Saturn, and I have just set out the opinions which the myth- ographers and the physicists hold about Saturn. I shall now proceed to set forth also the theories propounded by each of these authori- ties about Janus.
[2] The mythographers say that, when Janus was king, every man’s house was sacred and inviolable and that for the protection thus afforded divine honors were decreed for him, the entrances into and exits from a house being dedicated to him in gratitude for his favor. [3] Xenon, too, relates in the first book of his Italian Antiquities that in Italy Janus was the first to build temples to the gods and to ordain religious ceremonies and that for this he was rewarded with the privilege of being for all time the first to be called on by name at a sacrifice. [4] Moreover, some think that he has received the epithet of “two-faced” because of his knowledge of the past and foreknowledge of the future.
[5] The physicists on the other hand produce strong evidence for his divinity. For there are some who identify Janus with Apollo and Diana and maintain that he combines in himself the divine attributes of both. [6] Indeed, as Nigidius, too, relates, Apollo is worshiped among the Greeks under the name of “the God of the Door” (Thyraios), and they pay honors at altars to him before their doors, showing thereby that he has power over their going out and their coming in. Among the Greeks Apollo is also called Ayvistc “the Guardian of the Streets” (Aguieus), as presiding over the streets of a city (for in Greece the streets within a city’s boundaries are called &yviai); and to Diana, as Trivia, is assigned the rule over all roads. [7] At Rome all doorways are under the charge of Janus, as is evident from his name which is the Latin
BOOK I, CHAPTER 9 67
equivalent of the Greek Thyraios; and he is represented as carrying a key and a rod, as the keeper of all doors and a guide on every road. [8] Nigidius declared that Apollo is Janus and that Diana is Jana, that is to say, Jana with the addition of the letter “D,” which is often added to the letter “i” for the sake of euphony (as, for example, in such words as reditur, redhibetur, redintegratur, and the like).
[9] Some are of the opinion that Janus represents the sun and that his two faces (geminus) suggest his lordship over each of the two heavenly gates, since the sun’s rising opens and his setting closes the day. The fact that men call on the name Janus first when any god is worshiped is held to indicate that it is through him that access may be had to the god to whom the sacrifice is being made, and that it is as it were through his doors that he suffers the prayers of suppliants to pass to the gods. [10] Again, it is as marking his connection with the sun that an image of Janus commonly shows him expressing the number three hundred with his right hand and sixty-five with his left; for these numbers point to the measure of a year, and it is a special function of the sun to determine this measure.
[11] Others hold that Janus is the universe, that is to say, the heavens, and that the name is derived from eundo, since the universe is always in motion, wheeling in a circle and returning to itself at the point where it began. That is why Cornificius remarks, in the third book of his Derivations, “Cicero does not call the god ‘Janus’ but ‘Fanus, as though from eundo.”? [12] And it is for this reason that the Phoenicians in their sacred rites have portrayed the god in the likeness of a serpent coiled and swallowing its own tail, as a visible image of the universe which feeds on itself and returns to itself again. [13] Thus, among us too, Janus looks toward the four quarters of the world, as for example in the statue brought from Falerii. And Gavius Bassus, in his book on the gods, says that figures of Janus have two faces, since he is the doorkeeper of both heaven and hell, and that the figures are quadriform, as though to show that his greatness embraces all the regions of the world, [14] Moreover, in the ancient songs of the Salii he is hymned as the god of gods; and Marcus Messala (who was the colleague of Gnaeus
1 See Pliny Historia naturalis 34. 16. 33. 2 De natura deorum 2. 27. 67.
68 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
Domitius in the consulship and held the office of augur for fifty- five years) begins a reference to Janus, as follows: “He it is who fashions all things and guides them; he it is who in the compass of the heavens has joined together water and earth—the force which is naturally heavy and tends to fall downward to the depths below —with fire and air, which are light by nature and tend to soar to the boundless heights above; and it is this mighty power of the heavens that has united two opposing forces.”
[15] Again, in our sacred rites we invoke Janus as Janus Geminus, Janus Pater, Janus Junonius, Janus Consivius, Janus Qui- rinus, and Janus Patultius and Clusivius. [16] I have already ex- plained why we call on the god as “Geminus”; we call on him as “Pater” as the god of gods; and as “Junonius” because the beginning not only of January but of all the months is his, and Juno has authority over all the Kalends~and so it is that Varro in the fifth Book of his Antiquities of Religion writes that twelve altars, cor- responding to the twelve months, are dedicated to Janus. He is called upon as “Consivius” from conserendo, as the patron of “sowing,” that is to say, as the patron of the propagation of the human race, whose sowing and increase are of him; and he is invoked as “Quirinus,” as the lord of battles, from the spear which the Sabines call curis. Finally, we invoke him as “Patultius and Clusivius”’ because his doors are open (patent) in time of war and shut (clauduntur = cluduntur) in time of peace; and for this custom the following reason is given. [17] In the war which fol- lowed the capture of the Sabine maidens the enemy rushed to attack a certain gate (situated at the foot of the Viminal Hill and . afterward, in consequence of what occurred, known as the gate of Janus) and the Romans hurried to shut it; but, after it had been shut, the gate then opened again of its own accord. This happened a second and yet a third time; and, since the gate could not be closed, a large body of armed men stood on guard before its threshold, while the fight went on fiercely elsewhere. Suddenly a rumor spread that our troops had been routed by Tatius. [18] Whereupon the men who were guarding the approach to the gate fled in terror, and the Sabines were just about to burst in through the open gate when (so the story goes) a great stream of water came gushing in a torrent through it from the temple of Janus, and
8 Cf. Ovid Fasti 1. 129.
BOOK I, CHAPTER 9 69
large numbers of the enemy perished, either scalded by the boiling heat of the water or overwhelmed by its force and depth. It was therefore resolved to keep the doors of the temple of Janus open in time of war, as though to indicate that the god had gone forth to help the city.
So much, then, for Janus.
CHAPTER 10
[1] But to return to our account of the Saturnalia. It was held to be an offense against religion to begin a war at the time of the Saturnalia, and to punish a criminal during the days of the festival called for an act of atonement. [2] Our ancestors restricted the Saturnalia to a single day, the fourteenth before the Kalends of January, but, after Gaius Caesar had added two days to December, the day on which the festival was held became the sixteenth before the Kalends of January, with the result that, since the exact day was not commonly known—some observing the addition which Caesar had made to the calendar and others following the old usage —the festival came to be regarded as lasting for more days than one.
And yet in fact among the men of old time there were some who supposed that the Saturnalia lasted for seven days (if one may use the word “suppose” of something which has the support of competent authorities); [3] for Novius, that excellent writer of Atellan plays, says: “Long awaited they come, the seven days of the Saturnalia” [Ribbeck, II, 328]; and Mummius too, who, after Novius and Pomponius, restored the long-neglected Atellan to favor, says: “Of the many excellent institutions of our ancestors this is the best—that they made the seven days of the Saturnalia begin when the weather is coldest” [Ribbeck, II, 332].
[4] Mallius, however, says that the men who, as I have already related, had found protection in the name of Saturn and in the awe which he inspired, ordained a three-day festival in honor of the god, calling it the Saturnalia, and that it was on the authority of this belief that Augustus, in his laws for the administration of justice, ordered the three days to be kept as rest days.
[5] Masurius and others believed that the Saturnalia were held on one day, the fourteenth day before the Kalends of January, and
BOOK I, CHAPTER IÓ 71
their opinion is corroborated by Fenestella when he says that the virgin Aemilia was condemned on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of January; for, had that day been a day on which the festival of the Saturnalia was being celebrated, she could not by any means have been called on to plead, [6] and he adds that “the day was the day which preceded the Saturnalia,” and then goes on to say that “on the day after that, namely, the thirteenth day before the Kalends of January, the virgin Licinia was to plead,” thereby making it clear that the thirteenth day too was not a festival. i
[7] On the twelfth day before the Kalends of January there is a rest day in honor of the goddess Angeronia, to whom the pontiffs offer sacrifice in the chapel of Volupia. According to Verrius Flac- cus, this goddess is called Angeronia because, duly propitiated, she banishes anxiety (angores) and mental distress. [8] Masurius adds that an image of this goddess, with the mouth bound up and sealed,! is placed on the altar of Volupia, because all who conceal their pain and care find, thanks to their endurance, great joy (voluptas) at last. [9] According to Julius Modestus, however, sacrifices are offered to Angeronia because, pursuant to the fulfill- ment of a vow, she delivered the Roman people from the disease known as the quinsy (angina).
[10] The eleventh day before the Kalends of January is a rest day in honor of the Lares, for whom the praetor Aemilius Regillus in the war against Antiochus solemnly promised to provide a temple in the Campus Martius.
[11] The tenth day before the Kalends is a rest day in honor of Jupiter, called the Larentinalia. I should like to say something of this day, and here are the beliefs generally held about it.
[12] In the reign of Ancus, they say, a sacristan of the temple of Hercules, having nothing to do during the rest day challenged the god to a game of dice,? throwing for both players himself, and the stake for which they played was a dinner and the company of a courtesan. [13] Hercules won, and so the sacristan shut up Acca Larentia in the temple (she was the most notable courtesan of the
1 Cf. Pliny Historia naturalis 3. 5. 65.
2 For Hercules and the throwing of dice, see Pausanias 7. 5. 10 and Frazer’s Pausanias, IV, 173.
3 Cf. Aulus Gellius 7. 7-
72 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
time) and the dinner with her. Next day the woman let it be known that the god as a reward for her favors had bidden her take advantage of the first opportunity that came to her on her way home. [14] It so happened that, after she had left the temple, one Carutius, captivated by her beauty, accosted her, and in compliance with his wishes she married him. On her husband’s death all his estate came into her hands, and, when she died, she named the Roman people her heir. [15] Ancus therefore had her buried in the Velabrum, the most frequented part of the city, and a yearly rite was instituted in her honor, at which sacrifice was offered by a priest to her departed spirit—the rest day being dedicated to Jupiter because it was believed of old that souls are given by him and are given back to him again after death. [16] Cato, however, says that Larentia, enriched by the profits of her profession, left lands known as the Turacian, Semurian, Lintirian, and Solinian* lands to the Roman people after her death and was therefore deemed worthy of a splendid tomb and the honor of an annual service of remem- brance. [17] But Macer, in the first Book of his Histories, main- tains that Acca Larentia was the wife of Faustulus and the nurse of Romulus and Remus and that in the reign of Romulus she married a wealthy Etruscan named Carutius, succeeded to her husband’s wealth as his heir, and afterward left it to her foster child Romulus, who dutifully appointed a memorial service and a festival in her honor.
{18] One can infer, then, from all that has been said, that the Saturnalia lasted but one day and was held only on the fourteenth day before the Kalends of January; it was on this day alone that the shout of “Io Saturnalia” would be raised, in the temple of Saturn, at a riotous feast. Now, however, during the celebration of the Saturnalia, this day is allotted to the festival of the Opalia, al- though the day was first assigned to Saturn and Ops in common.
[19] Men believed that the goddess Ops was the wife of Saturn and that both the Saturnalia and the Opalia are held in this month of December because the produce of the fields and orchards are thought to be the discovery of these two deities, who, when men have gathered in the fruits of the earth, are worshiped therefore as the givers of a more civilized life. [20] Some too are of the opinion
4 Perhaps the ager Solonius to which reference is made in Livy 8. 12. 2. Cf. Cicero Epistulae ad Atticum 2. 3. 3.
BOOK I, CHAPTER IO 73
that Saturn and Ops represent heaven and earth, the name Saturn being derived from the word for growth from seed (satus), since such growth is the gift of heaven, and the name Ops being iden- tified with earth, either because it is by her bounty (ops) that life is nourished or because the name comes from the toil (opus) which is needed to bring forth the fruits of trees and fields. [21] When men make prayer to Ops they sit and are careful to touch the earth, signifying thereby that the earth is the very mother of mortals and is to be approached as such.
[22] Philochorus says that Cecrops was the first to build, in Attica, an altar to Saturn and Ops, worshiping these deities as Jupiter and Earth, and to ordain that, when crops and fruits had been garnered, the head of a household everywhere should eat thereof in company with the slaves with whom he had borne the toil of cultivating the land, for it was well pleasing to the god that honor should be paid to the slaves in consideration of their labor. And that is why we follow the practice of a foreign land and offer sacrifice to Saturn with the head uncovered.
[23] I think that we have now given abundant proof that the festival of the Saturnalia used to be celebrated on only one day, the fourteenth before the Kalends of January, but that it was afterward prolonged to last three days: first, in consequence of the days which Caesar added to the month of December, and then in pursuance of an edict of Augustus which prescribed a series of three rest days for the Saturnalia. The festival therefore begins on the sixteenth day be- fore the Kalends of January and ends on the fourteenth, which used to be the only day of its celebration.’ [24] However, the addi- tion of the feast of the Sigillaria has extended the time of general excitement and religious rejoicing to seven days.
5 See notes by Watson and by How, in their editions of select letters of Cicero, on secundis Saturnalibus (Epistulae ad Atticum 13. 52. 1).
CHAPTER 11
[1] Oh, said Evangelus, this is something that I cannot stand any longer: that our friend Praetextatus, to parade his learning and show how well he can talk, alike chose a moment ago to ascribe the practice of slaves taking meals with their masters to the cult of some god—as if, indeed, the gods would take any account of slaves or as if any sensible man would disgrace his house by keeping such low company in it—and is seeking now to refer to a religious rite the festival of the Sigillaria, the festival at which we amuse infants in arms with little masks of clay. He is regarded as a leading au- thority on matters of religion, and he makes that an excuse for bringing in the element of superstition. In fact, it would seem as if some divine law forbade us ever to disbelieve him.
[2] All shuddered at these words, but Praetextatus only smiled and said: I am quite willing, Evangelus, for you to regard me as superstitious and unworthy of credence, if I fail to give reasons to prove to you that both my statements are true. Let us speak of the slaves first. Are you joking or in earnest when you suggest that there are human beings whom the immortal gods regard as beneath their divine care and providence? Or perhaps you refuse to reckon a slave a human being? Let me tell you, then, what deep resentment was felt in heaven at the punishment of a slave.
[3] In the four hundred and seventy-fourth year after the foun- dation of Rome a certain Autronius Maximus, after flogging one of his slaves, had him fastened to a gibbet and led through the Circus before the beginning of the Games.1 This conduct angered Jupiter, and he ordered a certain Annius in a dream to inform the Senate of his displeasure at the brutal act. [4] Annius, however, concealed the matter; whereupon his son died unexpectedly, and
1 Cf. Livy 2. 36; Cicero De divinatione 1. 26. 55.
BOOK I, CHAPTER 1I 75
after a second warning, which too was disregarded, the man him- self suddenly became paralyzed. So at last, by the advice of his friends, he was carried to the Senate in a litter and told his tale. Hardly had he finished speaking when he was immediately restored to health and left the House on foot. [5] To propitiate Jupiter, therefore, a decree of the Senate and the Maenian Law added a day to those Games in the Circus, the day being called imstauraticius, not (as some suppose) from the gibbet—otavpdc in Greek—but to mark the restoration of Annius to health, for according to Varro the word instaurare is equivalent to instar novare, to renew.
[6] You see, then, Evangelus, what grave concern the greatest of the gods felt for a slave. But how do you come to have this bitter and groundless contempt for slaves, as though they were not made of and nourished by the same elements as yourself, drawing the breath of life as you do, and that from the same first principle? [7] For reflect, I pray you, that those whom you call your chattels are born in the same way as you, enjoy the same sly, live like you, and die like you. “They are slaves,” you say.? No, they are human beings. You repeat, “They are slaves.” Very well then, they are your fellow slaves, if you will but bear in mind that you are as much at the mercy of fortune as they are. You may live to see your slave a free man and he to see you a slave. How old was Hecuba when she became a slave? How old was Croesus? The mother of Darius? Diogenes? Plato himself? [8] And, after all, why do we shudder so at the word slavery? Of course a man may be a slave, but it was his destiny, and it may well be that, although he is a slave, his spirit is free. The fact that he is a slave will be to his prejudice only if I can point to someone who is not a slave. For one man is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to a desire for power; all men are slaves to hope and all to fear. Assuredly, no form of slavery is more shameful than that which is self-imposed; [9] and yet, while we spurn as a worthless wretch one bent beneath the yoke which fate has placed upon him, we refuse to tolerate any criticism of the yoke which we have put upon our own necks.
[10] You will find among slaves one whom no bribe can tempt, and again you will find a master kissing the hands of another man’s slaves in the hope of gain. I shall judge my fellow men, then, not by their lot in life but by their character, since a man’s character is
2 Seneca Epistulae 47; John of Salisbury 8. 12 (756a-757¢).
7 6 MACROBIUS: THE SATURNALIA
his gift to himself, but his status is assigned to him by chance. For just as a man is a fool who in buying a horse looks at its saddle- cloth and bridle instead of at the animal’s points, so the biggest of fools is the man who thinks that a fellow man should be judged by his clothing or by his rank (which is no more than a garment to clothe us).
[11] No, my good Evangelus, it is not only in the Forum and Senate House that you should seek a friend; look carefully, and you will find one in your home as well. All that you have to do is to show kindness and courtesy to the slave with whom you live, conversing with him and sometimes taking counsel with him as with a friend. Certainly it was that the master might never be the object of ill will nor the slave of insult that our ancestors called the master the father of the household and the slaves its members. [12] And so, take my advice; let your slaves feel respect for you rather than fear.
Perhaps someone will say that I am now degrading the master and, so to speak, emancipating the slave, in asserting, as I have, that a slave should show respect rather than fear. But to think thus will be to forget that what is enough for the gods is not too little for _ the master. Moreover, an object of respect is also an object of af- fection, and affection cannot be coupled with fear.
[13] What do you suppose was the origin of that oft-quoted and arrogant proverb which says that in every slave we possess we have an enemy? They are not our natural enemies, but we make them our enemies by the inordinate pride, insolence, and cruelty that we show toward them, when luxurious living makes us so prone to anger that to be crossed in anything leads to an outburst of violent rage. [14] For at home we assume the guise of passionate tyrants and seek to exercise over our slaves the full power permitted to us rather than to limit that power to what is fit and proper. And indeed, to say nothing of other kinds of cruelty, there are masters who, as they greedily gorge themselves with the abundance of their tables, refuse to allow the slaves who stand around them to move their lips even to speak, but every sound is checked with the rod. It may be accidental, but it does not escape the blows, and a cough, a sneeze, or a hiccup is punished with a severe thrashing. [15] That is why these slaves who may not speak before their master speak of him behind his back. But those who were free to speak not only
BOOK 1, CHAPTER II 77
in their master’s presence but also with him, whose mouths were not, so to speak, sewn up, they were found ready to lay down their lives for their master and to bring on their own heads the danger which threatened him; they would speak at table, but under torture they would hold their tongues.
[16] Would you have me review instances of the action of generous feelings in the heart of a slave? Hear, then, first, the story of Urbinus. He had been condemned to death and was in hiding on his estate at Reate, but the hiding place was betrayed. Where- upon one of his slaves, to represent him, put on his master’s ring and garments, lay down in the bedroom into which the pursuers were forcing their way, offered his neck to the swords as the soldiers entered and received the blow intended for his master. Urbinus was afterward restored to his former position and then erected a monument to the slave, with an inscription to tell the story of his devotion.
[17] Aesopus, a freedman of Demosthenes, who was privy to his late master’s adultery with Julia, was for long put to the torture but steadfastly refused to betray his patron, until Demosthenes, convicted by the evidence of others who also knew the facts, him- self confessed.
[18] That you may not argue that it is easy for one man to keep a secret, take the case of Labienus. No form of torture prevailed to make his freedmen reveal the place in which they had helped him to hide. And that none may say that the freedmen showed this loyalty out of gratitude for the gift of freedom rather than from any innate goodness of heart, let me tell you of generosity shown toward his master by a slave who had himself received punishment at that master’s hand. [19] Antius Restio had been proscribed and was fleeing, alone and by night. But, while the other slaves were plundering the man’s goods, one who had been put in irons and branded on the forehead was set free, after his master’s condemna- tion, by a compassionate stranger. This slave went in search of his fugitive master, urged him to be of good courage—for he knew, he said, that it was not his master but his own fate that should be regarded as responsible for the outrage he had suffered—hid him, and ministered to his needs. [20] Later, when he saw that the pursuers were at hand, the slave killed an old man whom he chanced to meet, built a pyre, and threw the body on it. When the
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pyre was alight, he ran to meet the men who were looking for Restio, saying that he had avenged himself on the proscribed man and had inflicted on him far crueler treatment than he had himself received from him. The slave was believed, and Restio was saved.
[21] Then there is the story of Caepio. He had been minded to kill Augustus, and, after the discovery of his crime and his subse- quent condemnation, he was conveyed by a slave to the Tiber in a chest, taken to Ostia, and brought thence by night to his father’s country house near Laurentum. Later, when the pair were ship- wrecked at Cumae, the slave hid Caepio secretly at Naples; and, when captured by a centurion, neither bribes nor threats could induce him to betray his fugitive master.
[22] When Asinius Pollio was seeking to compel the men of Padua to surrender their money and arms, they went into hiding to escape the harsh demand. A reward and their freedom were offered to any slaves who would betray their masters, but, as is well known, in no single instance was the bribe effective.
[23] Let me now tell you a story to illustrate a display not only of fidelity but also of a kindly and fertile ingenuity in slaves. At the siege of Grumentum certain slaves left their mistress and went over to the enemy. When the town had fallen, these slaves, in ac- cordance with an agreed plan, attacked their house and dragged the woman out with every appearance of threatening to wreak vengeance on her, crying out to all that met them that at last they had the chance to punish a cruel mistress. But after carrying their mistress away as though to kill her, they protected her with the greatest respect and loyalty.
[24] You will find too a man of servile status displaying a great- ness of heart that preferred death to disgrace. For Gaius Vettius, a Pelignian from Italica, when seized by his own troops for surrender to Pompey, was killed by his slave, who then took his own life rather than survive his master. [25] When Gaius Gracchus was fleeing from the Aventine, a slave named Euporus (or, as some say, Philocrates) refused to leave his side while any hope of safety remained and protected him in every way he could; but afterward, when his master was killed, he stabbed himself in the bowels and breathed his last over the body. [26] When Publius Scipio himself, — the father of Africanus, was wounded in a battle with Hannibal
8 Cf. Martial 3. 21.
BOOK I, CHAPTER II 79
and the rest of his men were deserting him, he was placed on a horse by a slave who single-handed brought him safely through to camp.
[27] If it is a small matter to have shown devotion to a master while he was alive, what of the spirit shown too by a slave who exacts retribution for a master after his death? For example, when king Seleucus had been killed by a friend, a slave of his became that friend’s slave and avenged his former master by stabbing his murderer as he dined.
[28] Again, I find combined in the person of a single slave two virtues which to a high degree give distinction also to men of noble birth—the ability to exercise sovereign power and the great- ness of heart which can think lightly of such power. [29] For Anaxilaus of Messana, the founder of Messana in Sicily and the tyrant of Rhegium, was content to have entrusted to the care of his slave Micythus the children of tender age whom he was leaving behind him at his death. Micythus was conscientious in the per- formance of his duty as guardian of the children and ruled the city so mildly that the men of Rhegium did not disdain to be governed by a slave. Afterward, when the boys came of age, he handed over their property and the sovereignty of the state to them, and he himself, taking only a small sum of money for the journey, went away to Olympia where he lived to a peaceful old age.
[30] There are many instructive examples too of public service rendered by men of servile status. Thus, in the [second] Punic War, when there was a shortage of citizens for enlistment in the army, slaves who undertook to fight in place of their masters were given the citizenship and called volunteers (volones), because their undertaking was voluntary. [31] Moreover, after the defeat at Cannae eight thousand slaves were bought to serve in the army; and, although it would have cost less to ransom the prisoners, the Romans in that emergency chose rather to entrust the defense of the state to slaves. And after the memorable and disastrous losses at the battle of Lake Trasimene, freedmen also were called on to take the oath for military service.
[32] In the Social War twelve cohorts of freedmen were enlisted and served with evident and notable valor. We know too that Gaius Caesar, when he was replacing casualties in his army, accepted
4 Livy 22. 57.
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slaves from his friends and made use of their gallant services. And Caesar Augustus also enrolled several cohorts of freedmen in Germany and Illyricum and gave them the title of “volunteers” (voluntariae) . :
[33] You must not suppose that such practices were peculiar to Rome. For, when the tribes that live near the river Borysthenes were attacked by Zopyrion, they liberated slaves, enfranchised aliens, and abolished debts, and so were able to withstand the enemy. [34] At Sparta, when only fifteen hundred Lacedaemo- nians were left fit to bear arms, Cleomenes raised an army of nine thousand men from manumitted slaves. And the Athenians too, when the resources of the state were exhausted, freed slaves.
[35] Nor should you conclude that examples of meritorious actions are confined to male slaves, for here is a story of a deed done by female slaves, which is no less memorable than those which I have recounted and as beneficial to the state as any service you would find rendered by any persons of noble birth. [36] It is common knowledge that the Nones of July is the Festival of the Handmaids, both the origin of and the reason for this celebration being well known, for on that day women, free and slaves together, offer sacrifice to Juno Caprotina under a wild fig tree, to commem- orate the generous courage with which female slaves were inspired to save the honor of Rome. [37] The occasion was after the capture of the city by the Gauls, when (although the Gallic rising had been put down) the resources of Rome were at such low ebb that her neighbors were on the lookout for an opportunity to attack her. They made Postumius Livius, the chief magistrate of Fidenae, their leader, and he sent and bade the Senate of Rome, if they wished what was left of their city to survive, to hand over to him their married women and unmarried daughters. [38] The Senators hes- itated in anxious debate, but a female slave named Tutela (or Philo- tis) promised that she and the rest of the maidservants would represent their mistresses and surrender in their place. They there- - fore assumed the dress of the matrons and their daughters and, followed by a company whose tears gave convincing evidence of grief, were delivered to the enemy. [39] In the camp—on the pretense that the day was celebrated as a feast day at Rome—they freely plied with wine the men to whom they had been allotted by
5 Fowler, Festivals, p. 177.
BOOK 1, CHAPTER II 81
Livius, and, when they had stupified them with drink, they sent a signal to the Romans from a wild fig tree near the camp. [40] A sudden attack by the Romans was successful, and the Senate in gratitude ordered all the slaves to be manumitted, gave them dow- ries from the public funds, and allowed them to wear the style of dress which they had assumed. The day itself was named Nonae Caprotinae, after that wild fig tree (caprificus) from which the signal that led to the victory was received; and it was resolved that there should be a yearly festival and sacrifice, at which the juice of the wild fig tree should be offered in memory of the deed to which I have referred.
[41] Nor is the intelligence of a slave unsuited to or incapable of the study of philosophy. Phaedo (one of the disciples of Socrates and so close a friend of both Socrates and Plato that the latter named after him his inspired book on the immortality of the soul) was a slave, although his person and his talents were those of a free man. Cebes, himself a follower of Socrates, is said to have bought him, at the latter’s instigation, and to have had him trained in philosophy. Phaedo afterward won fame as a philosopher, and his discourses on Socrates, which show very great taste, are still read.6
{42] There were not a few other slaves, too, who afterward became distinguished philosophers, and among them the well-known Menippus whose books Marcus Varro has sought to rival in the satires which he calls “Menippean,” although others call them “Cynic.” Furthermore, Pompylus, a slave of Theophrastus the Peripatetic, a slave of Zeno the Stoic called Perseus, and a slave of Epicurus whose name was Mys were philosophers of note who lived at that time. Diogenes the Cynic was also a slave, although he was in fact a free man who had been sold into slavery. [43] When Xeniades of Corinth, wishing to buy him, asked him whether he knew anything in the way of a trade, he replied: “I know how to govern free men (liberi).” Whereupon Xeniades, struck by this reply, bought him and set him free, and entrusted his children to him, with the words: “Take my children (Jiber?) and govern them.” [44] As for the famous philosopher Epictetus, he is too fresh in our memories for the fact that he also was a slave to be reckoned among things forgotten and unknown. [45] And two verses of his, written of himself, are quoted, in which you may find the further
6 Aulus Gellius 2. 18. Cf. Athenaeus 11. 507¢.
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hidden meaning that those whose lives are a struggle against sor- rows of many kinds are not necessarily hated by the gods: _
Slave, poor as Irus, halting as I trod, I, Epictetus, was the friend of God.?
[46] You now have a case made out, I think, to prove that the name of slave is not to be regarded with aversion and contempt, since even Jupiter has been moved to take thought for a slave; and it has been established that many slaves have shown themselves to be loyal, prudent, brave—and even philosophers.
I must now deal briefly with the Sigillaria, for I would not have you think that I spoke of a matter calling for a smile rather than reverence.
[47] Epicadus relates that Hercules after killing Geryon drove his herds in triumph through Italy and from a bridge (now known as the Sublician Bridge), which had been built for the occasion, cast into the river a number of human figures equal to the number of the comrades he had chanced to lose on his journey, his object being to ensure that these figures might be carried by the current to the sea and so, as it were, to restore to their ancestral homes the bodies of the dead.8 This is said to have been the origin of the practice, which has persisted, of including the making of such figures in a religious rite. [48] In my opinion, however, a truer account of the origin of this practice is that which, I remember, I recently recalled,’ namely, that, when the Pelasgians learned, by a happier interpretation of the words, that “heads” meant heads of clay not heads of living men and came to understand that @a@tdc meant “of a light” as well as “of a man,” they began to kindle wax tapers in honor of Saturn, in preference to their former ritual, and to carry little masks to the chapel of Dis, which adjoins the altar of Saturn, instead of human heads. [49] Thence arose the tradi- tional custom of sending round wax tapers at the Saturnalia and of making and selling little figures of clay for men to offer to Saturn, on behalf of Dis, as an act of propitiation for themselves and their families. [50] So it is that the regular use of such articles of trade
7 Anthologia Graeca 7. 676. Tr. H. Macnaghten, Verses Ancient and Modern (London, 1911).
8 Cf. Ovid Fasti 5. 650-60.
9 See above, 7. 31.
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begins at the Saturnalia and lasts for seven days. These days, in consequence, are only rest days (feriatos), not all of them are festivals. For we have shown that the day in the middle, namely the thirteenth day before the Kalends of January, was a day for legal business; and this has been attested by other statements made by those who have given a fuller account of the arrangement of the year, months, and days, and of the regulation of the calendar by Gaius Caesar.
10 See above, 10. 6.
CHAPTER 12
[1] At this point Praetextatus thought to end his discourse, but Aurelius Symmachus interposed, saying: Please go on, for it is a pleasure to listen to you, and tell us also how the year is ordered," before you find yourself put to the trouble of having to answer questions, should any of the present company be ignorant of the old arrangement of the year or of the more exact rules by which that arrangement has subsequently been changed. Indeed, I suggest that by your reference to the addition of days to the month of December you have yourself encouraged your audience to look for information on this subject. Thereupon Praetextatus took up the thread of his exposition and continued as follows.
[2] The Egyptians,? he said, are the only people who have al- ways had an exact method of determining the measurement of the year. With other nations the methods varied; and, although the numbering might be different, all alike were in error. It will be enough, then, if I refer to the customs which obtained in a few countries. Thus, in Arcadia the year was arranged into three months; in Acarnania into six; and the rest of the Greeks reckoned that their own year properly consisted of three hundred and fifty- four days.
[3] With these variations it is not surprising that of old Rome too had its own year, arranged—on the authority of Romulus—in a series of ten months. The year used to begin in March and to consist of three hundred and four days: six months having thirty days each, namely, April, June, Sextilis, September, November, and
1 In connection with this subject reference should be made to Fowler, Fes- tivals. See also Ovid’s Fasti, Plutarch’s Numa, and Bede De temporum ratione 11-13. -
2 Cf. Herodotus 2. 4.
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December, and four comprising thirty-one days each, namely, March, May, Quintilis and October; and today, too, in these four months the Nones fall on the seventh day, whereas in the rest of the months they fall on the fifth. [4] When the Nones fall on the seventh day of the month, the Kalends would return seventeen days after the Ides, but, when the Nones fell on the fifth day, the Kalends would begin again eighteen days after the Ides.
[5] Such was the arrangement made by Romulus; and he dedi- cated the first month of the year to his father, Mars. That March was the first month of the year is shown most clearly by the fact that Quintilis is the fifth month after it and that thereafter the months took their names from their numerical order. [6] More- over, on the first day of March a new fire was kindled on the altars of Vesta, that the charge to keep a new fire alight might begin with the beginning of the year. At the beginning of March, too, new laurel wreaths replaced the old in the Royal Palace (Regia) and also in the meeting places of the Tribes and in the houses of the flamens; and in the same month people went to Anna Perenna to offer public and private sacrifices for prosperity throughout the year and for years to come. [7] In March schoolmasters were paid their dues for the year that had been completed; the Assemblies held their first meeting; the taxes were put out to farm; and matrons would wait on their slaves at dinner, just as the masters of the household did at the Saturnalia_the women by this compliment calling on the slaves at the beginning of the year to give ready obedience, the men rendering thanks for service done.
[8] Romulus called the second month April, or “Aphril” as some suppose, who would spell the word with an aspirate, after the Greek word for the foam(aé@pdc)from which Venus is believed to have sprung. It is said that it was the intention of Romulus to name the first month after his father Mars and the second after Venus the mother of Aeneas and thus to make the beginnings of the year the special care of these deities, from whom Rome traced her origin—since today too in our sacred rites we call Mars our “father” and Venus our “mother.” [9] But others suppose that Romulus showed a deeper understanding, or even acted under the sure guidance of divine providence, in so arranging the initial months as to assign the first to Mars, often the slayer of men—in the words of Homer, who knew the god’s nature:
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Ares, blood-stained Ares, bane of men and sacker of cities [Iliad 5. 31] and then to dedicate the second to Venus, as the goddess whose kindly influence was such as to appease the other’s violence. [10] Certainly in the twelve signs of the Zodiac as well, each of which is held to be the appointed abode of an appointed deity, the first sign, the Ram, has been allotted to Mars and thereafter the next in order, the Bull, to Venus. [11] Again, the Scorpion, which is placed over against these two signs, is so divided as to be common to Mars and Venus. And in this division there is held to be evidence of a divine plan, for the hinder part of the Scorpion, which is armed with a sting as with a powerful dart, is the house of Mars, and the part in front, which the Greeks call “the Yoke” and we call “the Balance,” belongs to Venus, who (as it were with a yoke of harmony) joins in marriage and unites in friendship.
[12] Cingius, however, in the treatise on the calendar which he has left us, says that certain writers show their ignorance in sup- posing that the ancients named the month of April after Venus, since in the course of this month no festival, no notable sacrifice, was appointed in her honor by our ancestors, nor are her praises sung, as are those of the other deities, even in the hymns of the Salii. [13] Varro, too, agrees with Cingius, stating that even in the time of the kings the name of Venus, in either its Latin or its Greek form, was unknown at Rome, so that the month of April could not have been named after her. [14] But, whereas before the vernal equinox the sky is generally dull and overcast, the sea closed to shipping, and the land itself covered with water, frost, or snow, and whereas in the spring, that is to say in the month of April, all the above become open (aperiantur), and the trees too, and every- thing else that the earth holds, begin to open out into buds, we must understand that it is from all these signs of opening that the month is deservedly called Aprilis, as though for Aperilis—just as at Athens the corresponding month is called Anthesterion, because everything is then in flower.? [15] Nevertheless, Verrius Flaccus admits that is was afterward ordained that matrons should offer sacrifice to Venus on the day of the vernal equinox;* but, since the
3 In this month the Anthesteria, or “Festival of Flowers,’ was held at
Athens. 4 See Fowler, Festivals, p. 67.
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reason for this practice is out of place here, I must refrain from discussing it.
[16] Romulus gave May the third place, and there is a wide divergence of views among the authorities about the name of this month. Fulvius Nobilior, in the calendar which he deposited in the temple of Hercules “Leader of the Muses,” says that Romulus, after dividing the people into “older” (maiores) and “younger” (iuniores)—to the end that the former should protect the state by counsel and the latter by arms—honored each class by calling this month May (Maius) and the month that followed, June (Junius) 5 [17] Some relate that this month was transferred to our calendar from the calendar of Tusculum, which still has a reference to a god corresponding to Jupiter and called Maius, the name, that is to say, being derived from his greatness and majesty. [18] Cingius thinks that the month takes its name from Maia, whom he calls the wife of Vulcan, and he points by way of proof to the fact that the priest of Vulcan offers sacrifice to this goddess on the Kalends of May; but Piso says that Vulcan’s wife is called Maiesta not Maia. [19] Others maintain that it was Maia the mother of Mercury who gave her name to the month,’ and they find the strongest proof of their theory in the fact that in this month all merchants sacrifice to Maia and Mercury together. [20] Some assert (and Cornelius Labeo agrees with them) that the Maia to whom sacrifice is offered in the month of May is the earth, and that Earth received the name Maia from its great size (magnitudine)—just as in the course of her rites Maia is also called the Great Mother—and they, further, infer the truth of this opinion of theirs from the practice of sacrificing to the goddess a pregnant sow, which is the victim properly offered to Earth. They say too that Mercury is associated with the goddess in the rites because a human being receives the power of utterance at birth by contact with the earth, and, as we know, Mercury is the god of utterance and speech. [21] Cornelius Labeo is the authority for the statement that it was on the Kalends of May that a temple was dedicated to Maia, as the Earth, under the name of the Good Goddess, and he affirms that it can be shown from the more secret ritual itself of the sacrifice that the Good Goddess and Earth are identical. He adds that in the books of the pontiffs this same goddess is invoked as the Good Goddess and as Fauna, Ops,
5 Bede De temporum ratione 12.20. ° Ibid., 12. 21.
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and Fatua—[22] as Good, because she is the source of all that is good for the maintenance of our life; as Fauna, because she is favor- able (favet) to everything that serves the needs of living creatures; as Ops [help], because it is on her help that life depends; and as Fatua, from fando (speech), since, as we have just said, infants at birth cannot utter a sound until they have touched the earth.
[23] There are those who say that this goddess has the power of Juno and for that reason bears a royal scepter in her left hand. Others believe that she is to be identified with Proserpine and say that sacrifice is made to her with a sow, because a sow devoured the crops which Ceres gave to mortals. Others again hold that she is “Hecate of the Nether World,” and the Boeotians, that she is Semele. [24] It is said too that she was the daughter of Faunus and that she resisted the amorous advances of her father, who even beat her with a rod of myrtle because, although plied by him with wine, she did not yield to his desires. There is, however, a belief that her father changed himself into a serpent and had intercourse with his daughter under that guise. [25] In support of all these beliefs the following evidence is adduced: that it is a sacrilege for a myrtle rod to be found in her temple; that a vine is spread above her head, since it was on this that her father had chiefly relied in his attempt to seduce her; that it is not the custom to bring wine into her temple under its own name, but the vessel containing the wine is named a honey jar and the wine is called milk; and that there are serpents in her temple which, indifferent to their surroundings, neither cause nor feel fear. [26] Some identify the goddess with Medea, because herbs of all kinds are brought into her temple, from which the priestesses commonly make medicaments, and also because no man may enter the temple on account of the wrong suffered by Medea at the hands of her thankless husband Jason. [27] In Greece she is called the “Goddess of Women,” and Varro (who says that she was the daughter of Faunus) adds that she was so modest that she never went outside the women’s quarters, that her name was never heard in public, and that she never saw, or was seen by, a man—this being the reason why no man enters her temple. [28] And here too is the reason why in Italy women may not take part in the rites of Hercules. For, when Hercules was bringing the cattle of Geryon through Italy, a woman in reply to his request for water to quench his thirst said that she could not
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give him any because the day was the feast of the Goddess of Women and it was unlawful for a man to taste of anything that had been prepared for the goddess. Hercules therefore, when about to offer sacrifice, solemnly banned the presence of women and ordered Potitius and Pinarius, who had the charge of his rites, not to allow any woman to be present at them. [29] You see, then, how, having had occasion to consider the name Maia and having identi- fied Maia with Earth and with the Good Goddess, we have had to relate all that we have ascertained about the latter.
[30] June? follows May, and the name of the month is derived either (as I have already said) from the name given to a section of the people or (as Cingius thinks) from the fact that it was previous- ly called Junonius in Latium and for long appeared under this name in the calendars of Aricia and Praeneste. Indeed, as Nisus says in his Commentaries on the Calendar, our ancestors for long continued to use this name for the month, but later certain letters dropped out and from Junonius the month came to be called Junius. And certainly it was on the Kalends of June that a temple was dedicated to Juno Moneta. [31] Some have thought that the month of June takes its name from Junius Brutus (Rome’s first consul), because it was in this month, on the Kalends of June, that he sacrificed to the goddess Carna on the Caelian Hill, after the expulsion of Tarquin, in performance of a vow. [32] Carna is believed to be the goddess concerned with the care of man’s vital organs, and it is to her that one prays for the good preservation of the liver and heart and all the inward parts; and, since it was thanks to his heart that Brutus practiced the deception which won him a reputation for stupidity ® and so enabled him to come forward and reform the state, he honored with a temple the goddess who has the care of these vital organs. [33] Offerings are made to her of bean pottage and bacon, since these foods give strength to the body; and the Kalends of June are commonly called the Kalends of the Beans, because in this month ripe beans are added to the sacrificial offerings.
[34] July follows—the month which, when March held the first place in the year, was called Quintilis from its numerical position in the order of the months as prescribed by Romulus; and it kept this name even after the months of January and February had been placed by Numa before March, although it was then, clearly, no
7 Bede De temporum ratione 12. 23. 8 Livy 1. 56.
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longer the fifth month but the seventh. Subsequently, however, in pursuance of a law proposed by Marcus (son of Marcus) Antonius as consul, the month was called July in honor of the dictator Julius Caesar, because he was born on the twelfth day of this month.
[35] August is the next month, and it used formerly to be called Sextilis, until its complimentary dedication to Augustus, pursuant to a decree of the Senate, of which the terms are as follows: “Whereas it is in the month of Sextilis that the Emperor Caesar Augustus has assumed his first consulate and has thrice® entered the city in triumph and that the legions have marched down from the Janiculum faithfully following his leadership; and whereas it is in this month that Egypt has been brought under the power of the Roman people and it is in this month that civil wars have been ended; and whereas for these reasons this month is and has been the happiest of months for this Empire: resolved that this month be called Augustus.” Likewise, on the same grounds, a plebiscite was made on a motion put to the people by Sextus Pacuvius, a tribune.
[36] The month of September keeps its original name. Domitian indeed had imposed on it the name of Germanicus and had given his own to October. [37] But, when it was resolved to erase an ill-omened name from every monument of bronze or stone that bore it, these months too were divested of the titles which a tyrant had compelled them to bear. All subsequent emperors were careful to avoid the unhappy consequences of an ill omen, and so the months from September to December retained their ancient names.
[38] Such were the rules made by Romulus to measure the year. By his arrangement it was, as I have already said, a year of ten months and of three hundred and four days; the months being so disposed that four had thirty-one days each and six had thirty. [39] But, since this method of reckoning agreed neither with the course of the sun nor the phases of the moon, it sometimes happened that the cold season fell in the summer months and, on the other hand, the hot season in the winter months; and, on these occasions, as many days were allowed to pass unassigned to any named month as were needed to make the current month fit the season of the year and the appearance of the sky.
® Augustus celebrated triumphs on August 6, 7, and 8, 29 B.c. for victories in Dalmatia, at Actium, and at Alexandria. Cf. Vergil Aeneid 8. 714, Horace Odes 1.2.49; Suetonius Augustus 22; and Mommsen, Res Crestae d. Augusti, p. 9.
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[1] Romulus was succeeded by Numa. From such knowledge as he could acquire with only his natural genius to teach him—living, as he did, in an unkindly climate and in an age that was still uncivi- lized—or perhaps learning something from the practice of the Greeks, Numa added fifty days to the year, to enlarge it to three hundred and fifty-four days, the period which he believed to cor- respond with the completion of twelve circuits of the moon. [z] To these fifty additional days he added six others, by taking one from each of the six months which had thirty days apiece, and the fifty-six days thus made available he divided equally to make two new months. [3] The first of those two months he named January and made it the first month of the year, as the month of the two- faced god who looks back to the year that is past and forward to the beginnings of the year to come. The second month he dedicated to Februus, the god who is believed to have charge over ceremonies of purification; for it was necessary that the city should be purified in the month in which Numa ordained the payment of due rites to the departed spirits.
[4] Afterward the neighboring peoples followed Numa’s ar- rangement and began to reckon their year with the same number of days and months as he, but with this single difference, that they made their months consist of twenty-nine and thirty days alternately.
[5] A little later, in honor of the odd number? (a mystery which
1 See Bede De temporum ratione 11.
2 Cf. Vergil Eclogues 8. 75 and Ciris 373: numero deus impare gaudet. A belief that odd numbers (and usually the odd numbers up to nine) are “lucky” or in some other way significant is often found in folklore. The belief has
been held to be based on the fact that an odd number cannot be divided into two equal parts.
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nature had brought to light even before the time of Pythagoras) Numa added a day to the year and assigned this day to January, in order that the principle of the odd number might be preserved and both the year and each month, with the sole exception of February, consist of an odd number of days. For, in a series of twelve months, if each month contained either an even or an odd number of days, the total number of days would be an even number, but to give one of the months an even number of days made the total of the number of days in the year an odd number. [6] And so it was ordained that January, April, June, Sextilis, September, November, and December should be months of twenty-nine days each, with the Nones falling on the fifth day of the month, and, in all of them, the day after the Ides being reckoned the seventeenth day before the next Kalends; [7] but March, May, Quintilis, and October had thirty-one days, with the Nones falling on the seventh day of the month, and in each of these months too (as in the other seven months) the period after the Ides up to [and including] the follow- ing Kalends comprising seventeen days. February alone kept its twenty-eight days, as though the shortness of the month and the even number of its days befitted the denizens of the world below.
[8] In consequence of this division of the year by Numa Pompi- lius the Romans were now calculating the length of their own year, like the Greeks, by the course of the moon. And so, like the Greeks, they had to provide an intercalary month.’ [9] For, when the Greeks noticed that they had been careless in fixing the number of days in a year at three hundred and fifty-four (since the sun takes three hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days to complete its course through the zodiac, and it was therefore clear that their year was eleven and a quarter days too short) they devised a regular system of intercalation by which they inserted ninety days, arranged in three months of thirty days apiece, in each period of eight years. [10] The Greeks adopted this plan because it was troublesome and difficult to intercalate eleven and a quarter days each year, and they therefore preferred to multiply this number by eight and to insert the ninety days (which represent the product of eleven and a quarter days multiplied by eight) distributed into three
3 Cf. Herodotus 1. 32. See also the note on Herodotus 2. 4 in the com- mentary by How and Wells.
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months, as I have said. These days the Greeks used to call “super- numerary” and the months “‘intercalary.”
[11] The Romans resolved to follow this system too, but they were not successful, since they overlooked the fact that, as I have already reminded you, they had added one day to the Greek reckoning out of respect for the odd number, with the result that over the period of eight years there could be no conformity with the true position either in the number of the intercalated days or in their place in the calendar. [12] However, before the mistake was discovered, they calculated that in each period of eight years ninety days were to be reckoned as supernumerary, in accordance with the example of the Greeks, and they distributed these intercalary days by means of four intercalations, of twenty-two and twenty- three days alternately, every two years. But after every eighth year there was a surplus of eight intercalary days, the product of the single days by which, as we have said, the Roman reckoning of the length of their common year exceeded that of the Greeks. [13] When this error, too, was recognized, it was corrected as follows: in every third period of eight years sixty-six intercalary days were inserted, instead of ninety, to make up for the twenty-four days by which the Roman reckoning had exceeded the Greek in that number of years.
[14] Intercalation was always made in the month of February, as the last month of the year;* and here too the Romans followed the example of the Greeks, who also used to insert the super- numerary days in the last month of their year, as Glaucippus tells us, the author of an account of the sacred rites of the Athenians. But in one respect the Roman practice differed from the Greek, [15] for, whereas the Greeks inserted these days at the end of the last month of the year, the Romans made the intercalation not at the end of February but after the twenty-third day of that month, that is to say, after the celebration of the festival of the Terminalia was over. They made the five remaining days of February follow the intercalation,