SOURCE: Whittaker, Thomas. “The Saturnalia. In Macrobius; or, Philosophy, Science and Letters in the Year 400, pp. 15-56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923.

[In the following excerpt, Whittaker offers an explication and discussion of the Saturnalia.]

In a dedication of the Saturnalia to his son Eustachius, the author states his purpose with a candour that ought to have disarmed fault-finders. The composition is to be a medley taken from writers of all ages, Greek and Latin. The very words of the ancient authors will sometimes be carried over, yet a certain new quality will be given to them because they have been, as it were, digested and assimilated by one mind. Nothing could be more fairly said; and he is equally candid in telling us of the licence he has taken in bringing together the friends who are supposed to meet at the house of Vettius Praetextatus on the occasion of the Saturnalia. In this licence, he claims to follow Plato; who, he says, made Parmenides and Socrates discuss abstruse subjects together, though Socrates can scarcely have reached boyhood when Parmenides was an old man¹. Therefore he will leave the age of the persons at the time of the dialogue a little vague. In reality, some were too young to have met Praetextatus as grown men.

For general understanding, it will suffice to say that the chiefs of the Roman nobility, with some unofficial scholars², meet on the Saturnalia at the house of Praetextatus for discussion of liberal studies. They are interested in details of old cults, in the theory of religion, in comparisons between the Greek and Latin poets, especially of Virgil with Homer, in old stories and in old usages as compared with the present. Above all other studies is placed philosophy³; but Macrobius has reserved more express discussion of philosophical questions for his Commentary on the Somnium Scipionis.

A beginning is made with a disputation on the mode of reckoning the day, grammatical usages as illustrated by Ennius, and similar topics. The interlocutors are interested precisely in the questions that Seneca treated as examples of idle antiquarianism⁴; but pedantic use of old expressions is discountenanced. Let us live modestly like the ancients, says Avienus⁵, but speak the language of our own day. This may seem to imply a conventionally idyllic view of the past; but we shall see later that Macrobius assigns to his spokesmen a penetrating refutation of what it was customary (as it always is) to say about the simplicity of old times compared with present luxury. The permission of occasional intoxication which Seneca appears to give⁶ might have furnished them with a contrast to their own more sober manners. But, in substance, they agree with the more liberal passages of Seneca in which he assigns a place for disinterested curiosity and recognises pleasure among the things to be sought in life. The grave ancients would have had no quarrel with the conclusion of Milton:

He who of those delights can judge, and spare
To interpose them oft, is not unwise.

No implied apology, however, is needed, as regards gravity of subject or treatment, for the Saturnalia of Macrobius. The setting of the banquet, with the form of dialogue, gives a certain amenity, and enables the author to pass easily from topic to topic without too much logical arrangement; but he sometimes forgets the conversational form, and definitely refers the reader to some author, as if he were writing a treatise⁷. The most interesting part of Book i is, in fact, a rather elaborate treatise on the solar or cosmic theory of the origins of religion.

This is put into the mouth of Praetextatus, who is recognised by all as the great authority on questions about ancient religion. The starting-point is the search for the origin of the Saturnalia; that feast being the occasion of the meeting. First, Praetextatus reserves his personal view of religion itself. He will discuss the Saturnalia not in relation to the secret nature of the divinity, but only in relation to the fables and the physical explanations given of them⁸. It is perhaps not too much to say that what he proposes is to offer a science of the rites and myths uncomplicated by questions of philosophical edification.

For the general theory set forth, there were sources about which a few words must be said. The principal source was thought to have been indicated by some coincidences with the Oration of Julian on the Sun-god. Julian himself tells us that his source was Iamblichus⁹. Hence Wissowa¹⁰ came to the conclusion that Julian and Macrobius alike depend on a lost work of Iamblichus …, but that Macrobius did not simply take over this, but had other sources; for much of his matter is Roman, not Greek. Schedler, writing later, regards it as now proved that the common source was a lost work of Porphyry “On the Sun”¹¹. The two commentators agree in placing hypothetical Latin books between Macrobius and his Greek source, whether Porphyry or Iamblichus, not only for this portion of his work but for others. Why this should be necessary, I am unable to see. Macrobius knew Greek perhaps better than Latin, and refers to Plotinus and Porphyry in a way that shows real knowledge of them. But no doubt he used Roman antiquarian writers for his facts; and it is not likely that he could find the facts presented anywhere clear of theory. What it is now necessary to insist on is that Macrobius was himself an intelligent writer, and not simply a passive recipient of the intelligence of predecessors. In any case, there is no prospect of an end to the search for sources. Porphyry compiled before Iamblichus¹², Iamblichus before Julian, and Julian before Macrobius; and all that we know as a datum is that Macrobius and Julian certainly had a common source, and that Julian's direct source was Iamblichus, whom Macrobius nowhere mentions.

The beginnings of the solar theory of religion do not seem to be traceable, like the “Euhemerist” theory that the gods are deified men, to a particular name. We may be content to give Macrobius credit for a very circumstantial and coherent statement of it. He leads up to the examination of mythology by a preliminary discussion of ritual. The rites of the Saturnalia are declared to be older than the foundation of Rome. At first they included human sacrifices, said to have been commanded by oracles. The oracles were at length evaded by skilful interpretation, and the sacrifices commuted into harmless offerings of effigies or of parts of vegetables. Two of the stories may be quoted. Hercules, it is related, returning through Italy with the oxen of Geryon, got the sacrifices commuted by a new interpretation of the Greek … into an offering of effigies in human form and lighted candles (quia non solum virum sed et lumina φωτα significat)¹³. Albinus Caecina adds the story that a sacrifice of children to the goddess Mania, the Mother of the Lares, was restored by Tarquinius Superbus at the Compitalia in accordance with an oracle of Apollo, and that the Consul Junius Brutus, after the expulsion of Tarquin, substituted heads of garlic and poppies by reinterpreting the “capita” mentioned in the oracle¹⁴.

On this subject of commutations there was abundance of antiquarian lore, as may be seen also in Porphyry De Abstinentia, where all blood-sacrifice is treated as something unholy. This was the normal view of philosophers in the period, as is indicated in a speech of Horus (another interlocutor in the dialogues) when he claims on behalf of the old Egyptian religion the exclusion of all such rites—a view which, it is to be feared, is not confirmed by modern Egyptologists. The Egyptians, Horus says, did not receive Saturn or Serapis at all before the death of Alexander, and even under the Ptolemies would not admit their temples within the walls of any town, because their rites were polluted with the blood of beasts¹⁵. Unfortunately, this was only a “counsel of perfection.” Julian and his friend Sallust, themselves Neo-Platonic philosophers, when they restored the old as against the newly-established religion, had to defend animal sacrifices as part of the total system. We may be surprised, on reading Julian's confession of disappointment at the indifference to the restored cult in the towns, that the sacrificial customs should not simply have been allowed to lapse; but we know historically that, years later, the Christian Church could only suppress the custom of sacrificing in the country districts by a severe persecution. There was no pagan popular religion apart from it. And of course the Church carried on by symbolism the idea of blood-sacrifice in its own cult. Yet Heraclitus, five centuries before the Christian era, had struck at the root of the whole doctrine of cleansing by blood. So slow is progress, and so much is it an affair of compromise.

As we go on, we meet with other “counsels of perfection.” All are glad that the old barbaric ritual is gone; but, at the same time, general consent recognises in the primeval order of society an innocence that has been lost. In the reign of Saturn, there was no distinction of freedom and slavery¹⁶, and all wealth was held in common¹⁷. An expression of contempt for slaves is put into the mouth of Euangelus, whom all the rest agree from the first in regarding as a disagreeable person, to be received only out of politeness; while Praetextatus, the ideal pagan noble, completely takes over the view of Seneca¹⁸ in arguing for the equal humanity of slaves, whose condition is due to fortune and not to difference of nature. Jupiter himself, according to an old story, had reproved the cruelty of a Roman master to a slave¹⁹. Illustrations are given—preferably from the early times of the Republic—of religious ceremonies in which, according to the antiquaries, the virtues of slaves, both men and women, were commemorated.

After the preliminaries on ritual, we proceed to mythology. There is cursory mention of the opinions of some that Janus was a king who was deified for introducing religious rites²⁰, and that Saturn and his wife Ops were discoverers of the fruits of the ground²¹; but all the systematic theorising is in terms of solar explanations. More exactly, perhaps, the theory ought to be called cosmic. The sun stands for the whole as being visibly predominant, so that the powers of the universe may be treated as his aspects; but the idea of correlation also is used. Saturn and Ops, we are told, are, according to some, Heaven and Earth²². Serapis and Isis are interpreted as Sun and Earth or the receptive nature of things²³.

The method of proof is by identifications, ritual or traditional or etymological, of deities with one another, ending in identification with some deity unquestionably solar. The name of Janus associates him with Diana and so with Apollo, admittedly a solar god²⁴. He may also be treated as directly signifying the cosmic revolution²⁵. He is sometimes represented with four faces (“a double Janus”) as looking to the four quarters of the world and including all in his divinity²⁶. The explanation cited from the augur M. Messala, that he joined together the four elements, consisting of two groups, the heavy and the light, in one whole²⁷, is obviously a fanciful accommodation to Greek philosophy.

The discussion about the gradual formation of the Calendar, with its dedications of months to gods (as January to Janus), we may pass over lightly. It is interesting, however, to learn with what care for the susceptibilities of conservative religion Julius Caesar carried through his reforms²⁸. Another point that may just be mentioned is the casuistry, cited from the Roman law, about works permissible on days of rest. The head of a household was allowed to employ labourers to set free an ox that had fallen into a pit; and, if a broken beam of a roof threatened to fall, it might lawfully be propped up²⁹.

The return being made from digressions to the centre of the argument, Praetextatus claims the right to draw largely from the poets. It is not, he says, by vain superstition, but by divine reason, that they refer almost all the gods, “at least those that are under the heaven,” to the sun³⁰. The reservation here must not be neglected as something casual or merely formal. The religion of the philosophers themselves was not solar or cosmic, but was more metaphysical, more “transcendent.” The popular polytheism, from their point of view, symbolised a pantheism which was part but not the whole of what they regarded as philosophic truth. It is with this part, however, that they are now occupied. The various powers of the sun, says Praetextatus, gave names to gods. …

In a manner suggested by the Heraclitean philosophy, the opposite effects ascribed to each deity are explained by the opposite effects of the sun. Neptune is at once the Earth-shaker and the Securer. Mercury both awakens and sends to sleep the minds or eyes of men³¹. Apollo is the Saviour and also sends pestilence; and yet again, the pestilence is sent in championship of the good³².

The source of these explanations, we may see by the names of the philosophic authorities cited, is Stoic; and the Heracliteanism of the Stoics is no doubt responsible for many etymologies in the manner of the Cratylus³³. Their doctrine that the universe is one community accounts for some distinctive explanations. The idea of a national god is repudiated. Apollo, we are told, is called Πατρωος not as worshipped according to the religion of a particular race or State, but because the sun is the generating cause of all things; whence the Romans also call Janus the Father, celebrating the sun under that name³⁴. He is called the shepherd or herdsman not from the fable about his service with Admetus, but because the sun pastures all that the earth brings forth³⁵.

Apollo and Liber Pater are the same³⁶; but more directly it may be proved that Liber Pater, that is, Dionysus, is the sun. The proof is that in a secret religious observance the sun in the upper hemisphere is called Apollo, in the lower or nocturnal hemisphere Dionysus³⁷. Also Dionysus is represented as of various ages according to the season of the year. Those differences of age refer to the sun. Thus the Egyptians at the winter solstice bring the god from the shrine on a certain day as an infant; at the spring equinox, they present him under the form of a young man; at the summer solstice, he is figured with a beard; and in his fourth form as descending to old age³⁸. In an oracle of Apollo Clarius, the same god, Liber, is … interpreted generally as the highest god, and specially as the autumnal sun³⁹. In Orphic verses also, Liber and the sun are shown to be one and the same by the astronomical imagery in the dress of Dionysus⁴⁰.

Mars and Liber are joined by many in such a way as to show that they are one god. … In the wreathing of the point of the thyrsus (replaced among the Lacedaemonians by a spear) with ivy, there is a moral meaning. It indicates that the impulse to war should be repressed⁴¹. Being identical with one another, Bacchus (or Liber) and Mars are also identical with the sun⁴². Mercury and Apollo too are the same. The sun's movement between the upper and the lower hemispheres is signified by the representation of Mercury in fable as the messenger between the celestial and infernal gods⁴³. He is not called Argiphontes because he slew Argus; but under the form of the fable, Argus stands for the sky distinct with stars, which is as it were slain when the sun blots them from the sight of mortals by day⁴⁴. …

However ascetic the Neo-Platonists might be personally; however, in their theoretical philosophy, they might place the stability of the life of intellect above the flux of birth; they were careful not to blaspheme sex. For it was part of their view that the world-process must always go on. Thus Julian, whose personal chastity is denied by no one, takes occasion to glorify Aphrodite as sharing in productive power with the Sun⁴⁵. And Porphyry gives as one reason for his nominal marriage⁴⁶ when declining to old age⁴⁷, the purpose of conciliating the gods of birth …, as Socrates wrote verses before his death to propitiate the more popular Muses in case his philosophising was not accepted by them as a sufficient service⁴⁸.

There is a point of contact with Julian when we are told that one proof of the identity of Aesculapius with Apollo is that he is believed to have been born of him⁴⁹. Hercules is “that power of the sun which endows the human race with virtue by which it imitates the gods⁵⁰.” A similar interpretation of Minerva is cited from Porphyry. Since the goddess conveys prudence or fore-knowledge to human minds, she is rightly described as spiringing from the head of the chief god, that is, from the highest part of the ether, whence the sun takes his origin⁵¹.

The death of Adonis, the lamentation of Venus over him, and his return to life, of course Macrobius has no difficulty in explaining on his principles. The solar explanation adopted has become perhaps the best-known of all theories about the origin of a myth. As Adonis is wounded by the boar, so the sun receives a wound as it were from the rough season of winter, goes to the hemisphere of the earth symbolised by Proserpine, and then at the spring equinox returns to the hemisphere symbolised by Venus⁵². The myth of the Mother of the Gods and Attis is to be understood in like manner⁵³, and so also is that of Isis and Osiris⁵⁴; as is shown by the emblems of the cult in each case.

The signs of the Zodiac are all interpreted as part of the solar religion; and perhaps the theory is most definitely generalised in the explanation of the sign of the Twins. The living of Castor and Pollux by alternate deaths is taken as the symbol of the everlasting alternation between the descent of the sun to the lower regions of the world and the resurrection by which he returns to the summit. Here the sun is not that of Heraclitus, put out and rekindled, as in some of the explanations bearing traces of an earlier cosmology, but is always one and the same⁵⁵.

Nemesis, worshipped as against pride, is that one among the manifold powers of the sun of which the nature is to obscure brilliant things and withdraw them from sight, and to make bright and bring to view those that are in the dark⁵⁶. We are reminded here of the old saying, which comes down from the time of the “wise men,” that the work of Zeus is to raise up that which was low and to bring down that which was high⁵⁷. Something of the kind we meet with everywhere. In reading, for example, the story of the choice of lots at the end of the Republic, especially when every detail is brought out as in the commentary of Proclus, it is difficult to avoid the suggestion that some theosophic saying equivalent to “The last shall be first, and the first last,” had long been wandering about the world before it found embodiment in myth or parable.

The more penetrating, Praetextatus continues, will find in Pan, who is called Innus, not the lord of the woodlands, but the sun as ruler of all material substance⁵⁸. This is the real meaning of the name by which the Arcadians worship him. … Of this matter, the force of all bodies, whether divine or earthly, forms the essence⁵⁹. His love is Echo, beheld by no eye, but signifying the harmony of the heaven⁶⁰.

Finally, it is shown by many stories and figures in the poets, aided by philosophic interpretations, that Jupiter, the king of the gods, is the sun. The gods who, according to Homer and Plato⁶¹, follow him, are the stars. Further proof is found in Assyrian and Egyptian ritual; and the argument is brought to a close with an Orphic invocation in which Zeus is identified at once with Dionysus and with the Sun-god …⁶²

All praise the exposition of Praetextatus; but it is not left without critical objection. Euangelus ventures to point out one fault. Virgil has been quoted as meaning the sun and moon when he says “Liber et alma Ceres.” But was he not simply imitating some other poet without knowing what the words meant? Or are the Romans, like the Greeks, who raise to the skies everything of their own, to insist on making their poets also philosophers? This leads to a discussion in which the other persons of the dialogue undertake to find wisdom and knowledge as well as poetry in Virgil. To Symmachus is assigned the very judicious remark that his glory is neither to be made greater by any one's praises nor lessened by any one's disparagement⁶³.

Book i ends with a promise of the long and minute examination of Virgilian questions that fills Books iii to vi. Book ii digresses into a collection of witticisms on which there will be something to say; but in the meantime the pause in the argument seems to invite a short discussion of the theory of Macrobius on its merits. For the solar explanation put forward by him is modern as well as ancient, and, after a period of disfavour, may be said again to hold its own in contemporary controversy.

First, we must abstract from that substratum of popular religion which, as modern students of anthropology tell us, the educated Greeks and Romans did not themselves understand from within. Magic, sacrifice and sacrament, so important if we were aiming at an explanation, or even a definition, of religion as a whole, we may leave aside, concentrating attention on the imaginative mythology. If we make this abstraction, then, I think, a fair conclusion will be that Macrobius—proceeding, of course, on the work of predecessors—had successfully determined the real nature of one great normal development of belief.

This development used to be ascribed to “the Aryan race,” and it certainly does extend over the whole range of the Aryan-speaking peoples, from the Indians and Persians in the East to the Celts and Teutons in the West and North. Macrobius takes as its typical form that which he knew best, the Greek polytheism, but, as we have seen, not without glances at others; and, in fact, we must add, as he did, to the peoples that took part in this great development, the Babylonians and Egyptians. The curiously twisted local religion of Rome, an affair of ceremonial cult with little mythology, he knew well as an antiquarian, and could make use of his knowledge for the interpretation of Virgil's archaeology; but it contributes to his explanations only by occasional points of contact with Greek myth. The general dependence of the Latin on the Greek poets for their mythology is as clear to him as it is to us.

To bring out his view distinctly, I have dwelt especially on philosophical interpretations; but the strength of the argument is in the accumulation of detail. No doubt it is “induction by simple enumeration”; but the very facility of the process is in favour of the result. The minds of the theorists were flexible and imaginative enough to disentangle sympathetically the web of imagination in a mythology first spontaneously and then consciously and artistically poetic. All that we need to add to the generalisation of Macrobius is a psychological construction from beneath. This has been supplied in recent times by Sir Edward Tylor and by Herbert Spencer, working on the records of facts concerning the minds of peoples stranded at a level of thinking more primitive than that of the predominant races of ancient Europe and Asia⁶⁴. It is to be regretted that they imperfectly appreciated one another's work; but an interesting point that came out in the controversy between them is the concession that the generalisation seemed almost to emerge of itself from the facts. Like their ancient precursors in the study of myth, they were not wanting in a real gift of fancy, which enabled them to follow the processes of a more primitive intelligence than that of the medium in which they lived.

Both have shown how, starting from various phenomena such as dreams, trances, reflexions, shadows and so forth, the savage mind sought in the idea of a separable self the means of explaining the subjective life, of which man, as he emerged from a merely animal condition, gradually became aware in contrast with his objective activities among things. This self by degrees came to be imagined as a shadowy “ghost-soul.” Since it appeared to depart and return (for example, in sleep and waking life) it was thought of as surviving the body, and at length was conceived to live on indefinitely. As the ghost, it became the object of a cult, being supposed still to have power. The cult consisted in offering to it, by devices thought to confer the means of reaching it in its new abode, such words and ceremonial observances and offerings as were pleasing to a fellow-savage. Later, the ghost became a god; but Spencer and Tylor do not agree about the mode of transition from “animism” to religion.

Tylor definitely repudiates the view that the ancestral ghost as such becomes a god; and there is nothing to prevent our using his form of the “ghost-theory” as a basis for a theory of religion like that of Macrobius. The idea of the permanent soul—into which the imagination of the ghost passes—being once formed, natural objects, and at length the sun and stars and the great cosmic forces, can be supposed to be animated by a soul of their own; and it is these cosmic powers that are first called gods in the proper sense; that is, permanent living powers above humanity. When these become detached from their base, as typically in the anthropomorphic polytheism of Greece, we are, according to both Hegel and Comte, at a higher stage of religion than the “astrolatry” of the Chaldaeans. Yet, as the great gods became more humanised, the myths at first referring to cosmic processes began to appear more scandalous in contrast with the higher religion for which the gods were moral rulers; and so the philosophers looked with relative favour on the astral religion imported from the East. Though in itself something of a deviation from the normal development, this attempt to accommodate popular religion to philosophy must have helped them to reach the theory which traced the known mythological religions to a common root in the imaginative contemplation of the most impressive phenomena of the universe. That theory I believe to be on the whole sound.

Spencer supposes religion to arise in a more direct way from animism. Through the cult of ghosts thought to be specially powerful, who are usually those of kings or chiefs, the ghost becomes a god. As the other form of the ghost-theory furnishes the psychological base for Macrobius, this might have furnished the base for Euhemerus. The Cyrenaic philosopher, however, went about the explanation still more simply. Having actually seen the adoption by Alexander and his successors of that cult of the divine king which was one element in the Egyptian and Babylonian polities, he generalised it into an explanation of all religion as due to the deliberate statecraft of dynasts. This theory, as a general explanation of religion, is definitely refuted by Sextus Empiricus. How could the dynasts have thought of calling themselves “gods” in order to govern the people, if there was no popular idea of a god before? And his argument in effect disposes of a possible rehabilitation of the theory on Spencerian lines. Admitting cases of the deification of men, he points out that these always suppose the idea of some pre-existent divine power whom the person deified represents. The stock instance is that of Hercules: we find a similar position in Macrobius, who, like Sextus⁶⁵, admits at least hypothetically the existence of a man who was deified under that name, but holds that he was only one of a series of men honoured as showing forth, by their virtue, the power of the sun that was symbolised by the name⁶⁶. The coincidence is interesting, and confirms the impression that Sextus, though he does not forget his sceptical reserve, inclined to the view that the first deifications were of cosmic powers. This is the theory that in the end prevailed among the Greeks and Romans.

The divergent theory of the Greek “atheist” had a singular fate. Seized on by the Jews who were writing “Sibylline oracles” against the Macedonian and Roman Empires, it became with them the general explanation of “the gods of the nations.” All of these had been originally dynasts who, by fraud, came to be worshipped as gods. This idea passed over to the Christian Fathers, who used it when it seemed convenient⁶⁷; but, on European ground, it failed to predominate finally, as it had failed when Euhemerus put it forth. After the triumph of Christianity, a compromise was arrived at by which Christian poets and orators could use the names of the ancient gods very much as modern poets have conventionally used them since⁶⁸. Yet the theory of fraud did not fail altogether to leave a trace. Dr Verrall, in an explanation, perfectly conclusive in every detail, of the famous puzzle in Dante about the birthday of Virgil⁶⁹, shows that Dante's “false and lying gods”⁷⁰ are not the gods of mythology whom he knew from the Roman poets: the names of these he uses as symbols of divine powers. They are the deified emperors. Now this tradition came down to Dante from the Jewish authors of Sibylline oracles, whose invectives were inspired by the theory of Euhemerus.

Of course the phenomena that drew the special attention of Euhemerus were themselves phenomena of religion. Analogues of them still exist, and may yet count in the future of the world; but they are outside the great normal development with which Macrobius dealt. Emperor-worship was never serious for religion in Europe. The stage of religion that interested the last representatives of pagan culture was the elaboration of highly imaginative theogonies suggested by the great cosmic phenomena. The proper place of this seems to be between early animism and the later definitely ethical and metaphysical theologies and philosophies to which they had themselves gone on. With the development that these were receiving in the new official religion of the Empire, they could not be expected to feel any sympathy; but in the reasoned statement of a fundamental creed the two parties would scarcely have differed.

Book ii, to which we must now turn, shows us very clearly that the educated world of antiquity had found itself, quite apart from the appearance of a new religion, driven politically down a way that it did not desire to go. The dicta or dicteria quoted nearly all go back to the republican times, or, at the latest, to the beginning of the monarchy when there was still an interest in the struggle between the old and the new. In the Latin as in the Greek portion of the Empire, newer events and persons were as far as possible ignored in literature except by those who set themselves expressly to write the annals or celebrate the things of their own time. Already certain limited periods were “classical”; and we have followed the tradition. Yet, while the unloved new institutions were by preference left out of view, a certain advance in civilisation was quite recognised against indiscriminate praisers of “the good old times.” The guests at the banquet of Praetextatus do not fear to compare themselves, not altogether to their own disadvantage, with the guests in Plato's Symposium.

The most vivid of all the stories told is that of the Roman knight Laberius who wrote mimes, and who was compelled by Julius Caesar to appear on the stage as a performer in a mime. His prologue is given in full⁷¹; and finally the verse which he threw out during the action is quoted: “Necesse est multos timeat quem multi timent.” At this, it is said, all the people turned their eyes on the dictator, who was obliged to sit helpless under the taunt⁷². Similarly, there is an essentially derisory tone in the anecdotes that tell how various birds were taught to salute Augustus, when he returned victorious from Actium, with the words, “Ave Caesar.”

Here it seems in more than one way appropriate to refer to another work written on the occasion of the Saturnalia—the Caesars of Julian. For this very lively and audacious piece, though written by an emperor, retains the hostile or derisory tone to the founders of the monarchy; and, though written by the restorer of the ancient cult, reminds us a little of Aristophanes or Lucian in its treatment of Olympus⁷³. It was evidently intended as a manifesto against the apotheosis, and may even have been meant to reassure the Christians that one pagan institution at least would not be revived. Like Shakespeare⁷⁴, Julian makes Caesar something of a braggart. Alexander, contesting his claim to the first place among the divine successors of the god Quirinus, reproaches him with subduing the Germans and the Gauls in order to attack his own country⁷⁵. Silenus, the jester, who is allowed to philosophise pretty often, tells him that he might make himself the master of Rome, but that he could not, with all his acting of philanthropy, make himself loved⁷⁶. If Brutus and Cassius were driven out of the city, it was not for love of Caesar, but through the bribery of the people in his will. Augustus is put out of countenance by being called an image-maker⁷⁷—that is, introducer of little images of himself as new gods; and there is a touch of sarcasm in the allusion to what his biographer says about the glance of his eyes, which he prided himself on thinking to be like that of the Sungod⁷⁸.

Not everything in the speeches need be taken as considered opinion; but, all allowance being made for dialectic and rhetoric, “Julian is rather serious,” as he acknowledges in apologising for a certain want of facility in jesting. In his essentially republican ethics⁷⁹, he is following a tradition represented by Marcus Aurelius among the emperors before him. To Marcus the gods, in the competition for honours among the deified kings, give the prize (voting by ballot). The prize is for “good conduct.” Julian, himself more of a man of genius than Marcus, would evidently have liked to go beyond the Romans to the Greeks and give the first place to Alexander, whom he treats throughout sympathetically, representing him as repentant for his faults. In the end, the deifications are tacitly abolished. Cronos and Zeus consult together and tell the competitors to choose each his own divinity. Caesar wanders about at a loss till Ares and Aphrodite take pity on him and call him to them. To Julian himself, as Hermes tells him after relating the whole story of the banquet in heaven, the Sun-god Mithras is assigned as his divine patron. The policy of the Emperor is here evidently set forth in symbol. The only divine king recognised henceforth will be King Helios, popularly represented in the many gods, and philosophically interpreted as the “intellectual sun”; but with this established religion is to be combined complete freedom of worship secured by law.

No doubt Macrobius and his friends would have liked this policy to succeed; but, living a generation later, they are no longer concerned with the practical question. They hold their offices at the will of a Christian emperor, though the time has not yet come when all are obliged to profess the emperor's religion. It seems like a preparation for the next age when they turn from speculation about the nature of the gods and stories of the old time to the critical study of Virgil. The beginning of Book iii, with the end of Book ii, is lost: at the place where it opens, the topic under discussion is the poet's knowledge of religious rites. In the course of the discussion there are curious pieces of antiquarianism; as, for example, the explanation of a passage by the old notion that the gods can be constrained to hear prayers and to be worshipped with due rites against their will. Juno is made to complain that she has suffered this from Aeneas⁸⁰. Those who are specially interested in “taboos” may find in a saying quoted from Pompeius Festus a possible line of transition from religious ritual to ethical religion⁸¹. Virgil's learning in ritual is proved by his coincidences with Varro⁸². That he used his profound knowledge of archaic ritual allusively, like a poet, Macrobius knows quite well and approves of it as right. When he says that “eximius,” applied to a victim, is not a poetical epithet⁸³, he means “merely poetical”: Virgil knew the correct priestly terms, and was not indulging in otiose ornament.

Discussing the departure of the gods from Troy (Aen. ii. 351-2), Praetextatus (to whom the exposition has again been assigned) states various conjectures on the name of the god of Rome. The true name of the city, he admits, was never known even to the most learned; the Romans taking care that enemies should not do to them what they knew that they had often done to the cities of enemies⁸⁴. Then he cites from antiquarians the quaint formulae by which the gods of a city were invited to leave it and take up their abode among the Romans, and the city itself and its army “devoted”: the formula of devotion could be pronounced only by dictators and generals⁸⁵. There follows a disputation in which Euangelus states the case that can be made against Virgil's sacerdotal learning; Praetextatus replying on each point⁸⁶.

There is a gap between the twelfth chapter and the thirteenth, and we find ourselves in an argument by Caecina (one of the two Albini) against Horus, who is here presented as an ascetic philosopher rebuking the luxury of the time. The speaker maintains that, incomparably inferior as the men of the present are to those of that age, the existing luxury was exceeded by the great period of the Republic⁸⁷. In proof, he quotes tangible facts from records. The argument is taken up by Furius, who carries it back to the time of the Scipios. Undoubtedly those that won the empire could not have done it without abundance of virtues, but they were also not without vices, of which some have been corrected in our age by sobriety of manners⁸⁸. Modern readers will find it excessive austerity in these Roman pagans to disapprove of the freer manners of their ancestors that permitted boys and girls to learn to dance. Even distinguished men of mature years, it is noted as a scandal, prided themselves on dancing well⁸⁹. The results are given of much research on that favourite subject of declamation, the luxury of the fish-ponds. By recorded facts about certain fishes, it is shown that the quest for them was a more serious affair in earlier times than in later⁹⁰. As proof of the excessive luxury of the old times, the history of the sumptuary laws is recalled. These, beginning at Rome far back in the Republic, and proved insufficient, had to be extended and applied to all Italy. Is it then, Furius asks, the mark of a sober age that such laws should be needed? Not so: there is an old saying that good laws are occasioned by bad customs⁹¹. The present age is so temperate that it does not even know by name delicacies on which a limitation of price was imposed by the dictator Sulla⁹².

The discourse of Furius is interrupted by the coming in of dessert, and this leads to a discussion on the kinds of nuts and the derivation of their names. From nuts the discourse (attributed to the commentator Servius) proceeds to a classification of fruits in general⁹³.

At the opening of Book iv there is another gap. The discussion on Virgil has in the meantime been resumed. The poet's mastery of every kind of figure classified by the writers on the arts of expressing and appealing to the emotions is illustrated with copious detail. This is not the most readable book; but the part that has been preserved is short; and, if it does nothing else, it shows with what patience a technical rhetoric had been worked out on the basis of a psychology of the feelings.

Book v opens with an argument that Virgil is as much an orator as a poet. All the four kinds of eloquence recognised as characteristic in different Roman writers are to be found in him; and it might even be said that he alone has mixed in his work the ten different styles of the ten Attic orators⁹⁴. In a passage of deliberately heightened tone, the speaker is made to say that this poet has no less variety and brings no less harmonious a music out of dissonance than nature herself, the mother of all things. His poetic work, if you know its beauties in detail, will resemble in your eyes the divine work of the world. To the speech of Eusebius, Euangelus raises an objection that gives the next speaker, Eustathius, an easy case to answer, and leads on to more distinctively literary criticism. How could this countryman from the neighbourhood of Mantua, born of rustic parents and brought up in rustic surroundings, have the slightest knowledge of Grecian letters?⁹⁵ Eustathius of course has no difficulty in proving that the Mantuan was one of the most learned of poets. Himself a Greek⁹⁶, he speaks of Virgil as “your poet,” and recounts in his honour—quite in accordance with the ideas of the Romans—how he has reproduced Theocritus in his Eclogues, Hesiod in his Georgics, and so forth; but especially how he has appropriated the matter of Homer to the subject of his own Epic. Next he begins an exposition, which he is asked by Avienus to continue more systematically, of Virgil's definite imitations or translations from Homer. To take a verse from Homer, Avienus compares with robbing Jupiter of his thunderbolt or Hercules of his club: this the Roman poet has done so as to make what he has taken appear his own⁹⁷.

In the systematic exposition, parallel passages are given in profusion, first to show simply how Virgil makes Homer's verses his own, little comment being added⁹⁸. Then the speaker shows by new examples⁹⁹ how in some passages the Roman poet is richer in virtue of closer observation of nature of deeper psychology. Having quoted other examples to illustrate equality of splendour in the two poets¹⁰⁰, he goes on to cases where Virgil is distinctly inferior, sometimes so inferior that the comparison almost raises a blush¹⁰¹. There is no need, he says, to spend elaborate explanation on showing the greater life and vigour of Homer in describing the onset of battle¹⁰². On the smile of the eagle and serpent (Aen. xi. 751-6, taken from Il. xii. 200-7) the severe criticism is passed that the soul has gone and all that is left in the Latin verses is a lifeless body¹⁰³.

There follows a technical discussion in which it is shown that Virgil carried his imitation of Homer so far that he imitated what are wrongly blamed by some as defects of metre: the beginning of a line with a short syllable, the use of a short syllable for a long in the middle of a line, and the ending with redundant syllables. Like Homer, he sometimes introduces a line that might be prose; he successfully follows him in the skilful use of repetitions; and he shows how much he admired the Homeric double epithets by imitating them¹⁰⁴. We are given as examples, not of course literal translations of the epithets cited, but epithets formed on the Homeric model—malesuada fides, auricomi rami, centumgeminus Briareus¹⁰⁵.

In the Catalogues, and in the management of the personages introduced in them, the critic finds the Latin poet decidedly inferior. Homer gives the series of the ships and whence they came in a regular order; and the heroes make their appearance in the poem in such a way that we can distinguish one from the other. Virgil observes no order in citing the names from the different parts of Italy; introduces names of apparently important heroes and then tells us no actions of theirs, glorious or otherwise; and in some cases has his persons killed over again by different hands. In contrast with Homer's simplicity of narrative in the Catalogue itself, he deliberately varies the literary form of the introductions. Here the critic expresses his personal preference for the manner of Homer¹⁰⁶, but allows that Virgil might almost be said to have improved on his art in accumulating names¹⁰⁷.

It has taken modern discoveries to enable us to understand this difference. We now know that there was a real siege of Troy; and no doubt there was some actual tradition behind the catalogue of the Achaeans on one side and of the Trojan auxiliaries on the other. In the later books of the Aeneid, recounting the battles on Italian soil, there could only be artificial combinations of archaeological detail brought into a semblance of unity by imitation of Homer; for of course the tradition about the coming of Aeneas was late. The future predicted for him in the Iliad is thought to have referred originally to the foundation of some new kingdom in the neighbourhood of Troy. That Achaeans and Trojans alike were “Greeks,” modern research has proved; but the knowledge of this, though some traces of it are discoverable in ancient authors, had passed out of the tradition used by Virgil as by the Greek tragedians.

Both poets, the critic proceeds, for the relief of the reader introduce agreeable fables into their catalogues¹⁰⁸. Virgil is especially to be admired for the digressions in the Georgics from the dry precepts of agriculture. Both abound in apophthegms. Virgil sometimes departs from Homer in his theological doctrine, be this by accident or of his own will. Homer never mentions fortune, but always ascribes events to the decree of fate. Virgil, on the contrary, ascribes omnipotence to fortune; whereas even the philosophers who name her make her the subordinate minister of providence¹⁰⁹. In many details also of myth and story he departs from Homer. For example, Homer never mentions the judgment of Paris¹¹⁰.

It is unfortunate, says Eustathius, that Virgil had not Homer or some other Greek model to follow in assigning the causes for the beginning of the war in the seventh book¹¹¹. For want of an adequate cause, he has had to set in motion his Furies from hell and snakes and bacchanals. “Some other model,” he says advisedly; for in the fourth book the poet has followed not Homer but Apollonius Rhodius, from whom he borrowed the story of Medea, adapting it to the episode of Dido. But here special tribute is paid to the power of the Roman poet. Everybody knows the love-story of Dido as related by Virgil to be historically false; and yet all are moved by it. It has been taken over from poetry as a subject for all the arts, and has never ceased to be represented on the stage both in action and in song.

The attempt to imitate Pindar, whom Horace confessed to be inimitable, is declared a failure¹¹². In Virgil's description of an eruption of Aetna (Aen. iii. 574 ff.), suggested by a famous passage of Pindar (Pyth. i. 40 ff.), the critic finds nothing but a sound of words. Pindar describes things really seen: Virgil picks up images of things neither seen nor heard, and ends in monstrosity¹¹³.

From things known, as he says, to all or some of the Romans, the critic now comes to obscure allusions drawn from the less familiar parts of Grecian letters¹¹⁴. The learning at his disposal ranges over the dramatists, tragic and comic, the lyrists and the historians; many fragments of lost works being preserved. At the end of the dissertation, we are told that the grammarians did not know from what author Virgil had taken his description of Apollo as the prophet of Zeus (Aen. iii. 251), but ascribed it to the invention of the poet. Eustathius ventures to affirm that it is from Aeschylus, the highest name among the writers of tragedy¹¹⁵, and quotes in support of his opinion two lines from a lost drama called the Sacerdotes and one from the Eumenides.

After the exposition of the poet's debts to the Greeks, Praetextatus calls upon the two Albini, Furius and Caecina, the most learned men of the age¹¹⁶, to deal similarly with his debts to the ancient Roman writers. This is the subject of Book vi.

Furius begins with an excellent defence of Virgil's use of his reading, treated by some as robbery. From the old comic poet Afranius, he quotes the reply made to those who accused him of taking many things from Menander. “Not only have I taken from Menander,” he confesses, “but from any one else, even a Latin writer, who had anything which was to my purpose and which I did not think I could express better¹¹⁷.” Of course Furius adds that Virgil always gave some distinctive turn to that which he annexed.

Among the borrowed phrases are two famous ones: “cunctando restituit rem” (Aen. vi. 847) from Ennius¹¹⁸, and “non omnia possumus omnes” (Eclogue viii. 63) from Lucilius¹¹⁹. The most elaborate comparison is between various details in the description of a pestilence at the end of the third book of the Georgics and the description of the plague at Athens in the sixth book of Lucretius¹²⁰. It is not pointed out that this last is taken from Thucydides, though Macrobius has references to Thucydides elsewhere. If any doubt has been felt that Virgil had closely studied and was profoundly influenced by Lucretius, the doubt is completely resolved by the exact demonstrations of Macrobius. It is shown besides that Virgil has little touches suggested by Cicero¹²¹; and that in some cases he has not borrowed directly from Homer, as is commonly thought, but owes his turns of expression to imitations of Homeric passages by rough old Latin poets like Ennius. For the style of these Furius apologises¹²², and then hands over the subject to Caecina to continue from his own memory.

Caecina proceeds to show that the poet has been as diligent in his search of the ancient writers for particular words that suited his purpose as in his adaptation of verses and passages: it is the loss of curiosity about antiquity that makes his words appear new or singular. Among epithets thought to be of Virgil's invention, but really drawn from the ancients, are “Gradivus” for Mars and “Mulciber” for Vulcan¹²³. The copious learning here is of more interest on the whole to philologists than to general students of literature; as is also the remainder of the book, in which the commentator Servius is the chief speaker. The most interesting development for literary criticism is in the seventh chapter, where the art of Virgil in apparent understatement is brought out; as in calling Busiris, the Egyptian king who is said to have offered up human victims, “inlaudatus,” and the Stygian pool “inamabilis.”

Book vii, which is the last, is of more special interest in relation to philosophy, and forms a transition (whether intentional or not) to the Commentary on Scipio's Dream. In the first chapter, a question is raised about introducing philosophy at banquets. When we read that to exclude it altogether would be to exclude all the virtues, we perceive how decisively the tradition of considering it as “moral philosophy” had been impressed during the Stoic and Epicurean period. Yet the questions we find actually discussed are scientific and speculative; and that these are now usually abstruse, is evident from the general agreement that at banquets philosophy should be present only in moderation. When philosophers at a feast are in very small proportion to the other guests, and cannot hope to interest the company, they do best to be silent on their own topics. Even when there seems to be a place for them to come in, they should not talk about the deeper things and the knotty questions, but should start rather those that are useful and at the same time easy.

The rules of social intercourse laid down are those of a decidedly amiable society. Questions should be put about a person's knowledge or experience that will enable him to make a good figure by answering them, and so will give him pleasure. From anything contumelious, the wise ought to refrain at all times, and all ought to refrain at banquets. Jests should be made and received without offence; and there is an art of disguising compliments under the appearance of pointing out faults. Such rules about convivialities, says Eustathius, addressing the Romans as a Greek, were not disdained by Aristotle and Plutarch and “your own Apuleius”¹²⁴.

A discussion follows in which first Disarius, a doctor, makes a speech commending a simple diet as the most healthful. Eustathius replies on behalf of variety; introducing a passage from the Aιγες of Eupolis, remarkable for its profuse botanical vocabulary, in which goats boast of the varied kinds of herbs that they eat¹²⁵. Thus if “dumb animals” were a model for us, as the simplifiers appear to think, the case for simplicity would not be proved. But how can we take them for models when, Homer being the witness, pestilence falls on them first? Fables apart, they are shorter-lived than men; and those that are said to be long-lived are quite as greedy. Eustathius, however, ends by describing himself as a lover of temperance reluctantly arguing as a dialectical disputant because he has been pressed to take the other side. He has ventured to say a word for pleasure in eating; but it is agreed on both sides that anything to which the name of luxury can be applied is incompatible with the philosophic life.

The miscellaneous physical and physiological discussion that follows, in which heat and cold are taken as principles of explanation, shows what an authority Aristotle¹²⁶ had become in science. A passing mention of the complete disuse of cremation has some historical interest¹²⁷.

A topic more closely related to philosophy is the psychology of the senses. Disarius combines the observation of Aristotle, that the brain itself is insensitive, with the sound Platonic view (rejected by Aristotle), that the co-ordination of the senses and the sending out of impulses nevertheless have their seat in the brain. It does not at all follow, because the brain has not sense, that it cannot direct the senses. The anima, present there, is without sense (as distinguished from power to relate the senses to one another); but it is that which, through the brain, makes the composite being, the animal, sensitive. Animation of the body is caused and directed from the brain and the spinal marrow through the nerves, by means of the spiramentum that permeates them from the ventricles of the brain outward to the muscles. The anima itself is beyond all body¹²⁸.

This is Neo-Platonic doctrine in a relatively popular and adaptable form. The spiramentum is of course the “animal spirit” which continued to be part of orthodox physiology till modern times. It was taken over from the Stoics and assigned a place within the mechanism of the body, but deposed from the supreme position which it held in their doctrine. Renewed metaphysical thinking had made it impossible for the educated thought of a later age to accept such a crude mode of accounting for either mind or organism as sufficed for Seneca; who has no explanation or even description to give except that the unity we find to be characteristic of them is the tension of a spiritus or air¹²⁹. The anima for Macrobius is no longer a “breath,” but the unity of life and sense (and, in man, of thought) expressly recognised as something unique and not definable in corporeal terms. At the same time, through the advance of physiological science, the material conditions are more accurately defined than they could be in the time of Plato or Aristotle.

The discussions that follow on the causes of baldness and grey hairs and of blushing and pallor, and on various “natural questions” about honey, wine, oil, the properties of sea-water, etc., need not be set forth in detail. One or two points illustrate the ideals of the more rigorous philosophic sects. An expert on the pontifical law, Ateius Capito, was evidently tinged with Pythagorean doctrines, since he laid down the rule not to carve the image of a god on a ring¹³⁰. Caecina quotes from him an explanation, entirely from utilitarian causes, of the custom of wearing a ring on the fourth finger of the left hand. Further on in the dialogue, Horus mentions that he has only one garment and no slave, and does everything for himself. He needed, however, the practical instruction of a sailor, who told him that fresh water was better than sea-water for washing his cloak¹³¹. Incidentally, Eustathius is allowed to question the authority of Aristotle¹³².

Proceeding from the discussion of the properties of water, he asks why the appearance of things is modified when they are seen in water instead of through the air. Disarius in answer sets forth the Epicurean theory that images are constantly being thrown off from the surfaces of bodies, and that by means of these we see the things: the denser medium of water modifies the images as they pass. The discourse of Eustathius that follows is one more evidence of the increased clearness of thought regarding mental processes. It shows a definite understanding of the active element in sight. The passively received phantasms of the Epicureans, the speaker proves, cannot explain vision. The act of seeing requires, besides sense, the aid of memory and reason. These involve comparisons of the impressions of sight with those of the other senses. It is only by insisting on this that the arguments of the Academics against the possibility of knowledge can be refuted¹³³. We know that a certain kind of thing (for example, an apple) which the reason has inferred from the visual image by memories, is actually there, when we have tested the inference successively by the other senses (in this case, smell, touch and taste) and found it correct.

The speech of Eustathius, received with applause by all the rest, not excepting Euangelus, somehow provokes Disarius; perhaps because the speaker, to arrive at his sounder psychology, had brought in Plato's fancy that the eye sends out a light of its own to meet the light from the object of vision. Disarius does not mention this, but directly attacks philosophy as claiming for herself provinces that belong to the other arts. Take, for example, Plato's laughable mistake in saying that food and drink go down by different ways, the first through the gullet and the second through the trachea. The true account has been set forth by Erasistratus, “medicorum veterum nobilissimus¹³⁴.” Disarius quotes and comments on the passage of Erasistratus, adding a remark which he thinks useful for philosophers when they have occasion to refer to the sciences¹³⁵.

Eustathius begins his reply by a compliment. He had always classed Disarius himself among philosophers as well as physicians. But now, he continues, you seem to commit to oblivion something accepted by the consent of the human race, that philosophy is the art of arts and discipline of disciplines, working downwards by rational methods. Medicine is at the other extreme, dealing with that part of physics where conjecture rather than reason reigns¹³⁶; and that it should rise up against philosophy is an act of parricidal daring. Then he goes on to defend Plato dialectically, citing the testimony of poets more ancient than the philosopher. Obviously such a debating defence of a known error is to be taken only as part of the fashionable game of arguing on every side in turn. The serious reply in that age was already a commonplace; that knowledge had grown, and that the early philosophers wrote before any special sciences had been established.

After this display of skill, Euangelus, “envying and mocking the glory of the Greeks,” proposes the question, Which came first, the egg or the hen? Disarius has no objection to taking up the problem, and defends both sides in succession, leaving the choice of the right solution to Euangelus. Defending the thesis that the egg came first, he makes use of the position admitted in all the schools, that in the order of genesis the imperfect comes before the perfect, and only reaches perfection through the additions made by art and time¹³⁷. The “rationes seminales” which are in the simple egg, he adds in explanation of the process, are as it were the elements of the complex fowl¹³⁸. We may see in this an anticipation of Spencer's “physiological units”; as we may see in what is recorded of a lost treatise of the early Stoic, Sphaerus, περι sπέρματος, an anticipation of Darwin's “pangenesis¹³⁹.” And this is not to consider the scientific theories of the ancients too curiously; for modern biology, in spite of immensely greater knowledge of the organism in detail, is still no less an affair of speculative conjecture on these ultimate questions than the biology known to Sphaerus or Macrobius.

Notes

1. i. 1, 5: “quippe Socrate ita Parmenides antiquior, ut huius pueritia vix illius adprehenderit senectutem, et tamen inter illos de rebus arduis disputatur.” Of course the authority of Macrobius is not conclusive on the point of chronology; but we see that it was not the tradition of antiquity that Plato was a literally exact reporter.

2. i. 1, 1: “Romanae nobilitatis proceres doctique alii.”

3. i. 24, 21.

4. Ad Paulinum de Brevitate Vitae, 13, 5.

5. i. 5, 2.

6. Ad Serenum de Tranquillitate Animi, 17, 9: “Solonem Arcesilamque indulsisse vino credunt, Catoni ebrietas obiecta est: facilius efficiet, quisquis obiecit ei, crimen honestum quam turpem Catonem.” According to Plato, Seneca adds, the height of poetic inspiration cannot be reached with a sober mind; and according to Aristotle there is no great wit without a mixture of madness. In short, to reach greatness of expression, the mind must let itself go (17, 11). No doubt the experience of the tragedian suggested something to the philosopher.

7. See, for example, the note for the benefit of the “diligens lector” in bk i. 16, 30.

8. i. 7, 18.

9. Or. iv. 146 a, 150 d. … Cf. 157 d.

10. De Macrobii Saturnaliorum Fontibus, p. 41.

11. Die Philosophie des Macrobius, & c., p. 98: “Die Quelle für diese Deutungskunst bietet, wie die neuere Forschung ermittelt hat, die Schrift des Porphyr über den Helios, nicht, wie Wissowa nachgewiesen zu haben glaubte, das Werk περι θεων des Jamblich.”

12. For the De Antro Nympharum, he himself cites Cronius as a source; and Cronius may have depended on Numenius, who is also cited.

13. i. 7, 31.

14. i. 7, 34-35.

15. i. 7, 15: “nam quia numquam fas fuit Aegyptiis pecudibus aut sanguine sed precibus et ture solo placare deos, his autem duobus advenis hostiae erant ex more mactandae, fana eorum extra pomerium locaverunt.”

16. i. 7, 26.

17. i. 8, 4.

18. Macrobius does not refer to Seneca, the Stoic philosophy as a system being out of date; but there are clear traces of the use of his writings.

19. i. 11, 3-4.

20. i. 9, 2-4.

21. i. 10, 19.

22. i. 10, 20.

23. i. 20, 18: “Isis iuncta religione celebratur, quae est vel terra vel natura rerum subiacens soli.”

24. i. 9, 5-10.

25. i. 9, 11.

26. i. 9, 13.

27. i. 9, 14: “copulavit circumdato caelo.”

28. i. 14, 6-12.

29. i. 16, 11.

30. i. 17, 2. …

31. Il. xxiv. 343 is quoted.

32. i. 17, 23. This is, of course, an allusion to the opening of the Iliad. In the theory of mythology, we observe that the Greek stories are simply carried over, just as in the Latin poets.

33. E.g. i. 17, 35. …

34. i. 17, 42.

35. i. 17, 43; cf. 45: “quapropter universi pecoris antistes et vere pastor agnoscitur.”

36. i. 18, 1-6.

37. i. 18, 8.

38. i. 18, 10.

39. i. 18, 19-20. The lines suggest a gnostic attempt to bring Judaism into the general synthesis; but Macrobius does not seem to know anything of this. We may suspect composite authorship; some theological “liberal” correcting the exclusiveness of a Jewish “Sibylline oracle.” …

40. i. 18, 22.

41. i. 19, 2: “sed cum thyrsum tenet, quid aliud quam latens telum gerit, cuius mucro hedera lambente protegitur? quod ostendit vinculo quodam patientiae obligandos impetus belli. habet enim hedera vinciendi obligandique naturam.”

42. i. 19, 4; cf. 6. Both are fiery gods; “et certe ratio naturalis exigit, ut di caloris caelestis parentes magis nominibus quam re substantiaque divisi sint.”

43. i. 19, 10-11.

44. i. 19, 12-13. …

45. Or. iv. 150 c …

46. Ad Marcellam, c. 33.

47. Ibid. c. 1. …

48. Ibid. c. 2 …

49. i. 20, 4: “quod ex illo natus creditur.” Cf. Julian, Or. iv. 144 b. Apollo Musegetes begets in the world Asclepius, whom he has with him also before the world …

50. i. 20, 6: “quippe Hercules ea est solis potestas, quae humano generi virtutem ad similitudinem praestat deorum.”

51. i. 17, 70: “sicut et Porphyrius testatur Minervam esse virtutem solis, quae humanis mentibus prudentiam subministrat. nam ideo haec dea Iovis capite prognata memoratur, id est de summa aetheris parte edita, unde origo solis est.” Cf. Julian, Or. iv. 149 ab, where a slightly different turn is given to the explanation of Athena Pronoia … The poetic myth is here passing over for the philosophers into the idea of “the intellectual sun”; but the Stoic source of the theorising is visible in the notion of fiery or ethereal substance.

52. i. 21, 1-6.

53. i. 21, 7-10.

54. i. 21, 11-13.

55. i. 21, 22: “Gemini autem, qui alternis mortibus vivere creduntur, quid aliud nisi solem unum eundemque significant modo descendentem in ima mundi, modo mundi in summam altitudinem resurgentem?”

56. i. 22, 1.

57. Diog. Laert. i. 69 (Chilo) … Cf. Xen. Hell. vi. 4, 23 (Jason of Pherae to the Thebans) …

58. i. 22, 2.

59. i. 22, 3: “cuius materiae vis universorum corporum, seu illa divina sive terrena sint, componit essentiam.”

60. i. 22, 7: “huius Inui amor et deliciae 'Ηχω creditur nullius oculis obnoxia, quod significat harmoniam caeli, quae soli amica est, quasi sphaerarum omnium de quibus nascitur moderatori, nec tamen potest nostris umquam sensibus deprehendi.”

61. i. 23, 4-6.

62. i. 23, 22.

63. i. 24, 8: “haec est quidem, Euangele, Maronis gloria, ut nullius laudibus crescat, nullius vituperatione minuatur.”

64. See Tylor's Primitive Culture and Spencer's Principles of Sociology, vol. i.

65. Adv. Math. ix. 36. …

66. i. 20, 6: “nec aestimes Alcmena apud Thebas Boeotias natum solum vel primum Herculem nuncupatum: immo post multos atque postremus ille hac appellatione dignatus est, honoratusque hoc nomine, quia nimia fortitudine meruit nomen dei virtutem regentis.”

67. For their alternative view, that “all the gods of the heathen are devils,” they could find authority in the ascription, by Pythagoreans and Platonists, of the delight in bloodshed and the reek of sacrifice to evil “demons” who persuade men that they are gods; see Porphyry, De Abstinentia. They did not fail to press this point; so strongly, says Gibbon, that sometimes their attacks appear to glance at the Mosaic law.

68. Julian, while still nominally a Christian, could without the least objection fill his panegyrical orations with mythological ornament. This is well brought out by Miss Gardner in Julian, Philosopher and Emperor (“Heroes of the Nations” Series, 1895).

69. See A. W. Verrall, Collected Essays, Classical and Modern (Cambridge, 1913), “The Birth of Virgil” (pp. 204-218).

70. Inf. i. 70-2.

71. ii. 7, 3.

72. ii. 7, 5: “quo dicto universitas populi ad solum Caesarem oculos et ora convertit, notantes impotentiam eius hac dicacitate lapidatam.”

73. I cannot help feeling an underlying irony in Julian's use of the art of rhetoric to defend the “will to believe” in the miracle wrought by the image of the Mother of the Gods on arriving at Rome (Or.v.161ab). The orator is pleased with his debating point.

74. Cf. As You Like It, Act v. Sc. 2: “Caesar's thrasonical brag”; also Cymbeline, Act iii. Sc. 1.

75. Caesares, 324 a. …

76. Ibid. 332 a. …

77. … (332 d).

78. Ibid. 309 ab. …

79. Caesar himself, while taking credit for his clemency, admits the justice of his fate (321 c). …

80. iii. 1, 4.

81. iii. 3, 10: “secundum Pompeium Festum religiosi sunt, qui facienda et vitanda discernunt.”

82. iii. 4, 1-6.

83. iii. 5, 6: “eximii quoque in sacrificiis vocabulum non poeticum επίθετν sed sacerdotale nomen est.”

84. iii. 9, 5: “ipsius vero urbis nomen etiam doctissimis ignoratum est, caventibus Romanis, ne quod saepe adversus urbes hostium fecisse se noverant, idem ipsi quoque hostili evocatione paterentur, si tutelae suae nomen divulgaretur.”

85. iii. 9, 9.

86. iii. cc. 10-12.

87. iii. 13, 16.

88. iii. 14, 2.

89. iii. 14, 14-15.

90. iii. 16, 9 (on the size and price of the mullet): “at nunc et maioris ponderis passim videmus et pretia haec insana nescimus.”

91. iii. 17, 10: “vetus verbum leges inquit bonae ex malis moribus procreantur.”

92. iii. 17, 12.

93. iii. cc. 18-20.

94. v. 1, 20.

95. v. 2, 1.

96. v. 3, 2; cf. 3, 16.

97. v. 3, 16.

98. v. cc. 4-10.

99. v. c. 11.

100. v. c. 12.

101. v. 13, 26.

102. v. 13, 27. Here we come upon one of the many cases where no attempt is made to keep up consistently the illusion of dialogue: “quanta sit differentia utriusque loci lectori aestimandum relinquo.”

103. v. 13, 30: “his praetermissis, quae animam parabolae dabant, velut exanimum in Latinis versibus corpus remansit.”

104. v. 14, 7: “Homerica quoque epitheta quantum sit admiratus imitando confessus est. … et mille talium vocabulorum, quibus velut sideribus micat divini carminis variata maiestas.”

105. v. 14, 8: “adde et fumiferam noctem, et quicquid in singulis paene versibus diligens lector agnoscit.”

106. v. 15, 16: “has copias fortasse putat aliquis divinae illi simplicitati praeferendas, sed nescio quo modo Homerum repetitio illa unice decet.”

107. v. 15, 18-19.

108. v. 16, 1-4.

109. v. 16, 8: “in non nullis ab Homerica secta haud scio casune an sponte desciscit. fortunam Homerus nescire maluit, et soli decreto, quam μοιραν vocat, omnia regenda committit adeo, ut hoc vocabulum τύχη in nulla parte Homerici voluminis nominetur. contra Vergilius non solum novit et meminit, sed omnipotentiam quoque eidem tribuit, quam et philosophi, qui eam nominant, nihil sua vi posse, sed decreti sive providentiae ministram esse voluerunt.”

110. v. 16, 10: “nullam commemorationem de iudicio Paridis Homerus admittit.” This shows that Macrobius, with the Alexandrian critics, rejected Il. xxiv. 25-30 as an interpolation.

111. v. 17, 4.

112. v. 17, 7-14. Macrobius has only three or four references to Horace, and none to Ovid. Ennius as well as Lucretius he knows well; and he quotes Catullus.

113. v. 17, 14; cf. 17, 8: “eius modi sententias et verba molitus est, ut Pindaro quoque ipso, qui nimis opima et pingui facundia existimatus est, insolentior hoc quidem in loco tumidiorque sit.”

114. v. 18, 1: “fuit enim hic poeta ut scrupulose et anxie, ita dissimulanter et clanculo doctus, ut multa transtulerit, quae unde translata sint difficile sit cognitu.”

115. v. 22, 12: “in talibus locis grammatici excusantes imperitiam suam inventiones has ingenio magis quam doctrinae Maronis adsignant, nec dicunt, eum ab aliis mutuatum, ne nominare cogantur auctores. sed adfirmo, doctissimum vatem etiam in hoc Aeschylum, eminentissimum tragoediarum scriptorem, secutum.”

116. vi. 1, 1: “viros inter omnes nostra aetate longe doctissimos.” More than a century later, an Albinus was accused, along with Boethius, of conspiracy against Theodoric. See Gibbon, Roman Empire, ch. xxxix, ed. Bury, vol. iv. p. 200. “The senator Albinus was accused and already convicted on the presumption of hoping, as it was said, the liberty of Rome.”

117. vi. 1, 4.

118. vi. 1, 23.

119. vi. 1, 35.

120. vi. 2, 7: “ipsius vero pestilentiae, quae est in tertio Georgicorum, color totus et liniamenta paene omnia tracta sunt de descriptione pestilentiae, quae est in sexto Lucretii.”

121. vi. 2, 33-34.

122. vi. 3, 9: “nemo ex hoc loco viles putet veteres poetas, quod versus eorum scabri nobis videntur.” Cf. vi. 8, 9: “nam quia saeculum nostrum ab Ennio et omni bibliotheca vetere descivit, multa ignoramus, quae non laterent, si veterum lectio nobis esset familiaris.”

123. vi. 5, 1.

124. vii. 3, 24.

125. vii. 5, 9.

126. vii. 6, 16: “cuius inventis nec ipsa natura dissentit.”

127. vii. 7, 5: “licet urendi corpora defunctorum usus nostro saeculo nullus sit.”

128. vii. 9, 16.

129. See Naturales Quaestiones, ii. 6, 6: “esse autem unitatem in aëre vel ex hoc intellegi potest, quod corpora nostra inter se cohaerent: quid enim est aliud, quod tenet illa, quam spiritus? quid est aliud, quo animus noster agitatur? quis est illi motus nisi intentio? quae intentio nisi ex unitate? quae unitas, nisi haec esset in aëre?”

130. vii. 13, 11: “nefas esse … deorum formas insculpi anulis.”

131. vii. 13, 17-18.

132. vii. 13, 21: “Aristoteles enim ut non nulla alia, magis acute quam vere ista disseruit.”

133. vii. 14, 21.

134. vii. 15, 3.

135. vii. 15, 13: “vides satius fuisse philosophorum omnium principi alienis abstinere quam minus nota proferre.”

136. vii. 15, 15: “medicina autem physicae partis extrema faex est, cui ratio est cum testeis terrenisque corporibus, sed quid rationem nominavi, cum magis apud ipsam regnet coniectura quam ratio?”

137. vii. 16, 3: “semper enim, quod incipit, imperfectum adhuc et informe est, et ad perfectionem sui per procedentis artis et temporis additamenta formatur.”

138. vii. 16, 5: “nam sicut elementa prius extiterunt, et ita reliqua corpora de commixtione eorum creata sunt, ita rationes seminales, quae in ovo sunt, si venialis erit ista translatio, velut quaedam gallinae elementa credenda sunt.”

139. Diog. Laert. vii. 159 …