No less valuable is the schematic plan of the work (pp. Their interests and personalities as represented in the text bear significant, though not always straightforward, relation to their historical selves and often shape the tenor and direction of the conversation, as Kaster’s discussion makes clear. Macrobius’ fourteen interlocutors can be difficult to keep straight, but they are not simply names plucked at random.
#Saturnalia austin full#
They quickly prove their worth as continual points of reference for readers staying the full course. 2 Sections two and four are something more. Full details are to be found elsewhere, but enough information is provided here to tell us where we are textually, how we got here, and why this is the place we want to be. Kaster’s fresh inspection of the manuscripts has put the entire tradition on a firmer footing, leading to significant improvements over Willis’ 1963 Teubner. (Typical of Kaster’s engagement with recent developments is his specific citation of Cameron’s Last Pagans, a book that must have been in press almost simultaneously with this one.) The section on text is no less contemporary in its slant.
![saturnalia austin saturnalia austin](https://d.ibtimes.co.uk/en/full/1418329/saturnalia.jpg)
The biographical and cultural information in sections one and three is squarely in line with current thinking. Some of these sections are conventionally preparatory. This fifty-page essay provides both preparation for tackling the work and a skeleton key to its contents that encourages us to take Macrobius’ complexities seriously, to read him continuously and not simply to pluck the fruits that attract us. The Loeb format is well suited to the task of providing a manageable Saturnalia. What kind of world is this, where the censors’ nota still carries a charge although the censorship itself had been defunct for 450 years, and why would it still matter to Macrobius’ readers that nearly 700 years earlier Cato disparaged Postumius Albinus for writing Roman history in Greek? This is the world these volumes open to us, and what we learn from spending time there is worth considering. There is now more poignancy than pity in realizing that the ‘Rome’ of the Saturnalia, so familiar to us from its landmarks of Republic and Principate, was itself a world nearly half a millennium in Macrobius’ own past. Kaster does not accomplish this singlehanded: the old stereotype of the fifth century CE as a time of pedantry and cultural decline as pagan aristocrats waged a last, losing struggle against their Christian peers has been gradually yielding to a much more nuanced and sympathetic view of that age. Indeed, this new edition, distinguished in any case for its fresh Latin text, consistently readable translation, and rich annotation can also claim the less expected virtue of making Macrobius himself an interesting, perhaps even important figure.
![saturnalia austin saturnalia austin](https://www.austinchronicle.com/imager/b/big/2825037/1488/jb-AFCVColum062721-0002-copy.jpg)
Original research was not Macrobius’ aim, but even when immediate sources like Gellius and Plutarch survive, his work remains important in its own right as a document in the history of reception. As a repository of antiquarian lore, an anthology of lost authors, and a reflection of ancient attitudes toward literature, science and much in between, it has long provided grist for our scholarly mills along with recipes for its use.
![saturnalia austin saturnalia austin](https://www.romewithmarisa.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Saturn_with_head_protected_by_winter_cloak_holding_a_scythe_in_his_right_hand_fresco_from_the_House_of_the_Dioscuri_at_Pompeii_Naples_Archaeological_Museum_23497733210-928x1536.jpg)
1 It is not so prominent in the curriculum, though it has much to say about works that are. No Latinist will run that sort of risk with the Saturnalia of Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius. The overly competitive hotshot of Changing Places wins his round with Hamlet -and then unaccountably fails in his bid for tenure. ‘Humiliation,’ as described by David Lodge, is a game academics play by naming in turn the well-known books they have not read.