Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius - Life and Works, Gallery

Roman writer and Neoplatonist philosopher, probably born in Africa. He wrote a commentary on Cicero's Somnium Scipionis, and Saturnaliorum conviviorum libri septem, a series of historical, mythological, and critical dialogues.

Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius was a Roman grammarian and Neoplatonist philosopher who flourished during the reigns of Honorius and Arcadius (395–423).

Life and Works

He himself states that he was not a Roman, but there is no certain evidence whether he was of African or Greek descent. Since the tenure of high office at that date was limited to Christians, and there is no evidence in the writings of Macrobius that he was a Christian, early writers questioned both Macrobius's Christianity and his holding of high civil office.

The most important of his works is the Saturnalia, containing an account of the discussions held at the house of Vettius Praetextatus (c.

The first book is devoted to an inquiry as to the origin of the Saturnalia and the festivals of Janus, which leads to a history and discussion of the Roman calendar, and to an attempt to derive all forms of worship from that of the Sun. The third, fourth, fifth and sixth books are devoted to Virgil, dwelling respectively on his learning in religious matters, his rhetorical skill, his debt to Homer (with a comparison of the art of the two) and to other Greek writers, and the nature and extent of his borrowings from the earlier Latin poets. The latter part of the third book is taken up with a dissertation upon luxury and the sumptuary laws intended to check it, which is probably a dislocated portion of the second book.

The primary value of the work lies in the facts and opinions quoted from earlier writers.

Macrobius is also the author of a commentary in two books on the Dream of Scipio narrated by Cicero at the end of his Republic. The nature of the dream, in which the elder Scipio appears to his (adopted) grandson, and describes the life of the good after death and the constitution of the universe from the Stoic point of view, gave occasion for Macrobius to discourse upon the nature of the cosmos in a series of essays showing the astronomical notions then current and transmitted to the Middle Ages.

See editions by L.

Gallery

In his commentary on Cicero's Dream of Scipio, Macrobius described the Earth as a globe of insignificant size in comparison to the remainder of the cosmos. Many early medieval manuscripts of Macrobius include maps of the Earth, including the antipodes, zonal maps showing the Ptolemaic climates derived from the concept of a spherical Earth and a diagram showing the Earth (labeled as globus terrae, the sphere of the Earth) at the center of the hierarchically ordered planetary spheres.

Images from a 12th century manuscript of Macrobius' Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis (Parchment, 50 ff.;

Initial E shaped in the form of a writing man, probably representing Macrobius himself.	The Universe, the Earth in the centre, surrounded by the seven planets within the zodiacal signs.	The five climes of the Earth.	Sketch map showing the inhabited northern region separated from the antipodes by an imagined ocean at the equator.
Diagram showing a lunar eclipse.	Diagram showing a solar eclipse.