Supplement to the Glossary of the Romance of the Rose

Dissertation

He placed his [poem] in Spring, a season dedicated to Love; and as few people place faith in these illusions of our senses, he justifies the belief that one should have in them by the authority of Macrobius (p) Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius (fl. c. 400 AD) was a Roman grammarian and philosopher whose commentary on Cicero’s "Dream of Scipio" became the standard medieval reference for dream classification., who distinguishes five different types of dreams, as I will explain in the Glossary.

The ancients often delighted in hiding the most sublime truths from us under the guise of dreams, and it is of these fictions that La Fontaine Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695), the renowned French fabulist. said (q):

The sweet charm of many a dream,
Under the clothing of a lie
Offers us the truth.

It is in this way that Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BC), the Roman statesman and philosopher., under the fiction of the "Dream of Scipio," gives an idea of Platonic Theology, Astronomy, and the Science of numbers, of which Macrobius made a Commentary, where one discovers the deepest erudition employed with art.

François Colomne Francesco Colonna (1433–1527), an Italian friar to whom the "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili" (Poliphilo's Strife of Love in a Dream) is attributed., in 1467, in his discourse of the Dream of Poliphilus, explained the secrets of Love and the rules of Architecture, which is the main goal of his work: finally, under...

(p) Saturnalia, Book One original: "Saturnal. lib. primo." Note: While the author cites the "Saturnalia," Macrobius's influential classification of dreams actually appears in his "Commentary on the Dream of Scipio."

(q) Fable of the Faithless Depositary original: "Fable du Dépositaire infidéle." Referring to Book IX, Fable 1 of La Fontaine’s Fables.