Macrobius' Saturnalia Book One

[modernized text]

excerpts from a grammatical treatise (dedicated to a certain Symmachus) on the differences and affinities of the Greek and Latin verb; a Neoplatonist commentary on Cicero's Somnium ScipionisOriginal Latin: "Dream of Scipio"; and a substantial portion of a longer work, the Saturnalia.

THE SATURNALIA

The causes of the decline of Latin literature were many, and their effects were cumulative. Perhaps the two most potent causes were the growing gap between the spoken and written word (as Latin gradually developed into the Romance languages and dialects) and the discouragement of original creation by the retention of rhetoric—with its stock themes—as the staple of education long after such training had ceased to have practical value.

Certainly, education under the Empire did not foster original work; instead, it tended to stereotype literature and produce that "cloud of critics, compilers, and commentators" which, in Edward Gibbon's view, "darkened the face of learning." Henry Nettleship, in a lecture on Aulus Gellius—with whose Noctes AtticaeOriginal Latin: "Attic Nights" Macrobius was acquainted—also referred to the "passion for making epitomes, selections, florilegiaOriginal Latin: "anthologies", and miscellanies of all kinds" which "arose among the Romans in the first century after Christ and continued for a long period." The Saturnalia, it must be confessed, is a result of this activity.

The work takes the form of an imaginary dialogue. In the preface, the author says his aim is to put his wide and varied reading at the disposal of his son and thus provide him with a store of useful information.