Macrobius' Saturnalia Book One

Praetextatus; the difference between the two is well exhibitedAs Ellis has remarked (The Fables of Avianus, p. xx). by the difference between the tone of the famous third Relatio, addressed by Symmachus as Prefect of the City in 384 to Theodosius for the restoration of the Altar of Victory (which had been removed from the Senate House by Gratian in 382), and that of the sarcastic reply of Praetextatus to Damasus: “Make me bishop of Rome, and I will be a Christian straightaway.”Jerome Contra Ioannem Hierosolymitanum 8: "Facite me Romanae urbis episcopum et ero protinus Christianus." Yet it would be less than fair to Praetextatus to overlook the evidence (CIL VI, 1779) of his happy union with his wife Paulina: coniuncti simul vixerunt annos XL original: "they lived joined together for 40 years.".

In the Saturnalia, the oratorical style of Symmachus is described as rich and ornate (5. 1. 7), and he undertakes to discuss the most striking examples of Vergil's use of rhetorical devices (1. 14. 14, and Book 4). Macrobius presents him as meeting the somewhat dull decorum of Praetextatus with a proposal that the company amuse themselves after dinner by recalling witty and humorous sayings of men of old times (2. 1. 8); he is introduced, appropriately, as relating a number of Cicero's jests (2. 3). Later (7. 1. 2) he views with some apprehension a suggestion by Praetextatus that the conversation inter pocula between drinks / over wine should be in no lighter vein than what had preceded dinner.

A subscriptio a signed note to a manuscript of the first book of the Commentary records that one Aurelius Memmius Symmachus amended and punctuated his copy of the text with the help of one Macrobius Plotinus Eudoxius (the latter acting as the "counter-reader"); this suggests the duration in a later generation of a friendship between the families of the Symmachus and the Macrobius of the Saturnalia.

Flavianus

Virius Nicomachus Flavianus, who also held a number of public offices, was a kinsman of Symmachus, and the families were also connected by marriage. An inscription in which he is styled historicus disertissimus most eloquent historian is evidence of his literary tastes.CIL VI, 1782. He may have been the author of the work De vestigiis et dogmatibus philosophorum (now lost) referred to by John of Salisbury in Policraticus 2. 26 and 8. 11-12. See Webb, I, 141; II, 294, 304, 309, and 314. He also wrote Annales, which were used by Ammianus Marcellinus; see Dill, p. 155. Like Prae-