Macrobius' Saturnalia Book One

has not survived, nor has the account by Flavianus—which would have followed it—of the poet's knowledge of augural law (1. 24. 17 and 18). However, the first twelve chapters of what remains of the third book are devoted to the illustration of Vergil's acquaintance with the details of pontifical law.35 In these chapters, the speaker (Praetextatus) cites lines which refer, for example, to ceremonial purification by running water or by sprinkling (3. 1) and shows (sometimes with etymological explanations)36 the exactness with which Vergil brings out the ritual significance of a word or expression. The care with which he marks the ceremonial distinction made between the classes of sacrificial victims is also noted (3. 5), as is the fact that he assigns to a god not only the sacrifice appropriate to that god but also the god's special style of address (3. 6). Moreover, such knowledge of the pontifical law is not forced but (with docta elegantia original: "learned elegance") is often indirectly and allusively revealed.37 There is a gap after the twelfth chapter, for in the thirteenth the second course of the dinner is in progress, and Caecina Albinus, in reply to some comment by Horus on the luxury of their times (3. 13. 16), argues that earlier generations took much more thought for such pleasures. Furius Albinus then emphasizes Caecina's point by reference to the regard held under the Republic for skill in dancing (3. 14), to the high prices paid in those days for certain fish (3. 15-16), and to a long series of sumptuary laws (3. 17). Servius follows with a disquisition (which reads rather like a nurseryman's catalogue) on the various kinds of nuts, apples, pears, figs, olives, and grapes (3. 18-20). This is brought to an end by Praetextatus, who remarks on the lateness of the hour and reminds the guests that the party will reassemble on the morrow, the third and last day of the festival, at the house of Symmachus (3. 20. 8).

Both the beginning and the end of the fourth book have been lost, and what remains treats of the use made by Vergil of the rules of rhetoric.38 The speaker would seem to be Symmachus, who enumerates the devices employed by the poet to depict or evoke emotions.

35. Compare W. Y. Sellar, The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil, p. 374.
36. E.g., religiosus (3. 3. 8), delubrum (3. 4. 2).
37. E.g., cum faciam vitula pro frugibus (Eclogues 3. 77), where the word vitula suggests the terms vitulari and vitulatio.
38. Compare Butler's Hudibras (Part I, Canto 1, line 89):
For all a Rhetorician's Rules
Teach nothing but to name his Tools.