A Companion to Late Antique Literature

by Scott McGill

  Most importantly, Evangelus’s uncomfortable presence forces his fellow interlocutors to offer some justification for the steadily mounting mass of antiquarian data – “items that are worth remembering” (Praef. 3; and see, generally, Hedrick 2000, pp. 79–88 on patterns of memory and forgetfulness). One significant shared concern is to anatomize Virgil’s literary practice, especially his intertextual strategies. The stockpile of citations and parallel passages is key to an evaluation of Virgil’s relationship with his own literary heritage. Virgil (it is suggested) is at his best when blurring the boundary between the original and his imitation in ways that transcend both quotation and plagiarism; as a result of “the good judgment he displayed in his borrowings, when we read another’s material in his setting, we either prefer to think it actually his or marvel that it sounds better than it did in its original setting” (6.1.6, with McGill 2012, pp. 178–209; see, too, 5.2.13 and Virgil’s failure to measure up to Pindar at 5.17.7–14, with Pelttari 2014, pp. 29–31). Virgil is most vulnerable to criticism when he departs from an identifiable model (5.17.1–4). Praiseworthy invention, then, is not a matter of brash innovation but of finding an appropriate balance between the novel and the fitting (noue quidem sed decenter) (6.6.1; see, too, 5.3.16; Vogt‐Spira 2009; D. Kelly 1999, pp. 55–76; Goldlust 2010, pp. 278–282). For Macrobius, too, the literary past is never past; as Aaron Pelttari notes, “Macrobius endorses a theory of originality that takes full account of the importance of transmission, tradition, and repetition (in a word, the reading) of the past for any consciousness of the present” (2014, pp. 28–29; see, too, König 2012, pp. 203–214; MacCormack 1998, pp. 73–82).

  Virgil’s reading of his own literary antecedents thus provides an attractive model for a late antique reading of Virgil (Pucci 1998, pp. 64–69). At the core of these lengthy interventions on Virgilian reception is the implication that a critical investigation of Virgil’s poetics of imitation offers a useful framework for understanding the correct relationship between past and present. The test for the reader (in the congenial company of these 12 discussants) is to extend that paradigm – with all the erudition that implies and demands – to embrace topics as difficult as “the various names for solar deities.” Or perhaps better, the reader should wonder how far the paradigm can be extended. After all – aside from a not particularly witty remark by the emperor Augustus, possibly alluding to Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents (2.4.11 with Cameron 2011, p. 270; Jones 2014, pp. 154–155) – this is a text without any explicit reference to Christianity. Indeed, the Saturnalia’s sharpest provocation may be whether such “a highly idealized and highly stylized republic of learning” (Kaster 2011, 1: p. xviii) and its antiquarian fascinations with Virgil and traditional religion must remain forever fixed in the fictive world of late fourth‐century Rome, or whether, 50 years later, this past could, in its turn, yield items worth remembering – noue quidem sed decenter – by Macrobius’s son, Eustathius, and his fifth‐century Christian contemporaries.

  33.3 Past and Present

  Antiquarianism is (inevitably) backward‐looking. Its claim (as voiced in the Saturnalia) is to preserve “all that the ancients developed to perfection” (1.3.1). But neither Macrobius nor Lydus was engaged in some sentimental salvage operation. Both subjected the past to scrutiny. Lydus was clear: “I have carefully reviewed the most useful theories on the subject and purged them of their fraudulent inaccuracies” (Signs 22). The discussion in the Saturnalia confronts Virgil’s literary shortcomings and catalogs the moral failings of Republican Rome (3.13–17). Nor was a carefully curated past to be presented merely as a textual cabinet of curiosities (although that was certainly part of the pleasure); rather, the antiquarian project also claimed a continuing contemporary connection. One key task was the reconciliation of the divergent views of ancient authorities. “We ought to imitate bees,” Macrobius reflected; “wandering about, sampling the flowers, they arrange whatever they’ve gathered … and by blending in the peculiar quality of their own spirit they transform the diverse kinds of nectar into a single taste” (Praef. 5). It was this very process of harmonization – the active intervention of both the antiquarian and his readers – that implicated past and present. Macrobius reiterates his point to metaphorical excess. The process is fermentation, it is digestion, it is arithmetic “just as one number results from a sum of individual numbers,” it is the manufacture of perfume, blending “all the aromatic essences into a single fragrant exhalation” (Praef. 8). Best of all, it is the process of a perfect dinner‐party conversation (as the urbane company admires its own sympotic achievement on the final afternoon): “In every area of life, and especially in the jovial setting of a banquet, anything that seems out of tune should – provided the proper means are used – be reduced to a single harmony” (7.1.13; Kaster 1980, pp. 231–38; 2008, 1: pp. xliv–xlv; Goldlust 2010, 166–171; Gerth 2013, 90–103).

  But, for some, the non‐Christian past remained stubbornly dissonant. In his brief book report on John Lydus, the ninth‐century Byzantine bishop and bibliophile Photius – no enthusiast, declaring On Celestial Signs mired in myth and On Months “replete with pointless information” – noted that it was difficult to be certain of the author’s faith.

  He is a man who seems devoted to the old religion, because he honors the beliefs of the classical past and venerates them, but he also venerates ours, so that it is not possible for his readers to decide easily whether he venerates them through conviction or is just playing along. (Bibliotheca no. 180/125b)

  Some modern scholarship has been more certain, co‐opting Lydus as part of a “pagan opposition” to Justinian (Hunger 1978, 1: pp. 250–251; and, more generally, Bell 2013, pp. 217–246), or regarding any formal profession of Christianity (Maas 1992, p. 30) as the “religious dissimulation” of a Neoplatonist with a “preference for non‐Christian teachers and teachings” (Kaldellis 2003, quoting 303 and 307; see, too, Bjornlie 2012, pp. 114–115). But too easy an equation between antiquarianism – inevitably fascinated with the classical past – and paganism (even in its “softest” intellectualized versions) in sixth‐century Constantinople has been rightly questioned (Treadgold 2007, p. 258; Caimi 1984, p. 14; and especially the careful discussion in Maas 1992, pp. 67–82). Similarly, in his important study of the aristocratic elite in late fourth‐/early fifth‐century Rome, Alan Cameron (2011) has exposed the dangers of assuming any simple congruence between pagan belief and a cultivated engagement with classical culture. Even so, opinion on Macrobius remains divided. The best claim for a pagan Macrobius (at least on the basis of the Saturnalia) rests on a reading of Praetextatus’s lengthy exposition of the names of solar deities (prominently placed on the opening morning) as a rationalizing defense of paganism offering “the clearest views of his [Macrobius’s] beliefs” (Jones 2014, p. 155; see, too, Flamant 1977, pp. 652–680; Kahlos 2002, pp. 193–200; Syska 1993, helpfully summarizing a dense discussion at pp. 210–218). The case is somewhat weakened if, as suggested above, Praetextatus’s monologue, with its deracinated theology, is taken as the first in a series of antiquarian interventions in a symposium whose chief interest is a critical appreciation of Virgil. Macrobius’s appointment as Praetorian Prefect of Italy in 430 may also be relevant; at least after the opening decades of the fifth century it is vanishingly rare to find a non‐Christian holding high office in the West (Cameron 2011, pp. 272, 187–195). Macrobius, then, was “probably a Christian” (Kaster 2011, 1: p. xxii) or perhaps – in Alan Cameron’s compromise – an “uncommitted pagan” writing for an overwhelmingly Christian readership (2011, pp. 265–272, retreating from 1977, pp. 22–26; 1966, p. 36; see, too, Goldlust 2010, 15–19; Gerth 2013, 88–90).

  But too great a concentration on clarifying these authors’ religious confession (or level of commitment) risks impeding an appreciation of their projects. After all, some ambiguity – as Photius’s assessment grudgingly concedes – was inevitable in anything less than an openly hostile engagement with a non�
�Christian past (and particularly with the details of archaic rituals and beliefs). John Lydus is explicit in recognizing that tension: “To be occupied with the observation of the stars does not place one beyond right religion” (Signs 16a, but note the text is much restored). It is implicit in the Saturnalia’s repeated insistence – to Eustathius, to the interlocutors, to the reader – on harmonization. (To be sure, there is no explicit mention of Christianity. But that weighty silence seems a direct challenge to fifth‐century Christian readers to look beyond their religion. To think otherwise is to elect instead to reduce the Saturnalia to a narrow and nostalgic exercise in literary escapism.)

  Above all, late antique antiquarian texts and their authors expect their readers to work hard. Unlike encyclopedias or grammars or commentaries, which typically claim a more univocal or greater prescriptive authority over their material, antiquarian works are deliberately polyphonic. The lengthy translated extracts in Lydus and the 12 voices of “leading members of the Roman nobility and other learned men” overheard in a three‐day symposium are invitations to readers to join the discussion – sometimes frustrating, sometimes uncertain, sometimes inconclusive – to determine what “items are worth remembering.” From that point of view, antiquarian projects are not just about passively admiring “all that the ancients developed to perfection” or about applauding competitive academic pedantry (although both elements play a part). Most importantly, for the attentive reader, these texts hold out the active possibility of working toward a fuller understanding of an – inescapably – non‐Christian past and the ways, and on what terms, it might be connected with an – undeniably – Christian present.

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  Cameron, Alan. (1977). Paganism and literature in late fourth century Rome. In: Christianisme et formes littéraires de l’Antiquité tardive en occident (ed. Manfred Furhmann), 1–30. Entretiens Hardt 23. Geneva: Fondation Hardt.

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  Flamant, Jacques. (1977). Macrobe et le néo‐platonisme latin, à la fin du IVe siècle. Leiden: Brill.

  Formisano, Marco. (2012). Late antiquity: New departures. In: The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature (ed. Ralph J. Hexter and David Townsend), 509–534. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  Formisano, Marco. (2013). Late Latin encyclopaedism: Towards a new paradigm of practical knowledge. In: Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance (ed. Jason König and Greg Woolf), 197–215. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Gerth, Mattias. (2013). Bildungsvorstellungen im 5. Jahrhundert n. Chr: Macrobius, Martianus Capella und Sidonius Apollinaris. Berlin: de Gruyter.

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  Hicks, Andrew. (2012). Martianus Capella and the liberal arts. In: The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Latin Literature (ed. Ralph J. Hexter and David Townsend), 307–334. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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  Shanzer, Danuta. (1986). A Philological and Literary Commentary on Martianus Capella’s De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii Book 1. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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  Van Nuffelen, Peter. (2011). Eusebius of Caesarea and the concept of paganism. In: The Archaeology of Late Antique “Paganism” (ed. Luke Lavan and Michael Mulryan), 89–109. Leiden/Boston: Brill.

  Vogt‐Spira, Gregor. (2009). Les Saturnales de Macrobe: Une poétique implicte de l’Antiquité tardive. In: Manifestes littéraires dans la Latinité tardive: Poétique et rhétorique (ed. Perrine Galand‐Hallyn and Vincent Zarini), 263–277. Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes.

  FURTHER READING

  John Lydus’s On Months (often known by its Latin title, De Mensibus) is edited by Richard Wünsch (Leipzig: Teubner, 1898); On Celestial Signs (De Ostentis) by Curt Wachsmuth (2nd ed. Leipzig: Teubner, 1897). There is a serviceable English translation of both works by Anastasius Bandy (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2013). (It should be noted that both texts have been reordered by Bandy and no longer correspond to Wünsch and Wachsmuth, whose numbering of the fragments is followed here.) Macrobius’s Saturnalia is edited by Robert Kaster (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2011); the manuscript tradition is discussed in detail in Kaster 2010. The Saturnalia is elegantly translated in Kaster 2011 (whose translations are used here). Readers with a taste for late antique antiquarianism might also like to consult the fifth‐century De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (The Wedding of Philology and Mercury) by Martianus Capella. The complete text is edited by James Willis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1983) and the standard English translation is Stahl 1971, but note that there have been several subsequent French and Italian editions and translations of individual books; see Hicks 2012 for a helpful introduction and further bibliography.