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Saturnalia (Latin: Saturnaliorum Libri Septem, "Seven Books of the Saturnalia") is a work written after c. 431 CE by the Roman provincial Macrobius Theodosius. [1] The Saturnalia consists of an account of the discussions held at the house of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus during the holiday of the Saturnalia.
English: This codex from the Plutei Collection of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence contains the complete text of Saturnalia by the fourth−fifth century Latin author Macrobius. The work takes the form of a series of dialogues among learned men at a fictional banquet at which they discuss antiquities, history, literature ...
Macrobius's given name is unrecorded as is his family name ().His recorded name is a series of three surnames (), properly ordered Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius.This is what appears in the earliest surviving manuscripts of the Saturnalia and how he is addressed in the excerpts from his lost De Differentiis.
The Saturnalia was the dramatic setting of the multivolume work of that name by Macrobius, a Latin writer from late antiquity who is the major source for information about the holiday. Macrobius describes the reign of Justinus's "king Saturn" as "a time of great happiness, both on account of the universal plenty that prevailed and because as ...
In the dialogue of Macrobius's Saturnalia, the interlocutor Praetextatus says that sigillaria were substitutes for the sacrificial victims of the primitive religious rituals. [5] Interpreted as such, they raise questions about human sacrifice among the earliest Romans [6] (see also Argei and oscilla). The speaker Evangelus, however, counters ...
Macrobius (5th century CE) presents an interpretation of the Saturnalia as a festival of light leading to the winter solstice. [34] [14] (1.1.8–9) The renewal of light and the coming of the new year was celebrated in the later Roman Empire at the Dies Natalis of Sol Invictus, the "Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun," on December 25. [35]
One of the oldest Roman jokes, which is based on a fictitious story and survived alive to this time, is told by Macrobius in his Saturnalia: [5] (4th century AD, but the joke itself is probably several centuries older):
Praetextatus, Symmachus and Flavianus are the main characters of Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius' Saturnalia, written in the 5th century but set in the summer holidays of 384; the author describes the leaders of the pagan movement who host in turn different pagan intellectuals to discuss philosophical and religious matters. [13]