(fl first half of the 5th century ce). Latin writer. He is thought by some to have been the prefect in Spain (399–400 ce) or the proconsul in Africa (410 ce) cited in the Codex Theodosius but now identified with Theodosius, praetorian prefect in Italy in 430 ce. He was the author of a treatise comparing Greek and Latin verbs (De verborum graeci et latini differentiis vel societatibus), a commentary on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis and a Saturnalia, the last two of which were dedicated to his son, Fl. Macrobius Plotinus Eustathius, city prefect in about 461 ce. Together with the writings of Boethius, Martianus Capella, Cassiodorus and Isidore of Seville, Macrobius’s commentary helped preserve and communicate ancient science and Neoplatonic theory in the Middle Ages. The Somnium Scipionis, with its dramatic language, images of the harmony of the spheres and observations about the nature and ascent of the soul, provided Macrobius with an ideal basis for commentary on such subjects as the classification of dreams, Pythagoras’s discovery of musical consonance and Pythagorean number theory, the nature of virtue, distinctions between mortality and immortality, the Neoplatonic hypostases, movements of the celestial and planetary spheres and their harmonious sound, and the superiority of Plato’s view of the soul over Aristotle’s. Derived in large measure from Porphyry’s commentary on the Timaeus, Macrobius’s commentary (i.6 and ii.1–4) was a particularly important source for the medieval understanding of Pythagorean musical mathematics. The Saturnalia, with its emphasis on Virgil, rhetoric, poetics and such lighter topics as food and drink, became more widely known in the Renaissance.
W.H. Stahl, trans.: Commentary on the Dream of Scipio by Macrobius (New York, 1952/R)
P.V. Davies, trans.: Macrobius: The Saturnalia (New York, 1969)
J. Willis, ed.: Ambrosii Theodosii Macrobii Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis (Leipzig, 1970)
N. Marinone, ed. and trans: I saturnali (Turin, 1977)
L. Scarpa, ed. and trans: Macrobii Ambrosii Theodosii Commentarium in Somnium Scipionis libri duo (Padua, 1981)
M. Regali, ed. and trans: Macrobio: Commento al Somnium Scipionis (Pisa, 1983–90)
P.M. Schedler: Die Philosophie des Macrobius und ihr Einfluss auf die Wissenschaft des christlichen Mittelalters (Münster, 1916)
P. Courcelle: Les lettres grecques en occident, de Macrobe à Cassiodore (Paris, 1943, 2/1948)
J. Flamant: Macrobe et le néo-platonisme latin à la fin du IVe siècle (Leiden, 1977)
A. Barbera: The Persistence of Pythagorean Mathematics in Ancient Musical Thought (diss., U. of North Carolina, 1980)
A. Holbrook: The Concept of Musical Consonance in Greek Antiquity and its Application in the Earliest Medieval Descriptions of Polyphony (diss., U. of Washington, 1983)
M. Huglo: ‘The Study of Ancient Sources of Music Theory in the Medieval Universities’, Music Theory and its Sources: Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Notre Dame, IN, 1987, 150–72
M. Bernhard: ‘Überlieferung und Fortleben der antiken lateinischen Musiktheorie im Mittelalter’, Rezeption des antiken Fachs im Mittelalter (Darmstadt, 1990), 7–35
T.J. Mathiesen: Apollo’s Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln, NE, 1999), 617–18
THOMAS J. MATHIESEN