MACROBIO Y MARCIANO CAPELA: DOS VERSIONES SOBRE LAS EDADES DEL HOMBRE

Abstract

Late Antique Literature is often characterized by the return to topics and texts from the previous tradition, and their adaptation to the new cultural context. Particularly encyclopedic literature —such as scholar texts or commentaries— develops an intense activity glossing and attributing new meanings to the literary sources of the past, aiming to reconfigure them in the new times of conflicts and tensions. In a wide sense, late Antique writers accomplish a “diachronic” or “cultural” translation, whose main objective is inscribing new literary productions in the precedent roman traditions, although keeping conscious of the cultural transformations of Late Antiquity.
The present paper studies two versions of a Pythagoric topic which kept late antique enciclopedists interested: the importance of the number seven and its relationship with the ages of the man. In this case, we analyze the proposals of Macrobius (V A.D.) and Martianus Capella (V A.D.) who transformed this topic attending to the literary genres they write (narrative commentary and menippean satire respectively) and to their public. We will examine the discursive strategies by the means of which Macrobius (Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis 1.6.62-76) and Martianus (De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae 7.739) textualize and configure this knowledge in the new context of Late Antiquity.