Some sayings by Cicero from the ‘Saturnalia’ of Macrobius
I have been reading the Saturnalia of Macrobius, that curious store of Latin learning from the very end of the empire. Book 2 contains a collection of witticisms. Here are a few. [ 1] But I am...
View ArticleMacrobius on the date of Saturnalia
Today is the first day of Saturnalia, the Roman winter festival which lasted from 17-23rd December. In honour of the day, I thought that I would collect what the 5th century writer Macrobius has to...
View ArticleThe man who gave a few pence to the emperor Augustus
The story is in Macrobius, Saturnalia, book 2, chapter 4: [31] As he went down from his residence on the Palatine, a seedy-looking Greek used to offer him a complimentary epigram. This the man did on...
View ArticleFrom my diary
I have continued to work on the new Mithras pages. Today I have found myself mostly working on PHP scripts. Naturally I want to see if there are any hits on the pages, so I have written a simple...
View ArticleCaesar’s reform of the calendar – some ancient sources
Plutarch, Caesar 59: 59. 1. The adjustment of the calendar, however, and the correction of the irregularity in the computation of time, were not only studied scientifically by him, but also brought to...
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