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Ↄ. Martiana Rises to the Occasion
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We begin with a rather scornful quotation from C.S. Lewis about Capella, and move from there to the question of ‘seriousness’ in religion: Do we need it? We move on to a discussion of a cluster of ideas around periodisation (‘late antiquity’: Do we need it?), ‘decadence’, and cultural continuity over time. An excursus on Fulgentius (late 5th – early 6th centuries) – allegorical reader of Virgil’s Æneid as an image of human life from infancy, middle age, and into senescence, and rampant literary forger – follows. Another follows on ‘Virgil the Grammarian’ (seventh century), who wrote a grammar of invented words. It is insane. We then get a work-in-progress report on Martiana’s upcoming edition of Capella’s rediscovered grammatical/metrical work.
Interview Bio:
Ↄ. Martiana is a student of ancient theology, philosophy, and related matters. She maintains the SARTRIX wiki, ‘an online encyclopedia, public library and journal devoted to Ancient Mediterranean Polytheism’.
Works Cited in this Episode:
Primary:
Apuleius: for bibliography, see notes to Episode 73.
Ovid: the mythological masterwork we refer to is the Metamorphoses.
Virgil the Grammarian: see B. Löfstedt, Virgilius Maro Grammaticus: Opera Omnia, Teubner 2003
Secondary:
C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love, Clarendon Press 1936.
Vivien Law. Wisdom, Authority, and Grammar in the Seventh Century: Decoding Virgilius Maro Grammaticus. The University Press, Cambridge, 1995.
Thomas Kiefer
February 2, 2024
Great episode and interview–thank you.
Emily Stewart
February 2, 2024
on the intelligibility of texts, viz. when Earl mentioned never being able to pin down exactly what Plato is trying to do, I wonder if this has to do with the transition from still dealing with the remnants of a mostly oral society in Plato’s day to being within a firmly literate tradition in late antiquity? the book True To The Earth: Pagan Political Theology by Kadmus talks a lot about this, and it felt similar to what you two were discussing!
Earl Fontainelle
February 2, 2024
Emily, that definitely has to be part of it. Plato was consummately-literate, but he wasn’t part of a ‘culture of the book’. By the time we get to Capella, it’s not only a culture of the book, it’s even a culture (mostly) of the codex; codices are to the scrolls of Plato’s day as CDs are to cassettes, in a way. High-tech stuff, and it changes the way you interact with texts, and the way you think.
Emily Stewart
February 5, 2024
wow, codices! I definitely had thought we had another hundred or two years before those started to become widespread.
Earl Fontainelle
February 5, 2024
Not at all; probably they were really taking over at precisely this time. Case in point: the Nag Hammadi trove: dating from (very roughly) the fifth century, and not a scroll to be found. The Christians loved them, but there’s a lot of evidence that codices just generally took over in later late antiquity (like CDs in the early 90’s).