Macrobius ( 5th century ) says that the name Carna was derived from caro, carnis, " flesh, meat, food " ( compare English " carnal " and " carnivore "), and that she was the guardian of the heart and the vital parts of the human body.

Macrobius says that Dis Pater was placated with human heads and Saturn with sacrificial victims consisting of men ( virorum victimis ).

( Despite common belief, he did not take a day from February ; see the debunked theory on month lengths ) According to a Senatus consultum quoted by Macrobius, he chose this month because it was the time of several of his great triumphs, including the conquest of Egypt.

One of them, the Irish monk Dungal, asserted that the tropical gap between our habitable region and the other habitable region to the south was smaller than Macrobius had believed.

The order of months in the Roman calendar was January to December since King Numa Pompilius in about 700 BC, according to Plutarch and Macrobius.

She was one of the deities Macrobius proposed as the secret tutelary of Rome.

The priests offered sacrifice in the temple of Volupia, the goddess of pleasure, in which stood a statue of Angerona, with a finger on her mouth, which was bound and closed ( Macrobius i. 10 ; Pliny, Nat.

She is described as such in both Livy and Plutarch ; but in Dionysius, Macrobius, and another tradition recorded by Plutarch, she was instead the wife of Hostus Hostilius, a Roman champion at the time of Romulus.

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 the holiday.

In the Saturnalia of Macrobius, Servius appears as one of the interlocutors ; allusions in that work and a letter from Symmachus to Servius show that he was a pagan.

Macrobius relates Janus was supposed to have shared a kingdom with Camese in Latium, on a place then named Camesene.

Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius was a Roman who flourished during the early fifth century.

Alan Cameron notes that Cassiodorus and Boethius both refer to him as " Macrobius Theodosius ", while he was known during his lifetime as " Theodosius ": the dedication to the De differentiis is addressed Theodosius Symmacho suo (" Theodosius to his Symmachus "), and by the dedicatory epistle to Avianus's Fables, where he is addressed as Theodosi optime.

Which " foreign skies " Macrobius was born under has been the subject of much speculations.

J. E. Sandys went further and argued that Macrobius was born in one of the Greek provinces.

However other experts, beginning with Ludwig van Jan, point out that despite his familiarity with Greek literature Macrobius was far more familiar with Latin than Greek — as evidenced by his enthusiasm for Vergil and Cicero -- and favor North Africa, which was part of the Latin-speaking portion of the Roman Empire.

However, Macrobius is frequently referred to as vir clarissimus et inlustris, a title which was achieved by holding public office, we can reasonably expect his name to appear in the Codex Theodosianus.

Further, Cameron points out that during his lifetime Macrobius was referred to as " Theodosius ", and looking for that name Cameron found a Theodosius who was praetorian prefect of Italy in 430.

X. 1. 95 ), Varro was recognized as an important source by many other ancient authors, among them Cicero, Pliny the Elder, Virgil in the Georgics, Columella, Aulus Gellius, Macrobius, Augustine, and Vitruvius, who credits him ( VII. Intr. 14 ) with a book on architecture.

Macrobius ' Commentary upon Scipio's Dream was known to the sixth-century philosopher Boethius, and was later valued throughout the Middle Ages as a primer of cosmology.

The literary record offers at least one variation on this type ; Macrobius describes her cult statue as overhung by a " spreading vine ", and bearing a sceptre in her left hand.

His numerous translations from the Latin included Cicero's Somnium Scipionis with the commentary of Macrobius: Julius Caesar's Gallic War ; Ovid's Heroides and Metamorphoses ; Boethius ' De consolatione philosophiae ; and Augustine's De trinitate.

He may possibly be Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, the author of Saturnalia ; some think he may be the emperor of that name.

* Macrobius: The Saturnalia, the Latin text of the critical edition edited by Ludwig von Jan ( Gottfried Bass ; Quedlinburg and Leipzig, 1852 ), web edition by Bill Thayer.

* Compitalia, held sometime between December 17 ( the Saturnalia ) and January 5 ; in the later Empire, they were regularly held January 3 – 5, but Macrobius ( 5th century AD ) still categorized them as conceptivae.

Authors on the subject include the following: Plato, Cicero, Macrobius, Aulus Gellius, among the ancients ; as well as Argol, Maginus, and Salmasius.

The Somnium Scipionis, as it is known, survives because it was the subject of a commentary by Macrobius, who excerpted large portions ; both he and his readers in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were mainly interested in its discussion of astrology and astronomy, especially given the loss of the rest of the book.

He is known to have written his works around the same time as Lucius Pomponius, who also wrote Atellanae Fabulae ; Macrobius makes reference to him as a very well-esteemed writer whose atellaniolae (" little Atellans ") found a receptive audience.

Other scholars, mainly German, think it is related on the contrary to the martial character of the god Quirinus, an interpretation supported by numerous ancient sources: Lydus, Cedrenus, Macrobius, Ovid, Plutarch and Paul the Daecon.

He subsequently visited Neapolis, where he taught Greek to Virgil, according to Macrobius.

Furthermore, Fulgentius appears to have taken the idea of Virgil as a wise and infallible sage from the earlier writer Macrobius.

Fulgentius ’ treatment of Virgil as a sage seems to have been borrowed from the encyclopaedic work of Macrobius, the first to elevate the Roman poet to such an authoritative status.

For example: some early medieval manuscripts of Macrobius include maps of the Earth, including the antipodes, zonal maps showing the Ptolemaic climates derived from the concept of a spherical Earth and a diagram showing the Earth ( labeled as globus terrae, the sphere of the Earth ) at the center of the hierarchically ordered planetary spheres.

Macrobius, which explains the name as Latin deriving it from the verb ire (" to go ").

Macrobius gives the same interpretation of the epithet in his list: " Consivius from sowing ( conserendo ), i. e. from the propagation of the human race, that is disseminated by the working of Janus.

The correct order of his names is " Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius ", which is how it appears in the earliest manuscripts of the Saturnalia, and how he is addressed in the excerpts from his lost De differentiis.

The nature of the dream, in which the elder Scipio appears to his ( adopted ) grandson, and describes the life of the good after death and the constitution of the universe from a Stoic and Neo-Platonic point of view, gave occasion for Macrobius to discourse upon the nature of the cosmos, transmitting much classical philosophy to the later Middle Ages.

Many early medieval manuscripts of Macrobius include maps of the Earth, including the antipodes, zonal maps showing the Ptolemaic climates derived from the concept of a spherical Earth and a diagram showing the Earth ( labeled as globus terrae, the sphere of the Earth ) at the center of the hierarchically ordered planetary spheres.

File: Macrobius, mappa mundi. jpg | Sketch map showing the inhabited northern region separated from the antipodes by an imagined ocean at the equator.

* Macrobii excerpta Bobiensa, some extracts from Macrobius ' De uerborum Graeci et Latini differentiis uel societatibus

Images from a 12th century manuscript of Macrobius ' Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis ( Parchment, 50 ff.

Image: Macrobius DK nks218 4o fol 38v. jpg | Sketch map showing the inhabited northern region separated from the antipodes by an imagined ocean at the equator.

While several etymologists in antiquity derived the names Fauna and Faunus from fari, " to speak ," Macrobius said Fauna's name derived from faveo, favere, " to favor, nurture ," " because she nurtures all that is useful to living creatures.

" For Macrobius, the severing marks off Chaos from fixed and measured Time ( Saturn ) as determined by the revolving Heavens ( Caelum ).

The last mention of latrunculi that survives from the Roman period is in the Saturnalia of Macrobius .< ref name =" kowalski ">