1548 Lyon Edition of Macrobius with a Fascinating Early World Map

This is a beautiful example of the 1548 Lyon edition of Macrobius' Saturnalia and his commentary on Cicero's Dream of Scipio, or Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis. The latter is one of the most cited works in the scholarship of the Middle Ages. In addition to its foundational role in transmitting Neoplatonism to the medieval world, this book was by the medieval world as the essential primer on cosmography. Macrobius' commentaries built on Cicero's cosmographical ideas and formalized them. Macrobius' analysis of Cicero placed his cosmography in the context of Claudius Ptolemy's astrological work. Through Macrobius' lens, the universe as understood by the ancient world, was embraced by philosophers, authors, and artists. His ideas extensively influenced the early geographers of the 16th century and were the source of early speculation on the existence of the undiscovered 'Terre Australis' (Southern Continent), an idea later adopted by Mercator and Ortelius.

The Cosmos of Cicero

Cicero's Somnium Scipionis comprises nearly all that survives of the sixth book of the poet and philosopher's De Republica. It describes a dream of the Roman General Scipio Aemilianus, which was postulated to have taken place two years prior to his 146 BCE burning of Carthage. The dream, as related by Cicero, was relevant to geographers because it proposes several key ideas reflecting the cosmology of Cicero and the Roman world. In his dream, Scipio looks down upon Carthage 'from a high place full of stars, shining and splendid;' his grandfather appears, telling him that as the reward due a loyal Roman soldier, he might after death inhabit the Milky Way among the stars. Scipio perceives that Rome is a very small part of the world, itself made insignificant by the stars, 'Indeed the Earth itself seemed to me so small that I was scornful of our empire, which covers only a single point, as it were, upon its surface.' Scipio (per Cicero) describes the universe as comprising nine celestial spheres, of which the Earth is the innermost and smallest, while the outermost is heaven. The planets between move (their motion creates sound, the music of the spheres) while Earth remains fixed at the center. Scipio's attention moves to the surface of the Earth and describes its climatic belts.

Macrobius' Commentary and the Maps

Macrobius expanded on Cicero's text on multiple themes - not limited to the nature of the soul and astronomy. In addition, both manuscript and printed editions of the Commentaries included diagrams and maps in order to illustrate the cosmography outlined in Cicero's work. It is not clear if Macrobius himself produced such a map: of 150 manuscripts surviving of the work, only a hundred included a map. It is entirely possible, then, that later copyists produced maps and diagrams to clarify the work. These were nevertheless influential, setting forth geographical ideas that influenced mapmakers well into the 16th century.

Most notable among these is the woodcut map depicting the world as described in Macrobius' text. It is attractively composed and surrounded by wind-heads. The upper portion of the map presents the known habitable world - the oikoumene - and an unknown southern continent ('the temperate antipodes unknown to us') divided by an equatorial ocean, thought to be boiling and impassable. While the voyages of Marco Polo and the 15th-century explorers would certainly disprove the existence of a boiling equatorial zone, the concept of antipodean balance reflected on this map fueled the conviction of 16th-century geographers like Mercator and Ortelius that a southern continent must exist, and led to their inclusion of the immense southern continent on maps of the world and the Americas.

Macrobius' Saturnalia

The book combines Macrobius' commentary on Cicero with his Saturnalia, an idealized account of the discussions held at the house of 4th-century Roman aristocrat Vettius Agorius Praetextatus during the holiday of the Saturnalia (hence the title.) The conversations cover a variety of historical, mythological, critical, grammatical, and antiquarian topics. It is worth noting that the 17th and 18th-century notations appearing in the present text are mainly confined to the Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis and are not nearly as extensive in Saturnalia. The centuries, apparently, had judged which of these works would retain their relevance.

Publication History and Census

This edition of Macrobius was published in Lyon by Sebastianus Gryphius in 1548; Gryphius' editions had a long print history, but we see only 19 of the 1548 edition in institutional collections. In editions by a variety of publishers, Macrobius' works are well represented in institutional collections.