MACROBIUS AND THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
MACROBIUS AND THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

Summary/Abstract: Under the pretext of a literary commentary to the dream vision episode of Cicero's De Re Publica, namely the dream of Scipio Africanus the Younger, Macrobius delves into encyclopedic excursuses that far exceed the purpose of such a commentary, taking his readers through fields of knowledge such as rhetoric, natural sciences, geography, astrology and astronomy, Pythagorean arithmetic and geometry, musical theory, and neoplatonic philosophy. Apart from preserving for posterity a fragment of Cicero's treatise and for summarising essential aspects of knowledge, Macrobius's Commentario becomes one of the most influential works in the medieval period through the taxonomy of dreams elaborated in relation to Scipio's experience. This treatise examines Macrobius's writing and its influence in the medieval study of dreams.

• Details
• Contents