Katherine Krauss, Australian Catholic University
This paper will address the transformation and misrepresentation of Cicero in Macrobius’ Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis. Written towards the middle of the fifth century CE, the Commentarii reads Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis and its views on the value of engaging in Roman politics through the lens of Neoplatonist philosophy. Scholars of the Commentarii have been quick to note the difficulties of this endeavor and have primarily focused on how (and whether) Macrobius successfully reconciles Cicero’s support of participation in political life with the critique of civic pursuits in Neoplatonist thinkers (e.g., Zintzen 1969, Di Pasquale Barbanti 1988, Dodaro 2004, Labarrière 2011). This paper, by contrast, will take a literary-critical approach to the Commentarii’s discussion of civic life in the Somnium. It will examine how Macrobius’ Neoplatonist “distortion” of Cicero offers new insights on the interaction between ethical messaging and intertextual allusion in later Latin literature.
At Commentarii 1.8, Macrobius engages in an ambitious project of altering the political program of the Somnium Scipionis to align with Neoplatonist norms. In contrast to Cicero’s Somnium, which emphasizes the importance of political participation, Macrobius argues that the Somnium, in line with Neoplatonist thought, also views philosophical virtue as a pathway to blessedness after death. This (inaccurate) portrayal of Cicero’s text serves as an important cornerstone for Macrobius’ larger ethical project in Book 1 of the Commentarii of consciously reworking the Somnium, and the Greek philosophical sources read alongside it, to give them the appearance of valuing both active and contemplative lifestyles. Macrobius’ deliberately false memory of earlier literary production thus serves to further his own didactic agenda.
Macrobius’ strategies for achieving this reworking—a process of selective quotation which allows him to integrate his source material into a new context—reveal important similarities between the exegetical work of the Commentarii and intertextual allusion. As a result, I will argue, the Commentarii not only displays how moral norms inform its memory of Cicero. It also illustrates how an ethical agenda might motivate intertextual allusions which seemingly misremember the literary predecessor they invoke.