MARTIANUS MINNEUS

FELIX

See also:

• MARTIANUS MINNEUS FELIX CAPELLA

CAPELLA  , Latin writer, according to Cassiodorus a native of Madaura in Africa, flourished during the 5th century, certainly before the year 439 . He appears to have practised as a lawyer at Carthage and to have been in easy circumstances . His curious encyclopaedic work, entitled Satyricon, or De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii et de septem Artibus liberalibus libri novem, is an elaborate allegory in nine books, written in a mixture of prose and verse, after the manner of the Menippean satires of Varro . The style is heavy and involved, loaded with metaphor and bizarre expressions, and verbose to excess . The first two books contain the allegory proper—the marriage of Mercury to a nymph named Philologia . The remaining seven books contain expositions of the seven liberal arts, which then comprehended all human knowledge . Book iii. treats of grammar, iv. of dialectics, v. of rhetoric, vi. of geometry, vii. of arithmetic, viii. of astronomy, ix. of music . These abstract discussions are linked on to the original allegory by the device of personifying each science as a courtier of Mercury and Philologia . The work was a complete encyclopaedia of the liberal culture of the time, and was in high repute during the middle ages . The author's chief sources were Varro, Pliny, Solinus, Aquila Romanus, and Aristides Quintilianus . His prose resembles that of Apuleius (also a native of Madaura), but is even more difficult . The verse portions, which are on the whole correct and classically constructed, are in imitation of Varro and are less tiresome .

A passage in book viii. contains a very clear statement of the

heliocentric system of astronomy . It has been supposed that Copernicus, who quotes Capella, may have received from this work some hints towards his own new system . Editio princeps, by F . Vitalis Bodianus, 1499; the best modern edition is that of F . Eyssenhardt (1866); for the relationof Martianus Capella to Aristides Quintilianus see H . Deiters, Studien zu den griechischen Musikern (,88,) . In the 11th century the German monk Notker Labeo translated the first two books into Old High German .