is represented in the above-cited passage of Macrobius to have recently come forth as a critic, when the supposed social gathering took place: which statement, coupled with the 'charming modesty' which is there attributed to him as well as 'wonderful learning,' will perhaps justify us in considering him to have been a man of middle age about the end of the 4th century of our era. Many interpolations are supposed to have been made in his commentary, but there is no mistaking the tone of the principal writer in it, by which one may tell with some confidence whether a particular note has the Servian ring or not: I mean the extraordinary talent for finding obscure and mystical meanings in the plainest passages, to which a perfect modern parallel is furnished by Landino's commentary on Dante. A speciment occuring early in the Eclogues is so exquisitely amusing that I may perhaps be pardoned for adding it below. However, the desire of Servius to make every incident and epithet in Virgil emblematic of some old Roman custom or belief has preserved to us a most valuable and interesting body of antiquities.
On Ecl. 3. 96. 97 he writes:—Tityre pascentes a flumine reice capellas, id est, O Mantua, noli modo uelle aliquid agere de repetendis agris, nam cum apportunum fuerit ego omnes lauabo id est purgabo apud Caesarem cum de Actiaco proelio reursus fuerit, et bene in fonte, ipse enimper amicos Caesaris agrum meruerat recipere tanquam per rinolos quosdam, nunc autem Mantuanis beneficium dicit se ab ipso Imperatore meriturum.
Of Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, if that was his name, the author of the most interesting ancient work on antiquities extant, we know little but that he must have lived at least not before Praetextatus and Symmachus, whom he introduces in his Saturnalia. He seems to have been Consularis, a title which in late times did not necessarily imply the bearer to have been Consul, as indeed Macrobius' name does not appear in the Fasti. This honour, however, conferred upon a man who can scarcely have embraced the new faith, is well urged by L. Iahn (Prolegg. v.) as a reason for not placing Macrobius much later than the interlocutors in his supposed dialogue.
