CAPPELLA Marcian (Martianus Felix Capella)

Marcian Capella; Martianus Felix Capella, in the first half of V. n. e., Roman encyclopedic. A lawyer from Carthage, by a kind of encyclopedia in 9 of books, known as the Marriage of Philology and Mercury (De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii), which alternates with prose poems, as in Menippean satire (cm. Menippus). Composing mK. describes seven areas of contemporary science, the so-called seven liberal arts: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music. Varro, the first Roman lexicographer, added to the curriculum of a young Roman architecture and medicine, which mK. deliberately omitted from his work. In order to diversify the content of benefits (intended for the son) mK. took advantage of an allegorical tale about the marriage of Mercury and Philology, a symbol of science, which, after the deification of Olympus receives from the Apollo as a wedding gift, seven maidens, referred to the seven arts (I and II of the book.). In the main part of the product (III-IX kn.) Selected allegorical images in the appropriate attire and with the appropriate attributes show the new mistress their skills.

Chapeau is replete with poetic inserts (42 inserts various meters), but the second, encyclopedic, written in obscure, artificial prose; proposals in it very long (one of them has 180 words). Information from various fields of knowledge, . compiled in a short encyclopedic set, . filed dry, . sometimes seem mechanical compilation of different sources, . not only the works of Varro, . but the works of Greek and Roman authors, . whose names mK,
. - According to the then custom - not lead. While mK. was a mediocre writer, and his highly prized in the Middle Ages, because its product contained the entire amount of knowledge that were part of the curriculum of the time. It served as a school textbook, he commented and translated. Allegoric way of disclosure topics (borrowed from Apuleius) had a great influence on the allegorical poetry of the Middle Ages.