ENGL 6/7505
J. Comas
20 Mar 2010

Notes on Martianus Capella’s The Marriage of Philology and Mercury

This handout consists of three sections: (I) an outline of the nine books of De nuptiis, showing the order of the seven liberal arts, (II) an English translation of the opening sections of Books III and IV, presenting the allegorical descriptions of Grammar and Dialectic (which we’ll compare to the description of Rhetoric in our anthology), and (III) a selected bibliography.

I. Outline - The Nine Books of the De nuptiis
Book I.	The Betrothal
Book II.	The Marriage
Book III.	Grammar
Book IV.	Dialectic
Book V.	Rhetoric
Book VI.	Geometry
Book VII.	Arithmetic
Book VIII.	Astronomy
Book IX.	Harmony

II. Allegorical Characterization of Grammar and Dialectic
I thought we’d find it useful to compare Martianus’s description of Rhetoric (included in the Readings in Medieval Rhetoric anthology) to the descriptions of her two closest sisters, Grammar and Dialectic. So here are the opening descriptions in English, taken from the Stahl, Johnson, & Burge translation (see Bibliography below). Interpolations marked by square brackets are those of the translators; interpolations marked by angled brackets are mine.

Grammar
[223] So Latona's son [Apollo] moved forward from her former place one of the servants of Mercury, an old woman indeed but of great charm, who said that she had been born in Memphis when Osiris was still king; when she had been a long time in hiding, she was found and brought up by the Cyllenian [Mercury] himself. This woman claimed that in Attica, where she had lived and prospered for the greater part of her life, she moved about in Greek dress; but because of the Lain gods and the Capitol and the race of Mars and descendants of Venus, according to the custom of Romulus [i.e., Roman custom] she entered the senate of the gods dressed in a Roman cloak. She carried in her hands a polished box, a fine piece of cabinetmaking, which shone on the outside with light ivory, from which like a skill physician the woman took out the emblems of wounds that need to be healed. [244] Out of this box she took first a pruning knife with a shining point, with which he said she could prune the faults of pronunciation in children; then they could be restored to health with a certain black powder carried through reeds, a powder which was thought to be made of ash or the ink of cuttlefish. Then she took out a very sharp medicine which she had made of fennelflower and the clippings from a goat's back, a medicine of purest red color, which she said should be applied to the throat when it was suffering from bucolic ignorance and was blowing out the vile breaths of a corrupt pronunciation. She showed to a delicious savory, the work of many lat nights and vigils, with which she said the harshness of the most unpleasant voice could be made melodious. [225] She also cleaned the windpipes and the lungs by the application of a medicine in which observed wax smeared on beechwood and a mixture of gallnuts and gum and rolls of the Nilotic plant [papyrus]. Although this poultice was effective in assisting memory and attention, yet by its nature it kept people awake. [226] She also brought out a file fashioned with great skill, which was divided into eight golden parts joined in different ways, and which darted back and forth--with which by gentle rubbing she gradually cleaned dirty teeth and ailments of the tongue and the filth which had been picked up in the town of Soloe. [Trans. note: “I.e., solecisms.” <From the OED entry for solecism: "speaking incorrectly, stated by ancient writers to refer to ‘the corruption of the Attic dialect among the Athenian colonists at Soloi in Cilicia.’’>] (64-65)

Dialectic
So at the Delian's [Apollo] summons this woman entered, rather pale but very keen-sighted. Her eyes constantly darted about; her intricate coiffure seemed beautifully curled and bound together, and descending by successive stages, it so encompassed the shape of her whole head that you could not have detected anything lacking, nor grasped anything excessive. [Trans. note: “The Latin here, deducti per quosdam consequentes gradus, applies equally well to a logical argument ‘deduced through certain successive steps’ as to Dialectic's symbolic hairstyle.”] She was wearing the dress and cloak of Athens, it is true, but what she carried in her hands was unexpected, and had been unknown in all the Greek schools. In her left hand she held a snake twined in immense coils; in her right hand she a set of patterns carefully inscribed on wax tablets, which were adorned with the beauty of contrasting color, was held on the inside by a hidden hook; but since her left hand kept the crafty device of the snake hidden under her cloak, her right hand was offered to one and all. Then if anyone took one of those patterns, he was soon caught on the hook and dragged toward the poisonous coils of the hidden snake, which presently emerged and after first biting the man relentlessly with the venomous points of its sharp teeth then gripped him in its many coils and compelled him to the intended position. If on one wanted to take any of the patterns, Dialectic confronted them with some questions; or secretly stirred the snake to creep up on them until its tight embrace strangled those who were caught and compelled them to accept the will of their interrogator. (106-07)

III. Selected Bibliography
Standard Edition of the Latin Text
___. Martianus Capella, De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, ed. James Willis (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft, 1983).

Standard English Translation
Martianus, Capella. The Marriage of Philology and Mercury. Translated by William Harris Stahl and Richard Johnson, with E. L. Burge. Vol. 2 of Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).

Selected Secondary Literature in English
Baldwin, Barry. “Egersimon in Martianus Capella.” The American Journal of Philology 108, no. 4 (1987): 697-98.
Barnish, S. I. B. “Martianus Capella and Rome in the Late Fifth Century.” Hermes: Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie 114, no. 1 (1986): 98-111.
Bennett, Beth S. “The Rhetoric of Martianus Capella and Anselm de Besate in the Tradition of Menippean Satire.” Philosophy & Rhetoric 24, no. 2 (1991): 128-42.
Chang, Han-Liang. “The Rise of Semiotics and the Liberal Arts: Reading Martianus Capella’s The Marriage of Philology and Mercury.” Mnemosyne Fourth Series 51, no. 5 (1998): 538-53.
Johnson, Richard, with E. L. Burge. “The Allegory and the Trivium.” In The Quadrivium of Martianus Capella: Latin Traditions in the Mathematical Sciences, 50 b.c.-a.d. 1250, vol. 1 of  Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal Arts, 81-121. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971.
Leff, Michael C. “St. Augustine and Martianus Capella: Continuity and Change in Fifth-Century Latin Rhetorical Theory.” Communication Quarterly 24, no. 4 (1976): 2-9.
LeMoine, Fannie John. “Judging the Beauty of Diversity: A Critical Approach to Martianus Capella.” The Classical Journal 67, no. 3 (1972): 209-15.
Leupin, Alexandre. “Knowledge and Lacuna: Martianus Capella.” In Fiction and Incarnation: Rhetoric, Theology, and Literature in the Middle Ages, trans. by David Laatsch, 77-95. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
Mayor, John E. B. “Martianus Capella.” The Classical Review 10, no. 8 (1896): 368.
Relihan, Joel C. “Martianus Capella, the Good Teacher.” Pacific Coast Philology 22, no. 1/2 (1987): 59-70.
Shanzer, Danuta. “Three Textual Problems in Martianus Capella.” Classical Philology 79, no. 2 (1984): 142-45.
Stahl, William H. “To a Better Understanding of Martianus Capella.” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 40, no. 1 (1965): 102-15.
Weinstock, Stefan. “Martianus Capella and the Cosmic System of the Etruscans.” The Journal of Roman Studies 36 (1946): 101-29.
Wittkower, Rudolf. “‘Grammatica’: From Martianus Capella to Hogarth.” Journal of the Warburg Institute 2, no. 1 (1938): 82-84.