Macrobius
c. 385 CE–c. 430 CE · Rome
His Commentary on the Dream of Scipio transmitted Neoplatonic cosmology to the Latin West; the Saturnalia preserved much antiquarian lore.
Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→
RomeרומאItaly
We know they were here, but the specifics of what they did at this stop aren’t recorded yet in our corpus.
Rome in this era
Under the emperors (from Augustus, 27 BCE) Rome was the capital of an empire stretching from Britain to Syria, a city of perhaps a million people. Greek-speaking philosophers, physicians, rhetoricians and historians came to teach and write there; Domitian expelled philosophers from the city around 93-95 CE, and in the 3rd century Plotinus taught in Rome (244-270).
About Rome
Rome, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.
In Rome at the same time
Across the traditions, in Rome at the same time
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Macrobius’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Macrobius’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.