Martianus capella biography for kids
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Martianus Capella
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Martianus Capella
(b. Carthage; fl. Carthage, ca. a.d. 365–440)
transmission of knowledge.
Martianus may have been a secondary school teacher or a rhetorician, and he appears to have pleaded cases as a rhetor or advocate. He was the author of De nuptiis philologiae et Mercurii, the most popular textbook in the Latin West during the early Middle Ages. Cast in the form of an allegory of a heavenly marriage, in which seven bridesmaids present a compendium of each of the liberal arts, this book became the foundation of the medieval curriculum of the trivium (books III–V) and quadrivium (VI–IX). The setting (I–II) became a model of heavenly journeys as late as Dante and contributed greatly to the popularity of the book. Although Martianus understood little more of the subject matter of the disciplines than what he presented in digest form, he was a key figure in the history of rhetoric, education, and science for a thousand years.
Owing to the disappearance in the early Middle Ages of Varro’s book on the mathematical disciplines (Disciplinae, IV–VII), Martianus’ quadrivium books, inspired by Varro’s archetypal work, provide the best means of reconstructing the ancient Roman mathematical disciplines. Book VI, De geometria, proves to be not a book on geometry but
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Martianus Capella
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Roman writer of Africa who flourished in the fifth century. His work is entitled: "De nuptiis philologiæ et Mercurii". It was composed after the taking of Rome by Alaric (410) and before the conquest of Africa by the Vandals (429). The author, a native of Madaura, Apuleius's birthplace, had settled in Carthage where he earned a precarious living as a solicitor. He proposed to write an encyclopedia of the liberal culture of the time, dedicated to his son Marianius, and this work was planned like the ancient "Satyra", that is a romance which was a medley of prose and verse. The original conception was both bizarre and entertaining. Mercury has grown weary of celibacy but has been refused by Wisdom, Divination and the Soul. Apollo speaks favourably of a charming and wise young maiden named Philologia. The gods give their consent to this union provided that the betrothed be made divine. Philologia agrees. Her mother Reflection, the Muses, the cardinal virtues, the three graces surround her and bedeck her. Philologia drinks the cup of ambros