{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2247",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 2247,
    "subject": "Macrobius",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2000-05-08T19:36:32+00:00",
    "last": "2000-05-08T19:36:32+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0990@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Nigel Price",
        "address": "nigelprice1 at compuserve.com"
      },
      "date": "2000-05-08T19:36:32+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Macrobius",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Alga wrote..."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "I dug out Chaucer. \"The Parliament of Fowls\" is a charming Valentine's\nDay poem. The poet has been reading Scipio Africanus..."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "<Click!! >\n\n(What was that?  Oh no, it was the sound of Nigel switching into Mindless\nPedantry Mode...)\n\nNothing to do with Crowley, and even less to do with Wolfe, but when\nChaucer writes in \"The Parlement of Foules\" that he has been reading\n\"Tullyus of the Drem of Scipioun\", he almost certainly means that he's been\nreading Macrobius' commentary on Cicero's \"Somnium Scipionis\" (\"the Dream\nof Scipio\").  \"Tullyus\" refers to Cicero's full name: Marcus Tullius\nCicero.  The \"Somnium Scipionis\" originally formed part of book VI of\nCicero's \"De Re Publica\", but was always accompanied in mediaeval times by\nMacrobius' lengthy commentary (c 400 A.D.).  I've read Macrobius, and he's\nterminally dull, but the commentary was enormously influential in mediaeval\nthought, at a time when the interpretation of dreams was a popular\nobsession.  Chaucer quotes or refers to Macrobius in several works,\nincluding \"The Book of the Duchess\" and \"The House of Fame\", and in \"The\nNun's Priest's Tale\", where he sends up the whole debate about the\ninterpretation of dreams, and brings in Boethius as well so that he can\nhave a go at the scholarly predestination debate while he's at it.\n\nNot sure I'd completely agree with the notion that the narrative tour of\nheaven and hell had completely died out by the mid-14th century... Depends\nquite what you mean.  It long persisted as a literary trope in various\nforms, particularly in the various mutations of Renaissance epic, up to and\nincluding Milton, of course, in the 17th century.\n\nBut maybe you meant something more specific.\n\n<Click!!>\n\n(Phew! He's switched off.  I think we're safe again now!)\n\nNigel"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}