Macrobius’ Symposium

Abstract This chapter examines the importance of the literary symposium for the Saturnalia. Although Macrobius mentions Plato’s Symposium at several programmatic moments, his readings are informed by Plutarch’s interpretation of the Symposium in the Quaestiones convivales. Through these multilayered allusions, Macrobius reflects upon the limits of both Plutarch’s and Plato’s exemplarity for his late Roman interlocutors. He consistently upholds Plato and Plutarch as models of philosophical conversation but criticizes their overindulgence in material pleasures. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the Saturnalia’s place within the imperial and late antique traditions of the literary symposium and argues that Macrobius’ classicizing dialogue should be viewed within a wider tradition of late antique reflections on the merits of the symposium as a lived practice and a literary form.