Conclusion

Abstract The conclusion reviews the arguments made throughout the course of this book and explores their implications for our understanding of Greco-Roman literature more broadly. After synthesizing the readings of the Saturnalia and its literary and ethical models, this chapter looks at the presence of ethical allusion in Macrobius’ Commentarii in somnium Scipionis, his other surviving work, and in the extant fragments of the De verborum Graeci et Latini differentiis vel societatibus. From these studies, it concludes that Macrobius’ concept of ethical allusion may be rooted in grammatical traditions. These scholarly tendencies in Macrobius’ oeuvre were appreciated by some of his earliest readers but do not mean that he was isolated from contemporary social developments. Indeed, reading for ethical allusion brings to light the socio-ethical work done by the Saturnalia and suggests the importance of this strategy for advancing work in the field of Greco-Roman literary studies at large.