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The celebrations are directly traceable to the pagan Saturnalia of ancient Rome, which in spite of the conversion of the Empire to Christianity, and of the denunciation of bishops and ecclesiastical councils, continued to be celebrated by the people on the Kalends of January with all their old licence.
to 8 p.m., and Bourne and his friends determined to continue the experiment as a counterblast to the parish wakes of the time, which were little better than local saturnalia.
Ambrosius Macrobius Theodosius (c. 400) wrote a treatise on Cicero's Somnium Scipionis and seven books of miscellanies (Saturnalia); and Martianus Capella (c. 430), a native of Africa, published a compendium of the seven liberal arts, written in a mixture of prose and verse, with some literary pretensions.
1 7, 45; Bellum africanum, 28; Macrobius, Saturnalia, i.
He wrote a play of which the subject was his visit to Lentulus in the camp of Pompey at Dyrrhachium, and, according to Macrobius (Saturnalia, iii.