Theologica tripertita

Here's something related to Ovid's Fasti that came up in some of the scholarship. Varro (116-17 BC) was a hugely productive intellectual of early Rome, and apparently was the source of the later formalization of the liberal arts into the trivium and quadrivium:

Varro . . . turned out more than 74 Latin works on a variety of topics. Among his many works, two stand out for historians; Nine Books of Disciplines and his compilation of the Varronian chronology. His "Nine Books of Disciplines" became a model for later encyclopedists, especially Pliny the Elder. The most noteworthy portion of the Nine Books of Disciplines is its use of the liberal arts as organizing principles.[1] Varro decided to focus on identifying nine of these arts: grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, musical theory, medicine, and architecture. Using Varro's list, subsequent writers defined the seven classical "liberal arts of the medieval schools".[1]

The article below discusses Varro's notion of "tripartite theology" -- cosmic, political, fabulous. From in Religions of the Ancient World, ed. by Sara Iles Johnson.

Varro was very interested in the calendar, (the structuring form of Fasti), and in working out the chronology of Roman history:

Pre-Julian Calendar

The storytelling animal

Ovid is clearly a poet interested in the power of myth and magic -- and were he alive today, he'd doubtless be curious about video games. Salman Rushdie has written tales about the power of imagination and the limitations of mortality for his children, and talks about them in this charming interview, from the radio show entitled To the Best of our Knowledge.

At one point he suggests that Zeus and other ancient divinities have been relegated to "some kind of retirement home for ex-gods."

"I think it's a mistake to think the real world is devoid of magic," says Rushdie, In the games of his new book, Luka and the Fire of Life, life is cheap and plentiful. In the real world, it is dear and rare. Somehow we inhabit both worlds. Rushdie adds, "Man alone is the storytelling animal."

Interviewer: 

Jim Fleming

Guest(s): 

Salman Rushdie

12.19.2010

Salman Rushdie's life has been a fantasy, but not necessarily in the way he would have wanted.  The Ayatollah issued a death warrant on him after his book "The Satanic Verses," but it has finally been withdrawn. His new book involves dangers of a more literary kind. He tells Jim Fleming he wrote his new book "Luka and the Fire of Life" at his younger son's request.

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The short podcast of the interview is well worth listening to. As we are seeing, he power of stories is very much at the heart of the Metamorphoses as well.