La filologia come enciclopedia. Il De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii di Marziano Capella

The work of Martianus Capella, composed by nine books, realizes a real reductio omnium artium ad philologiam. The allegorical figure of Philologia reassumes in herself the disciplinae cyclicae (the lineral arts), which are represented in the nuptial fabula by the uirgines dotales that Mercury, the god of hermeneutics, offers to his own bride-to-be as nuptial gift. These uirgines dotales will expose in front of the reunited celestial senate to clebrate the marriagem every in a book (III-IX), the ars of which they are eponymouses. This cultural operation, tht assumes the form of an ecyclopedia, cnnects itselfs to a wast Hellenistic and Roman cultural tradition: it's path started in Alexandria with the 'various' and manifod doctrine of Eratosthenes, the first one who ascribed to himself the appellation of 'philologus'.