CAPELLA, MARTIANUS MINNEUS FELIX

flourished 5th century AD a native of North Africa and an advocate at Carthage whose prose and poetry introduction to the liberal arts was of immense cultural influence down to the late Middle Ages. Capella's major work was written perhaps about AD 400 and certainly before 439. Its overall title is not known. Manuscripts give the title De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii to the first two books and entitle the remaining seven De arte grammatica, De arte dialectica, De arte rhetorica, De geometrica, De arithmetica, De astrologia, and De harmonia. Mercury gives his bride, who is made divine, seven maidens, and each declaims on that one of the seven liberal arts that she represents. The prose style is often dry, but in parts it is influenced by the style of the Metamorphoses of Apuleius and is even more mannered and bizarre than that work's. The verse is mostly competent.