MARCIAN. Martianus Mineus Felix Capella, fl. fifth century A.D., was the author of De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae. He appears to have been North African; Afer Carthaginiensis (African of Carthage) is added to his name in the manuscripts. Scholars now believe that the book was written after Alaric's sack of Rome, A.D. 410, but before 439. De nuptiis is written in Latin prose, interspersed with verses. In nine books it tells of Mercury's marriage with the learned virgin Philologia. The bride ascends to heaven accompanied by the Nine Muses and the Seven Liberal Arts as bridesmaids: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Music. The last seven books are devoted to these last, forming an encyclopedia of the liberal arts. A key element in the history of European intellectual development, the work preserves, with Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Isidore, the classical learning available in the Middle Ages. Two commentaries on De nuptiis appear in the ninth century: one by Remigius of Auxerre, Commentum in Martianum, and the other by John Scott Eriugena, Annotationes in Marcianum.

The wedding of Philology and Mercury was not more splendid than that of January and May, MerchT 1732-1735. The frightened dreamer thinks of Marcian's descriptions of the heavens, HF II.985-990, a reference to Book VIII, "De astronomia." [Mercurie]

Marcian, the English contraction of Latin Martianus and derived from Marcius, the name of a Roman clan, appears in final rhyming position, MerchT 1732; HF II.985.