MAcCER A CALABRIAN 197 
Ravenna under Narses, 542 +, nor of the ‘‘ thema of Lombardy,’’ 915 +, under Basilius 
Macedo of Byzantium; but is claimed for Calabrians, especially those of Bova as surviving 
essentially unchanged in their mountain strongholds since a half-millennium B,C. A 
similar survival of Greeks in some parts of Sicily is asserted as a certainty by the folk-be- 
lief of modern Greece( Avéica). For Calabria its proof rests upon the labors of Domenico 
Comparetti, Giuseppi Morosi and Astone Pellegrini, and upon the Studi sui diuletti 
Greco-Calabro di Bova of the latter ; promptly made known to the English world in 1886 
by the Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, in her essay on ‘‘ Greek Songs of Calabria. ”’ 
An example of Calabrian survival is ud.yarpa, a knife, in Greek from the Ihad to 
the Klephtic songs ; maheri, a poniard, Calabria and Sicily still, wholly different from 
pugnale and stiletto, normal Italian for poniard, or from co/fe/lo, a knife. 
So 6 H210¢ Baoieber, the sun sets (literally, the sun kings itself, the sun puts on its 
purple), in popular Greek to-day and especially in the old Klephtic songs ( Attica); pro- 
nounced o eé/-yos vas-i-/év-ee ; the same expression survives current in Calabria as o iglio 
vasiléggui; of world-wide difference from the Italian for sunset, 7ramontare del sole. 
at Macer’s date was in the latter half of the oth century was claimed by Meyer. 
Renzi, observing the identity of some lines in Macer and in the Regimen Salerni, 
ed 
rom Macer, rather than the reverse. 2. e way in which Macer’s lines are used in 
the Regimen, date 1101, suggests that he was then esteemed an antiquity, and a matter 
of common property for writers of his school, 3. From Macer’s many citations and 
older authors, between one of the 5th and one of the 6th centuries. Evidently Macer 
did not live near Sigebert’s own period, but was to him simply known as an antiquity, 
and of some period since Rome. 5. The latest writer cited by Macer is Strabus who 
died 849 (and wrote in or afier 842) Placing Macer’s date as far from Sigebert as 
Possible will therefore make it about 850. 
lacer’s name is cited in Circa Instans as Macro, and Macron, hastily interpreted 
as Macrobius by some readers, as Bartholomaeus Anglicus. As A/acr the name 
4ppears in one Florentine 14th century MS. Afscron still occurs occasionally in 
Athens to-day as a family name. Were the form Macron merely an assimilation 
from his original name, we might have supposed the original form to have been 
= ancient Macar (=Eng. Aliss), classic Greek uaxap, happy, blest ; late Greek, 
#akapoc, name borne by the elder and younger saints Macarius of Alexandria, monks 
who died 390 and 394 A. D.; and by St. Macarius, patriarch of Antioch in the 7th 
Century ; all founders of so-called Macarian systems ; and borne by Macarius, 4 wig 
ere 
his name traceable to Latin only, it might have represented L. macer, meagre, or is 
maceria, a wall, maceriatus, endorsed, which last may have given rise to the province 
Materate in southern Italy. — Leaving his native Greek hills and becoming a Salernitan 
Physician and student of the classics, he may have chosen, in adopting @ Latin name 
(as Strabus and other contemporaries did), simply to alter its form to the accepted 
Roman name representing it, the name Macer, with the knowledge that this had been 
may made honorable as the name of a poet of plants, as well as of a historian, @ 
"an governor, several other poets, etc. See supra, p. 133- 
