[477]. Vernat ... æstivat, a favourite antithesis of conceit with Sidonius. An alternative equivalent for it would be, of course, the freshness of spring and the glow of summer. Nor does this exhaust the suggested pairs.
[478]. Commaticus. This word, originally employed of the alternate threnos of personage and chorus in Tragedy, passed, in rhetorical use, to the signification of “short-cut” clauses of prose, and later received a special application to poems (especially hymns) in very short lines.
[479]. P. 87.
[480]. P. 89.
[481]. Immane narratu est quantum stupeam sermonis te Germanici notitiam tanta facilitate rapuisse, pp. 108, [109].
[482]. Ep. x. p. 114.
[483]. No doubt Q. Remmius Palæmon, a very famous, very arrogant, and very immoral grammarian and schoolmaster, who flourished from Tiberius to Claudius, taught Quintilian, and is mentioned by Juvenal (vi. 451, vii. 215-219).
[484]. P. 172.
[485]. P. 188 sq.
[486]. Acer, rotundus, compositus, excussus. I am never quite certain whether these Sidonian collocations (see above, p. [385 note]) ought not to be taken in pairs as antithetic double epithets, “round in the keenness, and well struck off in its composition.”