Lactantius (Lucius Cæcilius Firmianus Lactantius) was a pupil of Arnobius, according to Jerome’s statement, and was called by Diocletian with the grammarian Flavius to teach Latin rhetoric at Nicomedia, in Bithynia, a Greek city in which teachers of Latin found few patrons. Lactantius. Lactantius was therefore poor and had leisure for writing. When he was converted to Christianity is not known, but it can not have been before he reached middle life. In his old age he was called by the Emperor Constantine to be the tutor of his son Crispus. Nothing remains of writings by Lactantius before his conversion, but his later works, both prose and verse, are numerous. The most important are the seven books entitled Institutiones Divinæ (Divine Institutions, an exhaustive philosophical work in support of Christianity against paganism), after which should be mentioned the treatises De Opificio Dei (On the Work of God, a discussion of creation and the nature of man), De Ira Dei (On the Wrath of God, dealing with the current theories of Providence), a fanatical work on the deaths of the persecutors from Nero to Galerius (De Mortibus Persecutorum), and a curious poem On the Phœnix. The treatise De Opificio Dei is Christian only in its general tendency, and contains no direct reference to Christianity. This is probably because it was written at the time of the persecution under Diocletian (303 A. D.). The poem On the Phœnix (that fabulous bird that builds a nest, burns itself up, reappears among the ashes as a worm, grows to an egg, is hatched, and flies away to renewed life) shows many traces of Christianity but contains no direct reference to the new religion. Lactantius was well educated in the learning of the pagans, and when he became a Christian did not forget what he had learned before. His style is purer than that of his Christian predecessors, being modelled upon that of Cicero. For this reason the name “Christian Cicero” has been applied more appropriately to him than to Tertullian, though in power of eloquence Tertullian, with all his harshness of style, is the greater.
The second century, which saw the birth of Christian literature in Latin, produced, as we have seen, several writers of real power, and as the third century opened, Christian literature gained, in the person of Lactantius, a writer who possessed at the same time elegance of style. With Lactantius the African school of Christian writing approaches the classical style of Minucius Felix, and the path is made straight for the writings of St. Jerome and St. Augustine. From this time on, the real life of Latin literature is seen in Christian rather than in pagan writings.
CHAPTER XIX
PAGAN LITERATURE OF THE THIRD CENTURY
Terentianus, about 200 A. D.—Quintus Serenus Sammonicus, about 200 A. D.—Nemesianus, 283 A. D.—Reposianus, toward 300 A. D.—Vespa, late in the third century—Hosidius Geta, early in the third century—Disticha Catonis—Marius Maximus, about 165-230 A. D.—Ælius Julius Cordus, about 250 A. D.—The Historia Augusta—Domitius Ulpianus, killed 228 A. D.—Julius Paulus, first half of third century—Cornelius Labeo—Quintus Gargilius Martialis—Censorinus, 238 A. D.—Gaius Julius Solinus—Gaius Julius Romanus, early third century—Marius Plotius Sacerdos, latter part of third century—Aquila Romanus—Ælius Festus Aphthonius, end of third century—The panegyrists: Eumenius, Nazarius, Mamertinus, Drepanius.
While Christian literature was developing in the third century the pagan literature dragged on its senile existence. Pagan poetry of the third century. There was little poetry that deserved the name, though skill in versification was not uncommon. Terentianus wrote in verse his handbook of metres about the beginning of the century, and not far from the same time Quintus Serenus Sammonicus composed a medical handbook containing sixty-three recipes in 1,107 hexameters. He does not pretend to be a physician, but derives his wisdom, such as it is, from Pliny and other writers. The recipes are of various kinds, some recommending the use of herbs in a simple and sensible way, while others prescribe more or less disgusting compounds of animal matter, and a few are nothing more nor less than magic charms. So fevers are to be cured by wearing tied to one’s neck a bone found within the enclosure of a house, and a cure for another fever is found in a piece of paper inscribed in the proper manner with the magic formula abracadabra, which is to be worn round the neck of the patient. To the credit of Sammonicus it should be said that his knowledge of metre is greater than his knowledge of medicine; but even that does not raise his handbook to the level of poetry. A writer of much better quality, who even deserves to be called a poet, is Marcus Aurelius Olympius Nemesianus, who wrote, in the year 283 A. D., a poem On Hunting (Cynegetica), 325 lines of which are preserved, and who is also the author of four eclogues formerly attributed to Calpurnius (see page [188]). The discussion of dogs, horses, hunting-nets, and the like in the Cynegetica can hardly be called poetry, but the eclogues, though written in close imitation of Calpurnius, who was himself an imitator of Virgil, show some genuine poetic spirit. There is also some poetic beauty in the poem on the love of Mars and Venus, by Reposianus, written toward the end of the third century, but not so much can be said in praise of Vespa’s metrical argument between a baker and a cook (Indicium Coci et Pistoris Iudice Vulcano) as to the relative merits of their callings, or of the epigrams and “echo verses” of Pentadius. These last consist of elegiac distichs so written that the first words of the hexameter are repeated or “echoed” at the end of the pentameter. Such verse has little relation to poetry, but shows that there was still an interest felt in the technique of metrical writing. That the study of the classic writers, especially of Virgil, was diligently cultivated, is shown by the existence of poems composed entirely of Virgilian lines and fragments of lines. A remarkable extant specimen of such work is the short tragedy Medea, probably written by Hosidius Geta, near the beginning of the third century. Several anonymous poems add little to our admiration for the poets of the third century, but the so-called Disticha Catonis should be mentioned because they gained great and long-continued popularity. They are maxims of every-day wisdom expressed in distichs of two hexameters. Such maxims are: “Regard it as the first virtue to hold your tongue; he is nearest God who knows how to keep a wise silence”; or, “Be sure to tell many of another’s kindness, but keep silence about the kindnesses you have done to others.” These distichs were soon imitated, and similar maxims in one line—monostichs— were also written. They are hardly poetry, but have some interest because of their popular nature.
The prose of the third century possesses even less interest than the verse. Pagan prose in the third century. The only historians worthy of the name—Dio Cassius and Herodian—wrote in Greek. Marius Maximus (about 165-230 A. D.) continued Suetonius’s lives of the emperors from Nerva to Heliogabalus, and about the middle of the century Ælius Julius Cordus wrote lives of the more obscure emperors. These works are lost, but, like those of several other writers of this period, were used by the authors of the so-called Historia Augusta, a collection of lives of the emperors from Hadrian to Numerianus (117-284 A. D.). These lives were written by six authors, four of whom, Ælius Spartianus, Julius Capitolinus, Vulcacius Gallicanus, and Trebellius Pollio, wrote under Diocletian (284-305 A. D.), while the remaining two, Ælius Lampridius and Flavius Vopiscus, belong to the early part of the fourth century. They are all alike in the poverty of their style and their liking for petty personal details. The books on the Prætorian Edict by Domitius Ulpianus, who was killed in 228 A. D., and by his younger contemporary, Julius Paulus, as well as other juristic works of the third century, were important contributions to the development of Roman law, and the attempt made by Cornelius Labeo in his lost work on the Roman religion to explain the pagan cult would probably, if it were preserved, be interesting as an attempt to defend the old religion against skepticism and Christianity. The extant parts of the work of Quintus Gargilius Martialis on agriculture, veterinary medicine, the use of healing herbs, and the like, show that the whole was a compilation from the works of Pliny the elder and other writers by a man who had sense and judgment; the treatise On Birthdays (De Die Natali), written in a lively and easy style by a grammarian Censorinus in 238 A. D., is a compilation from Suetonius, Varro, and others, of information concerning the birth and life of a man, astrology, music, and some other matters; and the Collection of Things Worth Remembering (Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium), by Gaius Julius Solinus, contains valuable information about early Roman history (to Augustus) and the geography of the ancient world, with especial attention to oddities and peculiarities, whether of the countries or their inhabitants; but none of these works is of independent literary importance. The grammatical writings of Gaius Julius Romanus, who lived in the first years of the third century, were much used by Charisius somewhat more than a century later. A grammar (Ars Grammatica) in three books by Marius Plotius Sacerdos, written in the latter part of the century, is extant, as is also a brief rhetorical treatise by Aquila Romanus. The four books On Metres by Ælius Festus Aphthonius, written under Diocletian, are lost, but their contents are in part preserved by Marius Victorinus. These grammatical works are of importance chiefly for their references to earlier literature.
None of the prose works just mentioned exhibits any creative talent or testifies to any new literary development. The only new literary phenomenon of the period is the rise of a school of oratory in Gaul, which produced, to be sure, nothing of great importance, but which shows by its very existence how far removed from Rome were now the centres of intellectual life, when the great Christian writers were Africans and the pagan orators were Gauls. The Gallic orators avoided the harshness and obscurity of the African school, and wrote in smooth Ciceronian Latin, with a plentiful flow of words and a poor supply of ideas. The panegyrists. A collection of twelve panegyrics has been preserved, the first of which is Pliny’s address in honor of Trajan, delivered in 100 A. D., while the remaining eleven are dated at different times from 291 to 389 A. D. One of these was delivered in 297 A. D. by Eumenius, a teacher of Greek descent, but Gallic birth, for the benefit of the schools in his native town of Augustodunum (Autun), and three (perhaps four) of the others are probably by the same author. Three of the remaining speeches are assigned to known authors and dates. They are by Nazarius, in honor of Constantine (321 A. D.); by Mamertinus, in honor of Julian (362 A. D.); and by Latinus Drepanius Pacatus, in honor of Theodosius (389 A. D.). Two of these orators belong to the second half of the fourth century, but their speeches resemble the others in the collection, all of which are full of most exaggerated praise of the emperors. These speeches contain many references to the history of the times, but must be used with great care by the historian, since their purpose is to praise the emperors, and not even historical facts must be allowed to cast a shadow upon the imperial glory. The Gallic school of oratory was evidently flourishing in the later years of the third century and the greater part at least of the fourth. It was a learned school, based upon imitation of the ancient classics, and standing in no close relation to the living language of the times. The extant speeches show how thoroughly the study of the classics was carried on in Gaul, and at the same time how ready the orators were to flatter emperors who were pleased to listen to their obsequious praise.