It is new spring; spring already harmonious; in spring Jove was born.
In the spring loves join together; in the spring the birds wed.
She (the swallow) is singing, we are silent. When will my spring come?
When shall I become like the swallow and cease to be silent?
I have lost the Muse by keeping silent, and Apollo cares not for me.
[133] The poem is the last of the Instructiones. The title reads: Nomen Gasei and the initial letters of the lines read from the last to the first from the words: Commodianus mendicus Christi. From this it is inferred that Commodian was Gasæus, i. e., from Gaza.
[134] The chief Latin writer on philosophy was Firmicus Maternus, whose eight books, Matheseos (Of Learning), published about 354 A. D., are occupied with Neoplatonic astrology. He is to be distinguished from his Christian contemporary and namesake, who wrote of the Error of the Pagan Religions. Gaius Marius Victorinus, who also lived about the middle of the century, was an African by birth, but taught rhetoric at Rome. He was the author of philosophical works, chiefly translations and adaptations from the Greek, but is best known by his extant work on metres in four books, and by some other extant grammatical treatises. In his later life he became a Christian, and wrote commentaries on St. Paul’s epistles, besides some controversial tracts.
[135] These grammatical works have little literary value of their own, and owe their importance to the fact that they contain information which is not elsewhere preserved. The same is true of several handbooks of various kinds compiled in the fourth century. Such are the Itineraries, giving the distances and routes between the towns along the Roman roads, the Notitia, describing the regions of the city of Rome, and a historical handbook of Rome for the year 354 A. D. preserved most fully in a manuscript in Vienna. A few maps of this period also exist, the most famous of which is the Peutinger Tablet (Tabula Peutingeriana), now in Vienna. A handbook of Agriculture (De Re Rustica) by Palladius, and the Epitome of Military Science (Epitoma Rei Militaris) by Flavius Vegetius Renatus, who also wrote an extant treatise on Veterinary Medicine (Mulomedicina), may properly be mentioned here, and these works possess also some slight literary interest.
[136] In 369 A. D. Festus wrote a handbook similar to that of Eutropius, but of less merit. The list of prodigies that took place from 249 to 12 B. C., compiled by Julius Obsequens from an abridgment of Livy, probably belongs to about the same time. Since a large part of Livy’s history is lost, such works as these are of some value.