Lactantius, “the Christian Cicero,” was the most learned man of Constantine’s age (306-337). His earliest effort, an hexameter poem, “the Banquet,” gained him such reputation that the emperor Diocletian appointed him to give instruction in rhetoric at Nicomedia. The “Banquet” is lost; but several of the author’s prose works remain, the greatest being his “Divine Institutions.” In his treatise “On the Death of the Persecutors,” Lactantius endeavors to prove the avenging hand of God in the violent ends of those emperors who had oppressed his people.
Boëthius.—Finally, we must notice the famous moral treatise “On the Consolation of Philosophy,” by Boëthius, a Roman noble who outlived the fall of his country (476). A model of integrity and justice, Boëthius was loaded with honors by Theod’oric, the Ostrogothic king of Italy; but at last, falsely accused by his enemies of witchcraft and treason, he was executed by his suspicious master (525).
The above-mentioned work was much read during the Middle Ages. Alfred the Great rendered it into Anglo-Saxon; Chaucer, into English; and later writers have reproduced its sentiments.
SPECIMENS OF LATER POETRY.
As a favorable specimen of later Latin poetry, we quote a few verses from an eclogue on hunting by Nemesian (280), a favorite poet in the time of Charlemagne, extensively read in the schools:—
“The toil that should round lawn and forest spread,
Hemming the nimble prey in moveless dread,
Must with inwoven plumes its threads divide,
From every various wing diversely dyed.
This the keen wolf and flying stag shall scare,