STUDIA GRAECA ET LATINA GOTHOB URGENS IA VI ~ATIN FATHERS AND THE CLASSICS A STUDY ON THE APOLOGISTS, JEROME AND OTHER CHRISTIAN WRITERS by HARALD HAGENDAHL GOTEBORG 1958 Also published as ACTA UNIV.ERSITATIS GOTHOBURGENSIS GOTEBORGS UNIVERSITETS ARSSKRIFT Vol. LXIV • 1958 2 THIS BOOK IS PRINTED WITH A GRANT•IN•AID FROM HuMANISTISKA FoNDEN Distr.: ALMQVIST & WIKSELL STOCKHOLM G0TEBORG 1958 ELANDERS BOKTRYCKERI AKTIEBOLAG Preface The origin of this book goes back not a few years. In the first part, >>TheA pologists and Lucretius>>,I take up a subject which I have treated already in Swedish in Eranos (XXXV, I937, 4I-67); it will now be reexamined in a considerably enlarged form. >>The· western Church and Classical Culture A. D. 200-550>► was the theme of a series of lectures which I gave in Oslo in I95I on the invitation of the Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture. I am much obliged to the Board. of the Institute for permitting me to postpone the publication of these lectures until I have finished this book. It was meant to contain research and discussions which could not find place in a general survey. With time it has i_ncreased in size and attained unexpected dimensions, mainly because of Jerome. The more I got engaged in his voluminous writings, the more I felt convinced that an exhaustive study of his relation to the Latin classics was wanted. Jerome's importance as a writer and.the reach of his influence may serve as an excuse if the second part of this book, headed >>Jeromea nd Latin Literature>>, has turned out to be so large that it could better have been published separately. The third part contains heterogeneous questions illustrating various sides of the main problem, the attitude of Latin Christianity towards secular literature. These questions refer to authors different both in time and character. Some of the most prominent Christian writers as well as many lesser ones will come under our observation, although their attitude will be examined only from a special point of view. There are two reasons for this limitation of my scope. On the one hand the attitude of many authors has been examined so thoroughly that a fresh inquiry is uncalled for. On the other, some leading Fathers, e. g. Ambrose - not to speak of Augustine - in spite of useful preparatory research, have not yet received monographs which would render justice to their importance for the problems which interest the classical scholar. This is however a task that demands a separate volume. 4 HARALD HAGEKDAHI, The scattered remnants of secular thought and letters to be found in the Fathers open a wide historical prospect. They testify to the immense influence which classical culture exercised upon Christianity. No Christian writer of the IVth and the Vth centuries could keep himself uninfluenced by it. Some of them attempted, more or less willingly and successfully, to bring about a compromise. This process cannot fail to captivate the student of antiquity, considering that it rescued the legacy left by the ancients from falling altogether into neglect. It represents in fact the last stage in the history of ancient civilization as well as the foundation of a new civilization resting both on Christianity and classical antiquity. Because of that it falls to a large extent also within the province of the classical scholar. The printing of this book has been made possible by generous grants from >>Humanistiska fondem> and the University of Goteborg. I wish to express to these institutions my sincere gratitude. My thanks are due also to the staff of the City and Universiti Library of Goteborg for never failing courtesy and helpfulness. I am much indebted to Dr Charles Barber, Mrs. Barbara Barber, B. A. and Mrs. Mavis von Proschwitz, M. A. for their valuable assistance in correcting my English. Goteborg 15 december 1957. Harald Hagendahl. Contents Page Preface .. 3 Contents . 5 PART I The Apologists and Lucretius Chap. r. Introduction 9 Chap. 2. Arnobius . 12 Chap. 3. Lactantius Chap. 4. The other apologists. Conclusion 77 PART II Jerome and Latin Literature Chap. r. Introductory remarks .. . . . . . . . . . . 91 Chap. 2. The writings 374-385 . 100 Chap. 3. Literary work in Bethlehem 386-393 . Chap. 4. Polemical and other writings 393-402 A. The controversy with Jo vinianus B. The Origenist controversy . C. Letters and commentaries . Chap. 5. The writings 402-419 215 A. Commentaries . . . . . 215 B. Letters ........ . 246 C. Polemical writings against the Pelagians .. 260 Chap. 6. Aspects and conclusions ..... A. The extent of J erome's readings . a. The poets of the Republic .. b. The poets of the Empire . . . . c. The prose writers . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. The quotations: technique and purpose ... C. Jerome's attitude: principles and practice .. 6 HARALD HAGE:::-IDAHL PART III Miscellaneous questions Page Chap. I. >>Illasn otissimas quattuor animi perturbationes,> 331 Chap. 2. The four virtues . 347 Chap. 3. Pagan mythology and poetry applied to Christian beliefs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 A. General remarks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 B. The myth of the iron age in Christian disguise 389 C. The conception of Purgatory 392 Indices . 397 PART I THE APOLOGISTS AND LUCRETIUS Chap. 1. Introduction Lucretius' influence upon Latin literature bears no proportion to his merits as poet and as thinker.1) If De rerum natura had been lost and we were left to reconstruct it from incidental quotations, as the matter stands in the case of Ennius and Lucilius, we cquld hardly realize in full that the poem on the nature of things was one of the masterpieces of Latin poetry as well as the chief literary manifestation of Epicureanism. The largest number of quotations is due to Nonius Marcellus, the grammarian, and to Macrobius, the philologist. The former confined his interest to the lexicographic point of view, the latter to Virgil's indebtedness to Lucretius and other poets. This is significant; for the influence which Lucretius exercised was almost entirely formal. It is most obvious in Virgil, whose poetical language is filled with Lucretian reminiscences, duly recognized by Gellius, Servius and Macrobius.2) From the Augustan age the line can be traced, more or less distinctly, to Flavian times, when, according to Tacitus, some literary circles 1) In my opinion it has been considerably overrated by George Depue Hadzsits in his useful, but rather superficial survey, Lucretius and his Influence, London 1935 (Our Debt to Greece and Rome. 12). Other points on which I disagree with Hadzsits will be discussed in the sequel. - Copious, although by no means ex haustive materials for the assessment of Lucretius' influence are brought together in the standard edition of Diels (Berlin 1923), in the commentaries of Lachmann, Munro, Heinze, Giussani and Ernout-Robin, in scholarly editions of other Latin authors and in numerous dissertations and papers, e. g. the monographs of Merrill, where the relations of individual writers to Lucretius are treated. References to literature will be found as wanted in the notes. It is worthy of remark that the question of Lucretius' influence is nowhere discussed in the three bulky volumes of the last edition by Cyril Bailey (I-III, Oxford 1947), 2) Cf. Hadzsits, p. 31: ,)The Virgilian poetry, over and over again, echoes the language of Lucretius who exercised a mighty spell over the sensitive nature of the Mantuan. Lucretian phraseology is woven into the fabric of Virgil's verse, and, whatever the metamorphosis, it became an integral part of the new poetry». IQ HARALD HAGBNDAHL preferred Lucretius to Virgil, and further to the archaizing movement of the second century. Its leading man, Fronto, favoured the reading of Lucretius, not from love of philosophy - for Fronto was hostile to all that bears that name - but as a means of realizing a new literary style. I mitatio veterum became the catch-word of the new school. Its aim was to renew the language by digging out and reviving obsolete or rare words in archaic literature. To that end Lucretian poetry proved useful.1) The best example will be found a century and a half after Fronto in Arnobius, who adopted Lucretian phraseology to a larger extent than anyone before or afterwards. In this connection the merely lexicographic interest of the grammarians has to be remembered. It is the last off-shoot of the archaizing movement. Ovid was transported with admiration for the sublime poet;2) Virgil, when still inclined to follow Epicurus, paid an equally fine tribute to Lucretius as an Epicurean philosopher: Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas atque metus omnis et inexorabile /atum subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari.3) For the rest, almost complete silence about the great philosopher of nature, even in those quarters where it could least have been expected. Cicero mentions Lucretius incidentally in a letter and then with appreciation, 4) and is credited by Jerome with having corrected the poem. 5 But in his philosophical writings Cicero entirely ignores Lucre ) tius. He neither mentions his name nor quotes a single line nor shows 1) Quintilian, who was not favourable to Lucretius, was of a different opinion: Inst. orat. X. 1, 87 Macer et Lucretius legendi quidem, sed non itt phrasin, id est corpus eloquentiae faciant. 2) Amor. I. 15, 23-24: Ca,-mina sublimis tune sunt peritura Lucreti, exitio terras cum dabit una dies. 3) Georg. II. 490. ') Ad Q. fratr. II. 9, 3. For different interpretations of Cicero's criticism see Diels, op. cit., p. XXXV; H. W. Litchfield, Cicero's judgment on Lucretius, Har vard Studies 1913. 0. Tescari, Lucretiana (Torino 1935), pp. 7 sqq., is on the same line as Hendrickson, Am. journ. of Phil. XXII (1901), 438. 5) Hier. Clwon. ed. Helm p. 149. As to the much debated eniemla'l!it I agree with the opinion of Bailey, op. cit., I, pp. 18-21.