Fragments

“The Gauls,” he says, “were anciently called Galatians from the whiteness of their bodies, and the Sibyl calls them so. This is what the poet meant when he says, ‘then their milk-white necks are entwined with gold,’ when he could have said ‘white.’ From this, certainly, comes the province of Galatia, into which the Gauls came at one time and mingled with the Greeks; for this reason that region was first called Gallograecia, and afterwards Galatia.”

“As for your question about the meters of comedies, I too know that very many think that the plays of Terence above all do not have the meter of Greek comedy, that is, of Menander, Philemon, Diphilus, and the rest, which consists of trimeter verses. For our writers of the old comedy preferred, in setting their plays to measure, to follow Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes. So they composed the prologues and the action of the first scenes in trimeters, and then put after them the longest lines, that is, tetrameters, which are called ‘square’ lines. In what follows they varied the meter: sometimes they used trimeters, sometimes trimeters with a quarter or a half added, that is, with a half-foot added, or a whole iambic foot, or a foot and a half. These they used variously through the middle acts, and again at the end of the plays square lines, such as we mentioned in the second scene. But although these same square lines ought to consist of sixteen syllables, they very often have twenty or more. Hence they are thought to lack meter and to be bound by no rule.”

… many, through ignorance of the Scriptures, as Firmianus also does in the eighth book of his letters to Demetrianus, assert that the Holy Spirit is often called the Father, often the Son.

And the apostle commands: “reading all things, holding fast what is good.” Lactantius in his books, and especially in his letters to Demetrianus, entirely denies the substance of the Holy Spirit, and with a Jewish error says that he is referred either to the Father or to the Son, and that the sanctification of both persons is shown under his name. Who can forbid me to read the books of his Institutes, in which he wrote most powerfully against the pagans, because the opinion stated above is to be detested?

Hope, fear, love, hatred, joy, sadness, lust, desire, anger, pity, zeal, wonder: these motions or affections of the mind were created by God in man from the beginning, and were implanted in human nature usefully and healthfully, so that, by ruling them in order and according to reason, man might by acting manfully practice good virtues, through which he would justly have deserved to receive eternal life from God. For these motions of the mind, when kept within their proper bounds, that is, directed to the good, prepare good virtues in the present and eternal rewards in the future; but when they overflow their limits, that is, when they turn aside to the bad, they become vices and iniquities and bring forth eternal punishments.

Within our own memory too, Lactantius, writing on meters, speaks of “pentameter” and “tetrameter.”

“and the vault of heaven through the air” (that is, Allecto) … Firmianus the commentator also says that one should read not “conuexa” (the vault) but “conuecta” (carried), so that it is she herself who is carried; this reading is hard to find in the copies.