Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/269

 IX] GREEK CHRISTIAN POETRY 251 Last Times. They are lurid with hatred of the heathen nations, of Rome above all. From the time of Justin Martyr many Christian Fathers accepted them, and so the ancient Sibyl entered the company of those who prophesied of Christ. Through the Mid- dle Ages the Sibyl remained a great name in poetry and art. These Sibylline Oracles show some Hellenistic liter- ary skill. The metre is hexameter, and many lines con- tain queer twisted survivals of Homeric phrase, which impart a grotesque epic flavor to the whole. Jewish fanaticism and Christian feeling break through occa- sionally ; but on the whole, hexameter metre and epic reminiscence dominate the form and influence the matter of the verses, curiously affecting the emotional contents. Even in the oldest Jewish ^ or Judaic-Chris- tian ^ portions, there is slight trace of Hebraic paral- lelism of statement, but much Homeric adjective and epithet. Christian feeling struggles to expression in those portions of the sixth and eighth books which are not earlier than the third century; but the expression is still affected by epic phrase and by the hexameter. The famous acrostic begins at line 217 of Book VIII : IH20Y2 XPEI2T0S 0EOY YI02 SflTHP 2TAYP02. It closes with a glorification of the Cross ; and then comes a reference to Moses conquering Amalek by faith, stretching out his arms ; * in which act Moses is sym- bolical of Christ. Lines 256-269 delineate Christ's in- » Sib. Orac, HI, 97-291; i6., 489-817 (second century B.C.) ■ Vm, 261.
 * Bk. IV, dr. 80 a.d.