Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/270

 252 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. carnation as his first coming to judgment, and with a realization of its great condescension ; 068i 7dp iy S6^Vf ^^^ ^^ fiporbs els Kpiaiv ijfet, OlKTpbSj Arifios^ &fju}p(poi, tv' oUrpoii iXirlSa Sdtrei . . . There follows a short review of Christ's works until he gives himself for the world a * pure virgin,' irapdevov ayvrjv. In a subsequent part of the same book is told the annunciation, the incarnation, and then the birth of Christ, — a child from " virgin parents a great marvel to mortals," /ttcya Oavfxa pporoLcriv ; ^ and if this phrase does not transport us from Bethlehem to Troy, we are at least carried part way to Ida by the lines which follow : — TiKrSfievov di pp4v7i x^^" ' Ovpdvios 5' iyiXaaae dpbvoi, Koi i,y6XKeTo Kbffpjos.^ Such passages relate to Christian matters, yet con- tain little Christian feeling,* which, however, breaks through the hexameter in the sixth book, when the blessed Cross is apostrophized in words prefiguring 1 VIII, 291. « VIII, 473 ; cf . Od., XI, 287. The more frequent Homeric phrase is Oavtta iBeaOai. ; e.g., II. XVIII, 83, 377, — but the pporolaiv is so very classic in its suggestion. • « The words are not those of the description of Zeus and Hera on Ida, in //., XIV, 347, etc. ; but compare II., XIX, 362. These pas- sages, like others in the Sibylline Oracles, suggest passages in Homer, but do not reproduce them. in the translation by the younger ApoUinarius (390 a.d.) of the sixty-sixth psalm into Greek hexameters. The result is something too Homeric for a psalm and too Hebraic to be really Greek, as Bouyy says, Poetes et M4lodes, pp. 43-51.
 * The incompatibility of hexameter with Hebraic feeling appears