Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/294

 276 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. Now I have brought my life to anchor at thy shore : — Hoc bene subductam religavi litore classem, In te compositae mihijixa sit anchora vitae.^ The didactic or polemic Latin poems remain to be noticed, and then the narrative. The two classes are not to be sharply set over against each other; for polemic and didactic poetry usually contained much narrative, and the narrative poetry frequently had a didactic or polemic purpose. Hexameter is the usual metre, and many of these poems have no other title to the name of poetry. The last remark applies to the work of the earliest Latin Christian poet, Commodianus of Gaza, Syria, who wrote in the middle of the third century. He was the author of a book of Instructiones, consisting of eighty acrostics in unmetrical hexameters. The first part of the work is a polemic apology for Chris- tianity, directed against the pagans ; the second part contains ethical admonitions for the use of the various classes of Christians. The poet's Carmen apologeti- cum forms a sequel, in which he instructs as to the Trinity, attacks secular studies, also the Jews, and devotes much space to Antichrist^ and the Last Times. He appears to have intentionally ignored quantity in his hexameters. The last acrostic in the Instructiones, read from below upward, is Com- modianus mendicus Christi ; and it would seem as if one intending to be "poor in spirit" wrote, with a depreciation of classical culture, in order to impress 1 Carmen XIII, 35. 2 The first appearance of Antichrist in Latin Christian literature.