Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/298

 280 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. Psyche and Amor is an allegory, in the course of which appear many personifications, Sobrietas, Consuetude, SoUicitudo, Tristities. The works of Prudentius' con- temporary, Claudian, also contain many personifications. The narrative poems, now to be noticed, consist of translations, transformations, or creations, from Old Testament or Gospel narrative. They form a class of poems of great magnitude, number, and variety; they do not stop with Latin, but branch out into the vernacu- lar literatures of mediaeval and modern Europe. If none of these poems reproduces the feeling and spirit of Bibli- cal narrative, some of them have merits of their own. The series begins with the Historia Evangelica of the Spanish priest Juvencus, written about the year 330. It is a close presentation of the Gospel story in four books of hexameters redolent of Virgil. The writer speaks in his prologue of the enduring fame of Homer and Virgil, who wove falsehoods ; and he deems that the truth which he narrates shall bring him an eternal meed of fame. This is not a Christian thought. Juvencus tells the Gospel story with smooth medioc- rity, quite unconscious of how his measures fail to reflect the spirit and feeling of the Gospel. To turn that story into hexameters meant a continual change of stress, with loss of point and emphasis. For exam- ple, Juvencus renders Christ's answer to the scribe, who said he would follow him : — Olli Christus ait ; quo me tu, scriba, sequeris f Vulpibus in saltu rupes excisa latebras Fraebet, et aeriis avibus dat silva quietem ; Aat hominis nato nullis succedere tectis Est licitum.^ 1 Hist. Ev., II, 14-18.