Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/299

 ix] EARLY LATIN CHRISTIAN POETRY 281 The flatness of this passage is partly due to its medi- ocrity, and partly is enforced by the metre. The poet fails to give the feeling of the Gospel. A poem which regularly speaks of God as ^^summus tonans^' would naturally have a Roman and Virgilian tone. The story of Christ stilling the tempest closes thus : — Inde procellis Imperat etplacidam stemit super aequora pacemA The last is a good line, but the feeling and reminis- cence are Virgilian. Mention may be made of the Alethiaf or three books of Commentaries on Genesis, written by Claudius Marius Victor, near the middle of the fifth century. They are an expository rendering in hexameters of the Biblical story, with many didactic digressions. Of greater interest and far wider influence was the PaschcUe Carmen of Sedulius, composed at this time. It comprised somewhat less than two thousand hex- ameters and was divided into five books. The name would indicate some underlying thought on the part of the poet, giving a unity to his work. It was a poem of Christ our Passover, offered for men. The first book sings the miraculous deliverances in the Old Testament. The second book tells the birth and childhood of Christ, and the three remaining books sing the story of the saving " miracula Christiy^ until the final paschal sacrifice and redemption, consisting of Christ's death, resurrection, manifestation of Him- self, and His ascension. Sedulius' poem continued to be widely read from his own century on to the 1 Hist, Ev., U, 38; cf. JEneid, I, 249.