Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/310

 292 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. had written in these metres would certainly come to him. Modern education offers no analogy to the many ways in which the Latin-speaking youth were satu- rated with Virgil. They almost wrote Virgil as they spoke Latin. Thus classical reminiscence and, above all, Virgilian phrase entered Christian Latin poetry. Even Com- modianus, writing with intentional illiteracy, has Virgilian phrases, and shows knowledge of Horace, Lucretius, and Terence.^ Juvencus and Sedulius are Virgilian in phrase and tone, so far as mediocrity can reflect greatness. Paulinus of Nola, educated in pagan rhetoric, with some faculty of diction and no original- ity, never thought to avoid classical phrases. His Carmen VIT, an adaptation of the first psalm, begins with Horace's Ab impiorum segregavit coetibus ; and again in Carmen XIII he plays devotionally with the name of Felix in the words of Virgil : — Sis bonus ofelixque tuis. Prudentius, also, shows his classic education, though not borrowing so profusely. The following lines from his Apotheosis curiously echo Horace and Lucretius : — O nomen praedulce mihi f lux^ et decus, et spes, Praesidiumque meum ! rcquies o certa laborum, Blandus in ore sapor, fragrans odor, irriguus fons, Castus amory pulchra species, sincera Voluptas. 1 See Dombart's edition (Vol. XV of Vienna Corpus), Pref., pp. lii-vl.
 * Beatus ille quiprocul ' vitam suam