Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/56

 38 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. Imperial period joins hands with the Middle Ages. Even before the fifth century, Virgil was regarded with superstitious veneration. As early as Hadrian's time the habit had arisen of finding one's future lot indi- cated in a line of Virgil chosen at random — the "sortes Virgilianae." His commentator Macrobius, a contemporary of Jerome and Augustine, holds him to be infallible in every branch of learning. Hence, he is an authority respecting everything as to which an opinion can be elicited from the real or imagined mean- ing of his language. This is a point of joinder with the Middle Ages; for the mediaeval man who read old Latin authors regarded them primarily as authori- ties upon whatever branch of fact they seemed to treat; their statements were accepted as true. When Latin poetry culminated in Virgil, there was no greatness left in Greek literature, which, however, was still to show some small excellences from time to time. Plutarch, for example, catches the illustrative pertinence of the incidents he tells. His narratives bring out the characters of his worthies ; and he sees a relation between a man's character and his fortunes. But even in Plutarch's time writings were coming into vogue which had lost all sense of ordered causal sequence of events, as well as of anecdotical pertinence ; and, lacking all perception of character, they failed to preserve any proper relation of fortune to the person- ality of the hero, or rather to the personality of him to whom the incidents of the story happen. A typical example is the Life and Deeds of Alex- ander the Great, by the pseudo-Callisthenes. This work probably was written in Egypt not later than