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LATIN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 199 most important, as his works were long held to be high authority, and they contain excel- lent materials, with pertinent criticisms in a clear style. His contemporary Julius Paulus surpassed him in fertility, but was his inferior both in accuracy and style. Three gramma- rians of this time enjoy some celebrity, viz., Julius Romanus, Juba, and Censorinus; their treatment 'was rhetorical. Gargilius Martialis wrote an extensive work on husbandry, from Greek and Roman materials. Marius Maxi- mus wrote at length the biographies of the emperors subsequent to Nerva, but without attention to truth. Herodianus wrote in Greek a history of his time, and Dion Oassius a Ro- man history from the foundation of the city to the year 229. The grammarian Julius Solinus wrote worthless Collectanea Rerum Memora- Mlium, revised in the 6th century and given out again under the title of PolyMstor. The contents of the works of St. Cyprian (Thascius Ca3cilius Cyprianus) are partly of an apolo- getic and partly of a practical and hortatory character ; and their diction, though not admi- rable, at least excels Tertullian's in lucidity and correctness. Many attempted metrical compo- sition. Such were Alfius Avitus, who wrote a history in iambic dimeters ; Marianus, the au- thor of Lupercalia ; Septimius Serenus, who imitated Greek metres ; and Saminonicus Sere- nus, who wrote 1,115 hexameters De Medicina Prcecepta. Two poems of Commodianus which have come down to us are filled with an ardent Christian zeal, though executed in defiance of metre and prosody. Several emperors of the second half of the 3d century were of Thracian and Illyrian origin, raised to the throne for military valor ; and when the organizing ge- nius Diocletian, the son of a peasant in Dalma- tia, attained the imperial power, the eastern in- fluences which had penetrated all departments of life were succeeded by northern influences, and both the form and the substance of Latin literature suffered severely. In the time before Diocletian, Nemesianus wrote a didactic poem on the chase, of which the first 425 lines, which have come down to us, attest a great command of words. The history of these years was writ- ten by a number of authors, but we hear of them only through the Scriptores Augustas His- torice, who availed themselves of them. The rhetorician Aquila Romanus left a meagre and hasty little book, De Figuris Sententiarum et Elocutionis. Toward the end of this time it seems that Nonius Marcellus composed his ex- tant lexical work Compendiosa Doctrina per Litteras, which, in spite of its great want of solid information, criticism, and accuracy, is still invaluable, as it contains numerous quotations from earlier Roman literature. With Diocle- tian (284-305) came the panegyrical orators, who devoted their eloquence to the superhu- man virtues and performances of the empe- rors. Gaul was now the chief home of this art, and Marseilles, Narbonne, Toulouse, Treves, and other cities had rhetoricians of their own, whose lectures were much favored by the viva- city and linguistic versatility of the nation. Of such speeches we possess some by Maximianus Herculius and by Eumenius of Autun. The Scriptores Augustas Historic^, as jElius Spartia- nus, Valcatius Gallicanus, and Trebellius Pollio (in several cases it is doubtful to whom the authorship belongs), are all void of talent and ability, though apparently honest; these bi- ographies form our sole historical source. A jurist named Gregorianus made a collection of the constitutions from Hadrian to Diocletian, known as the Codex Gregorianus ; it survived, however, with the supplement by Hermogeni- anus, only as far as it was inserted in Justin- ian's codex. An Ars Grammatica was writ- ten by Marius Plotius Sacerdos; a metrical manual by Terentianus of Mauritania ; and seven books in defence of his conversion to Christianity, but without much comprehen- sion of the purport of the religion, by the rhetorician Arnobius, the teacher in eloquence of the famous Lactantius Firmianus, who sur- passes all other Christian writers in the puri- ty and elegance of his diction, and the more important of whose works have happily come down to us. A work of value for histori- cal studies is a fanatical account of the end of all persecutors of the Christian religion, from Nero down to Galerius and Maximinus. A number of metrical compositions which turn on subjects of heathen mythology, such as those by Reposianus, Csesius Taurinus, and Pentadius, belong also to the time preceding the official victory of Christianity, and the removal of the imperial residence to Con- stantinople, which imposed a new character on the literature of the 4th century. This is the epoch of the greatest brilliancy in the lit- erature of the Christian religion. Constantino himself wrote memoirs, of which only scanty traces survive. He also was pleased with panegyrical speeches, and Eumenius, Nazarius, Marcomannus, and Titianus were the most prominent rhetoricians of his age. Optatianus wrote a nonsensical poem in praise of the em- peror, and the Spanish presbyter Juvencus a version of the Old and New Testament history in epic metre. Jurisprudence was exclusively devoted to collecting and epitomizing. Cha- risius was the author of juridical monographs, and Hermogenianus of the codex bearing his name and of Epitomce Juris. A collection of legal documents, generally entitled Fragments Vaticana, was also probably made in the time of Constantine. Grammatical studies were now prosecuted without pretence to historical investigation and scholarship ; the work of Cominianus seems to have been of this kind. Firmicus Maternus of Sicily wrote Matheseos Libri VIII., a complete system of astrology; and a Christian writer of the same name pro- duced a work entitled De Errore Profanarum Religionum, in which he demands the eradica- tion of paganism. Philosophy was studied in Athens in the theosophic and theurgic manner