viii] CHRISTIAN PROSE 209 scattered through the subject provinces. As facilities of transmission abounded, they naturally wrote to each other. Letter- writing became more common than it ever had been with the Greeks. The fact that the Greek race was spread through the East caused no such separation of friends as resulted from the con- stant exodus of Roman officials or exiles to the prov- inces. A great part of Cicero's Correspondence was occasioned by the situation thus created, and the example of that greatest of letter-writers made letters an important part of Latin literature.^ The Romans were better letter-writers than the Greeks ; and from the time when Latin Christendom, turning from the language which had brought Christianity to Rome, speaks its own tongue, the most interesting letters are Latin and not Greek. The earliest collection of Latin letters is the corre- spondence of Cyprian,^ the cultured and authoritative bishop of Carthage, who was martyred in the persecu- tion of Valerian (257-258). The might and order of the organized Church speak in them, and the writer's zeal. They show a masterful grasp of the situation. Their style betrays the saint's former profession of a rhetori- cian.' It has little affinity with that of Tertullian, whom he calls his master and from whom he draws
- The poetic epistle, though it may have had it« obscure Greek
forerunner, was a Latin creation; it became a favorite with the poets of Latin Christendom. > Not all these are by Cyprian ; some are written to him.
- Many a Christian saint of the third and fourth centuries had
been a professor of rhetoric, though we do not read of their having been professors of other matters, — a fact sbowing the primacy of rhetoric in the schools. p
