Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/305

ix] TRANSITION TO MEDIEVAL POETRY 287 the Middle Ages "when metrical Latin verse was not produced. The early Christian Latin poets followed the usual forms or genres of antique poetry, yet with devia- tions caused by the novel character of Christian topics as well as by the declining literary taste of the period in which they wrote. The classical world had always been familiar with epic poems, i.e. heroic narratives in hexameters; and from the times of Hesiod and Xenophanes that metre had been used in didactic and philosophic compositions. The general conception of a large narrative poem occupied with a lofty theme passed into classically educated Christendom. The substance of the Christian attempts at epic poetry was taken from the Pentateuch and the Gospels. Pale reproductions of Gospel story were Juvencus* Ilistoria Evangelica and Sedulius* Carmen Pasclmle. Small literary gain came to the narratives of Genesis from the Commentaries of Claudius Marius Victor. Dracontius' Heacaemeroji was a more spirited produc- tion ; and in the poem of Avitus emerges at length an epic of the Fall of Man. There was little epic quality in these poems ; char- acters as well as narratives were paraphrases rather than creations. The poems lacked unity and heroic action. Their lofty themes constituted religious narratives in which the action was not wrought out through the greatness and energy of the charac- 603; Ebert, op. cU., II, 18&-189; so does the Vita 8. Oermani by Helricus (Traube) , Poet. Lat. Aev. Car., 111,432-517; Ebert,op. cit., II. 289-291 (dr. 873) . Cf . also Norden , A ntikr Kunstproaa, 721-724, as to metrical poems in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.