Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/96

78 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. finds voice in Augustine. Despite all the antique ele- ments of his personality, which made him still a Roman man of the transition epoch, these Christian sentiments proclaim him the true continuer of the spirit of the Old Testament through Christ, and make him the most completely Christian man since the Apostolic time, and the great father of mediaeval Christianity. II. Synesius of Cyrene Synesius, a native of Cyrene, an ancient but de- cayed Greek city of the Libyan Pentapolis, was a live Hellenic personality of the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century. His writings were not to be of great influence in Western Europe, but they show the mingling of Hellenic-pagan and Chris- tian elements in a man of the transition epoch. He was honest, brave, lovable. Before his adoption of Christianity he was a Neo-platonist, and a devoted admirer of Hypatia, the Neo-platonist woman-philoso- pher of Alexandria, where Synesius spent some happy years. He loved study and cultured ease, as well as hunting and the agricultural occupations of a country gentleman. He hated public affairs ; but the misfor- tunes of his province forced military and then epis- copal leadership upon him, as he was the only man brave enough to quell marauding Libyans and oppose tyrannous officials. His countrymen compelled him to be ordained Bishop of Ptolemais ; and a troubled epis- copal career brought him prematurely to his grave. Hellenic Africa had its woes when Rome fell before