Arles, and by profession a philosopher; he was also a student of Greek literature, but he was never tired of airing his "superficial" acquaintance with Latin. For instance, when some superficial pretender to antiquarian knowledge was boasting that he was the one man who could explain Sallust, he proved, with a great deal of Socratic display, that the boaster did not understand the hazy antithesis, that it was doubtful whether one of the Catilinarian conspirators was "duller" or "emptier," "stolidior an vanior."

He had rather more success in a Socratic dialogue on the meaning of penus, "household stuff," and showed that several high authorities had given confused definitions, while the unlucky disputant had given no definition at all. The scene is laid in the "area of the palace," among a crowd that was waiting to salute Cæsar; and for the most part Gellius entertains us, when he is dramatic, with the talk of loungers in public places, instead of the prolonged discourse of a select coterie in some nobleman's villa or bedroom, which is the scenery of the dialogues of Tacitus and Cicero.

2

Occasionally Favorinus does get into good society in private he pays a visit to a distinguished family which a baby has just entered, and preaches' a sermon on the duty of mothers to nurse their own children, of which the grandmother. strongly disapproves. He philosophizes, too, in an elaborate harangue against the pretensions of the Chaldæans. The temper of the speech is curious, at once rationalistic and pietistic. Favorinus takes most of the objections which a man of science would take (if one could be compelled to discuss the question). He asks how the planets can decide anything at the moment of birth? Is not the moment of conception more important? How is it that many who are born at the same moment under the same planet are so unlike? How is it that if an astrologer can predict the issue of a birth, he cannot predict the issue of a game at dice? If large events are more easily discerned, which of the events of human life can be considered large? and so forth. Lastly, if the planets determine fate, can it be said that every one

Gell. "Noct. Att.” xii. 1.

of the crowd who

2 Ib. xiv. 1.

perish in a general catastrophe, like a conflagration or an earthquake, was born under the same planet or the same constellations? But, with all this, Favorinus does not presume to emancipate himself from the assumptions of the astrologers: he takes it for granted that the heavenly bodies must, in some way or other, dominate the affairs of our earth. He does not suppose that it is a mere accident when astrologers are right: there is a real connection which the astrologers dimly apprehend; if they could see it clearly they would be as the gods -an hypothesis too shocking to be credible. But Favorinus cannot stick firmly either to science or piety; he goes on to explain that men would be mere puppets, which is contrary to common-sense. After all, the objection to astrology was practical; the young men who haunted the Chaldæans compromised themselves in many ways. Elsewhere Gellius is content to transcribe the Stoic distinctions about fate with very little criticism, almost as if he thought them satisfactory.

Favorinus is the one original feature in Gellius's compilation, and generally appears at the beginning of a book to give a certain show of dramatic liveliness, though Gellius's modesty prevents him from giving this prominent position to a discourse on the duties of a judge. It was a sort of axiom of Roman law to decide cases which turned on a conflict of testimony between the parties, in favor of the defendant; it was an axiom of philosophers in such a case to prefer taking the word of the more respectable of the two. Gellius once had a case of this kind to decide, and adjourned it on purpose to consult Favorinus. The sage told him a good deal about his duty in general, especially as to the question whether the judge was to interrupt the pleaders and show his feeling as the case went on. As to the particular case, he enjoined on him by all means to decide for the plaintiff, who had a good character, against the defendant, who was a rogue. This struck Gellius as too great a responsibility, so he refused to decide at all.

In general Gellius appears as a hearer, not as an actor: on one occasion he found himself in the distinguished society of

Herodes Atticus, who edified him by quoting Epictetus against an insincere young Stoic babbler.

It cannot be denied that Gellius is a little censorious: he likes to correct his predecessors and contemporaries; he sneers at the elder Pliny for some of his stories about the chameleon; he is very angry with the people who express themselves unintelligibly in order to show their knowledge. of ancient words; he abuses Seneca for his criticism on Vergil and Ennius; he corrects Verrius Flaccus, whom he often quotes, and oftener follows, for his explanation of Cato. The passage comes in a speech against the monstrous "regiment" of women. A woman brings a big dowry; she keeps back a big sum that she lends to her husband, and then, when she is angry with him, she sends a "receptitious slave" to dun him. Verrius Flaccus held a "receptitious slave" was a good-fornothing slave-a slave whom the owner had to take back because the buyer found he did not answer the warranty given with him when sold. Gellius, for his part, thought that when the lady kept back her money she kept back the slave too, and that otherwise no slave who did not belong to his mistress's settled estate could be sent on such an errand. It is a very pretty quarrel.

So far as Gellius had a taste of his own, it was for the simplicity of ancient literature: he is fond of giving little excerpts from Claudius Quadrigarius and Piso, as if there were some charm in the bald, transparent sentences. On one occasion he compares the way Claudius aud Livy described the conflict between Corvinus and the gigantic Gaul, very much to the advantage of Claudius. In the same spirit he exults at Cato's speech where he boasted that he had not gone to the expense of having one of his villas plastered and whitewashed, and thinks that such an example would be the most effective medicine for the excesses of his own day, when philosophers on fire with covetousness used to talk of having nothing and wanting nothing when they were as rich as they were greedy.

Gellius himself is not exactly free from hypocrisy: he tells us a very pretty story of what he found in a book that he picked up at a second-hand shop while waiting at Brundisium

-and one may charitably hope he did pick up the book; but the excerpts had been made to his hand by the elder Pliny, a much more laborious and instructive writer.

As to style, Gellius has no pretensions; he is fond of assuring us that he spoils whatever he repeats, especially the Greek harangues of Favorinus, and devotes a whole article to the impossibility of finding a Latin translation, or even a Latin periphrase, for the Greek πολυπραγμοσύνη. He had been reading, he says, Plutarch's treatise against that vice, and when he came to explain the subject gave the impression that it must be a virtue. His chief fault is that he is long and heavy, or else bald and abrupt; his happiest attempts-they are never very happy-are in the way of light, rapid narrative. He translates Herodotus's story of Arion, which he thinks a model in that line, and the introduction is meant to vie with the translation. Still, it may be said that few modern compilers are so uniformly free from cumbrousness, ambiguity, and solecism. The chief signs of the decay of the language are the complete disappearance of harmony and rhythm, and the multiplication of abstract compounds and lengthened forms of words (cognomentum), with the occasional intrusion of words like insubidus, which properly belong to slang, in an author who keeps up a painful struggle for correctness, and anxiously insists that dimidius liber is wrong for half a book, and that it ought to be dimidiatus.

PART VIII.

THE BARREN PERIOD.

CHAPTER I.

MINUCIUS FELIX.

Ir is difficult to fix the precise date of the earliest work of Christian Latin literature, the "Octavius" of M. Minucius Felix. The only two data which can be trusted are, that the author seems to write in a time when the Christians, though slandered, were not persecuted, and that the latest scholars agree in thinking that Tertullian imitated and misunderstood him, though the opinion of scholars of the seventeenth century was that he imitated Tertullian. Whether the earlier date or the later be correct, the author seems to belong to the African school; his principal speaker seems to be a provincial governor, who quotes Fronto, certainly as a countryman, perhaps as a contemporary. He describes the idolatry of the day in terms which are a distinct echo of Apuleius. But the scene of the dialogue is laid at Ostia, the speakers are supposed to be domiciled at Rome. Minucius is supposed to be paying a visit to Octavius, an older Christian and the chief speaker in the dialogue; and, as they are walking by the sea one morning, Cæcilius, a pagan friend, salutes an anointed image of Serapis. Octavius reproaches Minucius for leaving Cæcilius in his natural blindness. There is no hint that it would cost Cæcilius dear to have his eyes opened; the author speaks with less fervor of the sufferings of the Christians than the Stoics speak of the sufferings of their representative sages; earnestness is not his strong point. Lactantius praises