"Virgil, Minucius Felix and the Bible"

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70 DAVID S. WIESEN

sichern, doch ein Prinzip hat. Dieses ist oft gezeigt worden, nur sollte nichtvergessen werden, daB der neoterische libellus sich hier wirksam zeigt. Undauch damit sollen wir rechnen, daB, wenn die Neoteriker Gedichtbulcherge-schrieben haben, doch nicht nur sie selbst von dem Gesichtspunkt geleitetwaren, ihre Gedichte einmal auch in dieser Form herauszubringen. Es istkeineswegs undenkbar, daB die klassischen Dichter, wenn sie das einzelneGedicht niederschrieben, an Buchveroffentlichungen dachten, ja daB dieserGesichtspunkt die Produktion mitbestimmte. Es ist darum eine Leistung, diegar nicht hoch genug zu werten ist, daB ein solcher mehr technischer Gesichts-punkt nicht dazu veifiihrt hat, die Norm auch durch Aufnahme weniger ge-lungener Arbeiten zu erreichen oder Gedichte zu verfassen, die praktisch nurFillsel waren'. Der neoterische libellus war nach Form und Inhalt durch-disponiert, es hatte ein Absinken bedeutet, wenn Niveau und iuberhauptQuali-tat dieses libellus nicht wieder erreicht wurde. Aber tberlegungen, die sichhier einstellen, etwa uiber este Form als piagende Kraft in der Literatur, wollenwir zurtickstellen. Wichtiger ist uns: wenn die Neoteriker ihrer ars huldigten,dann waren auch ihre libelli nach Umfang und Inhalt (um von der Buchaus-stattung abzusehen) von ihrer Muse bestimmt.

Bovenden fiber Gottingen KARLDEICHGRABER1 Nachtraglich: Zu diesen tberlegungen moge man WILAMOWITZ - diese Zeitschrift

6i, I926, 298 = KI. Schriften IV 425, im Auszug auch Ovid, Wege der Forschung XCII47I - vergleichen. DaB die Neoteriker ohne Bucher nicht auskamen, daran sei nur kurzerinnert.

VIRGIL, MINUCIUS FELIX AND THE BIBLEThe incalculable influence exercised by Virgil upon Roman letters and

Roman education is a phenomenon probably unparalleled in literary history.Even Homer, for all his immense poetic authority and his central place inGreekeducation, cannot be said to dominate Greek literature in the same wayor to the same extent as Virgil Roman, for Homer stood at the very beginningof the brilliant and original development of Greek literature, and his geniusstimulated, without overpowering, the talents of later writers. After Virgil,in contrast, )>nogreat development was possible, until the Latin languagebecame something differentO


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Virgil, Minucius Felix and the Bible 7Ilesser ones: affectation, lifeless imitation, bombast, pedantry, were the shadowsgradually lengthening across the landscape of Latin literature. Virgil, fromhis own lifetime onward throughout the remainder of antiquity, provided theauthoritative texts and great models that were imitated in epic, parodied insatire, rewritten for stage performance, learned by heart in the schools, ran-sacked to provide subjects for rhetorical exercises, paraphrased in Greek,abused by ostentatiously learned bluestockings, drummed into the ears ofhelpless dinner guests'. This unhealthy passion for Virgil knew no limits andraged unchecked even by the antiquarian reaction led in the Antonine ageby Fronto and his school. Virgil's firmly established place in education, andin Roman culture generally, prevented his being supplanted by any passingpreference for Ennius or Lucretius. Many, diverse, and sometimes bizarre toour minds, were the uses to which Virgil's verses were put. Indeed, the wholequestion of the various ways in which the Romans appreciated and used theirmost admired poet is worthy of fresh and comprehensive treatment2. Thispaper, however, will attempt to isolate one strand of a complex fabric; it willtry to discover when and under what influences Virgil's poems came to beviewed as a repository of Christianreligious truth.

Our particular concern is not the 'Messianic' fourth Eclogue, which Lac-tantius was the first Christian writer to interpret allegorically, as an inspiredmillenarian prophecy, and which he compared with Isaiah's description ofthe GoldenAge to come3. The Christian reading of this poem received officialsanction in an Oratio ad Sanctos ascribed to the Emperor Constantine . Butthe technique demonstrated in that speech (whether it was actually written bysome scholar of Constantine's court or is a forgery of the fifth century as somescholars maintain), the method of forcing a pagan poem to yield a Christian

1 On parodies of Virgil in Juvenal, see I. G. SCOTT, The Grand Style in the Satires ofJuvenal (Smith College Classical Studies 8, Northampton, Mass., 1927); on Virgil in thetheatre and schools, D. COMPARETTI, Vergil in the Middle Ages, trans. by E. BENECKE,London I895, 25 and 29-33; on Virgil in Greek translation, Seneca, Ad Polybium 8; onfemale Virgilian commentators, Juv. 6, 434-437; on Virgil at the dinner table, Juv. ii,i8o-i8i and Petronius, Sat. 68.

2 The work of COMPARETTI, still the fullest treatment of the subject, is in need of ex-pansion and revision on the basis of knowledge gained since his day. The more recentscholarship is widely scattered, e. g., J. SPARGO, VIRGIL, the Necromancer, Cambridge,Mass., I934; P. COURCELLE, Les Peres de l'Eglise devant les Enfers Virgiliens, Archivesd'Hist. Doct. et Litt. du Moyen Age 22, I955, 5-74 and Les Ex6g6ses Chretiennes de laquatrieme Eglogue, Rev. des Et. Anciennes 59, I957, 294-3I9; H. HAGENDAHL, LatinFathers and the Classics, G6teborg 1958; H. DE LUBAC, Ex6g6se M6di6vale, Paris I964,Part II, Vol. II, 233-262 and esp. bibliography, p. 24I, n. I.

3 Div. inst. 7, 24. See COURCELLE, Les Exegeses 294-295 and Louis J. SWIFT, Lactan-tius and the Golden Age, AJPh 79, 2, I968, I53-I55.

4 Oratio Constantini XIX-XXI, (ed. I. A. HEIKEL,Griech. christl. Schrifts., Eusebius,Vol. I, Leipzig, I902, I8I-I87).


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72 DAVID S. WIESENmessage through allegorical exegesis was clearly no novelty; it presupposedanestablished, traditional belief that Virgil's works embody more than humanwisdom'. In the present essay, the specific questions we ask are, when doessuch a concept first emerge and when is it adopted for Christian use? Ourmethod will be, first to trace briefly the growth of the belief in an all-knowingVirgil, then to indicate how certain attitudes toward literature, poetry inparticular, prevalent in later antiquity naturally led Christians to adopt Virgilas one of their own, and finally to show how MinuciusFelix in his apology forChristianity uses Virgil's poetry virtually as a sacred text. Addressing hiswork to a cultivated, pagan, Roman audience, Minucius, it will be argued,employs Virgil as a proof-text in a way similar to that in which the earliestapologists, namely the apostles themselves, had drawn upon Old Testamentpassages in their attempt to persuade Jewish hearers of their Christian mes-sage. In Minucius we will see how the need to find convincing support forChristianity within pagan literature led the apologist to take ready advantageof the profound reverence that educated contemporaries felt for Virgil. Thisapologetic use of Virgil nurtured, in turn, the belief among Christians thatVirgil's poetry was, in a very literal sense, divinely inspired and contained,if rightly read, religious truth. Then, once the belief became common thatVirgil had been stirred by divine enthusiasm, it seemed naturally to followthat his poetry was really an intricate code concealing profound and esotericwisdom. Accordingly, elaborate techniques had to be developed for decipheringthe code, for tearing away the veil behind which the poet had chosen to hidehis message. One such technique was the cento, the piecing together of linesand half-lines of Virgilian poetry in order to fabricate a new work which,though Virgilian in language, disclosed beneath the original, or rather imposedupon the original, an entirely new meaning. The early stages of this develop-ment can be glimpsed in MinuciusFelix, but it is not perfected-if that is theproper word-until the fourth century, when a lady of aristocratic family,Falconia Proba, told selected stories from the Old and New Testaments in 694lines of Virgilian verse, claiming thus to reveal all the bard's recondite secrets,arcana vatis cunctareleyye .

The intellectual seeds that were to produce Falconia's strange plant weresown as early as the first century of our era, when an aura of superstitiousveneration began to surround the name and works of Virgil. It is difficult,

I On the much debated question of the authenticity of the speech ascribed to Constan-tine, see the full bibliography in COURCELLE,Les Exegeses, p. 296, n. i, and COURCELLE'sown opinion ibid., *que 1' on songeait beaucoup 'a a quatrieme Bucolique dans l'entouragepalen et chretien de Constantin et qu'une certaine authenticite de l'Oratio, remaniementgrec d'un discours original Latin elabor6 dans la chancellerie de Constantin, n'a rien d'invraisemblable #.

2 Falconia Proba, Cento, line I2 (ed. SCHENKL,C. S. E. L. XVI, 569).


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Virgil, Minucius Felix and the Bible 73however, to find the precise moment when praise for Virgil's divine geniusceased to be a mere laudatory metaphor and became instead a literal assertionthat the poet was in touch with higher powers. The transition from respectto awe is subtle and almost imperceptible. Seneca, of course, speaks inetaphori-cally when he introduces a Virgilian quotation with the words: Clamat eccemaximusvates et veluitdivinoore instinctus saluttarearmencanit1. The qualifyingword velut, pointing up the metaphor, makes it clear that Seneca is expressingadmiration for human genius and nothing more. But near the end of the firstcentury, we find that admiration and respect are beginning to develop intoveneration, and steps are taken toward the deification of Virgil. Silius Italicus,we are told, adored the bust of Virgil, celebrated his birthday religiosius quamsuum, and visited his tomb as if it were a shrine2. Statius too regarded Virgil'stomb as a holy place, while Martial virtually classified the poet as a divinity,or at least a hero, when he declared that Virgil sanctified (consecravit)he Idesof October, his birthday, as Mercury the Ides of May, and Diana those ofAugust3. It was no novelty, to be sure, in antiquity for great poets to receivesemi-divine honours after death, but the phenomenon seems to have belongedexclusively to the Greek world up to this time. From at least the fifth centuryB. C. religious honours had been paid to Hesiod at his tomb in BoeotianOrchomenos . The grave of Aeschylus in Sicilian Gela had become a place ofpilgrimage, where tragedians of later days brought sacrifices and mountedperformancesof their own dramas5. It is well known that Sophocles' fellow-citizens had awarded the poet heroic status as Dexion, 'the receiver', who hadbeen host to the sacred snake of Asclepius6. But for Romans to regard oneof their own poets with religious awe was an innovation, and Virgil was appar-ently the only Roman writer ever to enjoy such reverencein antiquity (althoughApuleius, like Virgil,was held to be a magician in the MiddleAges).

By the time of Hadrian, indeed, religious honour was paid not only to thespiritof the inspiredVirgilhimselfbut had been extended to the text of his poetry.Hadrian himself, before he reached the principate, consulted the sortes Vergi-lianae, so we aretold, at a time of anxiety in his life, when the Aeneidconvenientlyproduced a text predicting his future imperial greatness (Aen. 6, 8o8-8I2)7.Should the story be true, Hadrian's exaggerated trust in Virgil's wisdom is notto be seen as an odd or isolated example of a superstitious attitude toward the

I De Brev. vitae 9, 2. 2 Pliny, Epist. 3, 7, 8; Martial II. 48-49.3 Statius, Silvae 4, 4, 54; Martial 12, 67.4 L. R. FARNELL, Greek Hero Cults, Oxford I92I, 364.5 M. NILSSON, Geschichte der Gr. Religion, Munich 1955, Vol. I 719.6 See F. WALTON, A Problem of the Ichneutae of Sophocles, Harvard Studies in Class.

Phil. 46, 1935, I67-I89.7 Spartianus, Hadrianus 2, 8. But the accuracy of such a detail in the HA is always

open to question.


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74 DAVID S. WIESENgreat literature of the Roman past. On the contrary, in a period of decliningintellectual vigour, men look backward to the noble creative spirits of bygonedays with ever greater awe and nostalgia the more they feel themselvesincapable of equalling the achievements of past genius. The general convictionprevailed in an increasingly retrospective and superstitious age that wisdomlay hidden in documents written long ago, buried away in old poets and philo-sophers. )>Allantiquitya, says CURTIUS,)seesthe poet as sage, teacher, andeducator(('. But to the mind of later antiquity, from the first Christian centuryonward, it was axiomatic that nothing could be simultaneously new and truepoetry, and especially the oldest poetry was regarded as a treasuryof religiousand philosophical ideas, and as men began to lose, or disregard,their historicalsense, they ascribedto poets knowledge of truths and teachings utterly foreignto them and entirely unknown to the times when the poets had lived. As earlyas the second century of our era we find prevalent a belief that had long beendeveloping: the greatest spirits of the past, whether poets, philosophers,historians, or religious teachers, expressed not the particular wisdom charac-teristic of their age, of their individual gifts, or of the genres in which theywrote, but a generalized, undifferentiated religio-philosophical wisdom ofuniversal validity. The belief had a vast influence on educational ideas andmethods. Plutarch was expressing a common pedagogical concept when heurged young men to read the poets not for the sake of the truth and beauty tobe found generally in poetry, nor for the wisdom of particular poets (theseadvantages he ignored), but for the sake of the timeless philosophical truths,chiefly of an ethical nature, to be gleaned from such reading2.

The breakdown, so characteristic of later antiquity, of the strict boundariesseparating poetry, philosophy, and religion is well illustrated by the list ofteachers whose images were worshipped by the second century Gnostic teacherCarpocratesand his followers. Homer, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and Christ,werethe equal recipients of their syncretistic piety3. In the same spirit, the Em-perorAlexanderSeverusis said to have kept in his palace two oratories. The up-per one contained statues of inspired sages eclectically chosen: Apollonius ofTyana, Christ, Abraham, Orpheus, et huiuscemodiceteros. n the lower one theEmperor revered Cicero,Virgil-whom he called the Plato of poets-, Achilles,and othergreat men4. The notion that all men who claimed any kind of greatnessor wisdom are to be judged by one canon only, the moral and religious value

1 E. R. CURTIUS, European Lit. and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. by W. R. TRASK,New York 1953, P. 203.

2 Quo modo adulescens poetas audire debeat 35f-37b. Cf. Horace, EPIST. I, 2.8 Irenaeus, Haer. I, 25, 6; Epiphanius, Haer. I. 6 (P. G. XLI 374). See E. R. DODDS,

Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety, Cambridge I965, I07.4 Lampridius, Alex. Sev. 29, 2 and 3I, 4. For a salutary word of caution here, see

R. Syme, Ammianus and the HA, Oxford, I968, I38.


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Virgil, Minucius Felix and the Bible 75of their achievements, can also be seen, from a negative point of view, in themiscellaneous list of false pagan teachers drawn up by the second centuryChristian apologist Theophilus of Antioch. He rejects the 'useless and godless'opinions of the following poets and thinkers: Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, Aratus,Euripides, Sophocles, Menander, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides,Pythagoras, Diogenes, Epicurus, Empedocles, Socrates, and Plato'. Herodotusis singled out as a philosopher of particular wickedness, for when he recordedthat among the Indians parents are eaten by their children, he was actuallyinculcating such behavior2. Theophilus makes no distinctions between thekind of truth proper to different literary genres, sees no distinction betweenbehavior described and behavior advocated, and concedes nothing to thegreater or lesser rudeness and ignorance of the age in which a writer lived; allpagan authorities are weighed as instructors of religion and ethics, and all arefound wanting. While pagans tended to accept the profoundwisdom of all thenoble names of their inherited culture, whatever intellectual fields these famousmen had tilled, those Christianswho rejected pagan culture, discarded all itsgreat representatives as false and corrupting teachers.

Most Christians, however, did not choose the path of Theophilus. To rejectthe wisdom of 'gentile' writers would have meant the abandonment of all thehigher culture carried down from the past and the permanent identification ofChristianity as a barbarianreligion unsuited to men of taste, birth, and educa-tion. But before Christians could acknowledge the value of pagan writers,methods had to be devised for transformingthe dross of falsehood into the goldof truth. One such method had long enjoyed success among the pagans:allegorical interpretation. The use of allegory to uncover lofty philosophicaldoctrines latent in the Homeric epics was as old as the sixth century B. C.; ithad developed as the natural reply to the criticism of Homer voiced by thepre-Socratic thinkers3. The attempt to transform naive or immoral tales in-herited from the remote past into edifying philosophicaldoctrineswas ridiculedfrom time to time by both pagans and Christians, including Plato, Seneca,Plutarch, Celsus, Tatian, and Irenaeus, but to no effect; the search for philo-sophic subtleties, current ideas, and salutary moralizing in writers of the

I Ad Autolycum 3, 2 (P. G. VI 1122-23). But we also have the opposite doctrine inthis work (2, 37-38, P. G. VI III5-20), that the testimony of Greek poets and philo-sophers confirms the teachings of Scripture.

2 Ad Autolycum 3, 5 (P. G. VI II26-27).s On allegorical exegesis in general, see F. CUMONT, Recherches sur le Symbolisme

Funeraire des Romains, Paris 1942, PP. 5-IO, and the older literature there cited; E.HATCH, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity (Hibbert Lectures i888; reprintedNew York, I957), 50-85; E. R. CURTIUS, Op. cit. 203-207; B. SMALLEY, The Study of theBible in the Middle Ages, Oxford I952, I-26; H. WOLFSON, The Philosophy of the ChurchFathers, Cambridge, Mass., 1956, Vol. I 24-72; LUBAC, Exegese, Part I, Vol. II, 373-396,489-548; Part II, Vol. II, I25-I49.


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76 DAVID S. WIESENremote past became ever more intense, until in late antiquity allegory becamethe most important system of textual interpretation'. As CUMONTuccinctlysays of Homer: )>L'Iliadet l'Odysee sont devenus les livressacresdupaganisme,leurs chants sont interpretes comme des recueils d'oracles, et les Neo-Platoni-ciens en citent les vers a l'appui de leurs speculations comme les Peres del'Eglise le font des versets de la Bible


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Virgil, Minucius Felix and the Bible 77Old Testament were simply continuing the midrashic or non-literal methods ofexegesis employed by Palestinian rabbis,whose aim, like that of the allegorizinginterpreters of Homer, was to make old text conform to advancing theologyand ethics.

The habit of ransacking old and great writers for figurative interpretationsand esoteric doctrines at the expense of the literal or surface meaning wasimmeasurably strengthened by a twofold belief cherishedthroughout antiquity,that the gods communicate to men through enigmas and that the inspiredbardis the unconscious spokesman of deity, the reporterof a divine message'. Platoin his Ion had painted the portrait of the delirious, frenzied poet who, in hisstate of enthusiastic inspiration, unconsciously uttered valuable truths. In theApology too Socrates classifies roUq TnOLuT2&c' oVq 'Te 'TpaCyaLc)V xcd 70U

cv OUp&543COVxcO ToUq &X?ouqwith seers and soothsayers,who say manygood things without understanding their meaning2. The early Christianapologists express the same thought in a Christianform. To Athenagoras, forinstance, the poets and preachersof Sacred Scripture were but flutes throughwhich the divine breathblew, creatingmusic formen's souls3. The authorofthe Exhortation to the Greeksascribed to Justin Martyr, using a similar meta-phor, compares the writers of Scriptureto harps or lyres upon which the plec-trum of the Holy Spirit played and revealed the truths of heaven4. Once thetheory of the divine inspiration of certain great writers was granted, it wasinevitably broadened to include great philosophers, when the distinctionsbetween the truths of philosophy and the truths of poetry began to be obscured.Indeed, the belief that pagan philosophers had been inspired from on high isbasic to Philo's thinking, as can be seen in his extremely influential three-foldexplanation for the presence of divine truth in philosophy: philosophy wasborrowed by the Greeks from the Jews; it was discovered by natural reason,but with the help of God; it was vouchsafed by God to the Greeks as his specialgift to them 5.

The Church Fathers employed all three of these explanations in theireffortsto reconcilephilosophy and Scripture. They welcomed the first argumentwith particular eagerness; and many Christian writers worked up elaboratechronologiesto show that Moses was older than the earliest Greekteacher, who

1 Poets continue throughout antiquity to invoke the Muses not merely in deference toconvention, but also because the nine maidens conveniently symbolize the mysterioussources and nature of artistic inspiration. If the Muses had not represented a living con-cept, the Christian poets would probably not have been at such pains to reject their helpin favor of Christ's, e. g. Paulinus of Nola, Carmen IO, 20-2I: Negant Camenis, nec patentApollinildicata Christo pectora (C. S. E. L. XXX p. 25).

2 Plato, Apology 22b-23c. See also E. E. SIKEs, The Greek View of Poetry, LondonI93I, 67-7I. 3 Athenagoras, Legatio 9 (P. G. VI 908).4 Pseudo-Justin, Cohortatio 8 (P. G. VI 256).

5 H. WOLFSON, Philo I I41-I43; Church Fathers, I 2I.


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78 DAVID S. WIESENis sometimes identified as Linus, sometimes as Orpheus,sometimes as Homer.)Jndeed#Mosess more ancient than all the Greek writers,and whatever the philosophers and poets have said in speaking about theimmortality of the soul, or retribution after death, or speculation on celestialmatters, or other similar matters, they took from the prophets... #1 As aresult of this borrowing, which reinforced the seed of reason implanted in allmen, divine teachings and biblical history, it was believed, are latently presentin pagan writers, although half-understood, garbled, or recast2. The accountof divine creation in Genesis is mirroredon the shield of Achilles (Iliad E 483),and referencesto the Sabbath are to be found in Plato, Hesiod, Homer, Calli-machus and Solon3. Examples of this process of identification could be multi-plied almost endlessly, as could examples of Platonic and Stoic philosophicalteachings discovered in Scripture. But for our present study the importantpoint is that the attitude toward literature prevalent in later antiquity allowedhuman wit ample scope to lay bare the philosophichidden in the sacredand thesacred latent in the profane. Educated men imbued with this attitude wouldnaturally, indeed inevitably, direct their minds, as they read both sacred andsecular texts, away from literal and historical meanings in their search forspiritual or occult doctrines lying beneath the surface.

Keeping in mind these general assumptions, we turn now to the passageof Minucius Felix's Octavius in which the Christian interlocutor, havingsupportedhis belief in divine reason and providenceby eloquently setting forththe traditional argument from design drawn chiefly from Cicero, then goeson to ask whether this divine rule is single or plural (Oct. I7-I9). Monarchy,he asserts, is the most efficient form of government among men, the only formof government among animals. (Oct. i8, 5-7). The consensus omniumsupportsmonotheism. Even the common crowd, stretching forth hands toward heaven,calls upon a singulardeus (Oct. i8, ii). Monotheism,far frombeing the doctrineof a particular novel sect, is implanted in human reason by nature. Thisthought then leads Octavius to introduce poets first and then philosophers aswitnesses to monotheism. The apologist seems to have two ends in view here:to combat the claim of Caecilius, the pagan interlocutor, that Christians arestudiorum rudes, litterarumpro/anos, expertesartium etiam sordidarum4,the

1 Justin, First Apology 44 (P. G. VI 396). On Justin's attitude toward Greek philo-sophy, see H. CHADWICK, arly Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition, OxfordI966, 9-22.

2 Cf. Theophilus, Ad Autolycum I, I4 and 3, i8-ig (P. G. VI I045 and II46); Tatian,Orat. ad Graecos 3I and 36-4I (P. G. VI 868-872 and 879-888); Tertullian, De anima2, 4, ed. J. WASZINK, Amsterdam I947, P. 3.8 Pseudo-Justin, Cohortatio 28 (P. G. VI 293); Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 5,I4, 107 (ed. 0. STAHLIN, Griech. christl. Schriftst. Vol. XV, Clem. Alex. II 397-398).

4 Oct. 5, 4.


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Virgil,MinuciusFelix and the Bible 79upstart opponents of all that is noble in the higher culture of educated Romans,and then to show that the naturalunderstandingof commonpeople is supportedby the deeper wisdom of the learned and the inspired'.

Minuciusbegins his survey of the poets with Homer, as his pagan audiencewould no doubt expect: Audio poetas quoqueunum patremdivum atque homi-num praedicantes,et talem esse mortaliummentemqualemparens omnium diemduxerit (Oct. i9, i). We see that the apologist has started by rendering theHomeric formula 7rocrtp&vapCvre OsCovr (I1. A 544 etc.), emphasizingHomer's supposed monotheism by his own addition of unum to patrem2. Heaccompanies this with the suggestion that Homer, by employing the phrasein question, is proclaimingor preaching(praedicare)a religiousdoctrine. To themodern reader this seems a gross overinterpretation of a standard phrase, butMinucius' reading is in accord with the general belief of antiquity that greatpoems are religious documents containing theological teaching. The words ofOctavius that follow (talem esse ... duxerint) very loosely render Odyssey qI36-I37:

tozoqY&P oOq 'a'dvCZXOoV,LVvOpc7rco1vQlOV i,uocp OC'f 7tCCap cXVpO)V re OCv

The literal sense of Homer's words is accurately given by RIEU: )>In act ouroutlook on life here on earth depends entirely on the way Providence is treatingus at the moment(, - not a particularly apt thought for the apologist's pur-pose, one would have supposed3. However, it was no novelty for a deepertruth to be found in these words than lies on the surface. St. Augustine reportsCicero's statement, made probably in a lost portion of De Fato, that theStoics were accustomed to quote these Homeric verses when asserting thepower of fate, which they identified with the supreme God4. Minucius seemsto attribute a less definite meaning to the words than did the Stoics5. He is nodoubt pleased to discover that Homer makes the character of mortaliummentemdependent upon divine dispensation6. Yet only one element in theHomeric verses really applies to the apologist's argument at this point, the

1 P. BEAUJEU well remarks that Minucius' threefold division of the argument (mono-theism of the vulgus, of the poets, of the philosophers) is a reworking of Varro's theologiatripertita as described by Tertullian, Ad nationes 2, i. See BEAUJEU's edition of the Octa-vius, Paris I964, I07, n. I9.

2 There may also be a recollection of Ennius' translation of the Homeric phrase, patremdivumque hominumque, cited by Cicero (De nat. d. 2, 2, 4.), at the point where his Stoicinterlocutor is beginning to expound his argument for the existence of God.

3 See Odyssey, ed. W. B. STANFORD, London I954, Vol. II 304.4 Augustine, De civ. Dei 5, 8.5 BEAUJEU, Op.Cit. io8 points out that these Homeric verses, ))faisaient partie du stock

de citations couramment utilis6es par les rh6teurs(.6 With an inconsistency typical of the apologists, Minucius uses Homer and other poets

when he finds them useful and rejects them when he does not. Cf. the reference in Oct. 24


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80 DAVID S. WIESENwords parens omnium, and we must observe that the phrase is not translationbut a monotheistic rewordingof irocrp &v'p, vv O&Cv re1. Cicero, n contrast,had thus rendered the same Homeric verses:

Tales sunt hominumsnentes,quali pater ipseluppiter auctiferas lustravit lumine terras .

It is the phraseparens omnistmwith its implications of the divine origins of theuniverse that links the Homeric passage to the citations and arguments thatfollow, for in the sequel more emphasis is laid upon God's role as Creator andsource of everything than upon God as moral governor of the universe. At theconclusion of his review of pagan witnesses, the apologist will round off thediscussion by referring back to the quotation from Homer: ))Eadem ere etista, quae nostra sunt; nam et deum novimus et parentemomnium dicimns ...(Oct. I9, I5).Since Minuciuswrites as a Roman for a Latin-speaking audience, he doesnot stop to cite other Greek poets as witnesses to Christianity, as he mighteasily have done. For instance, the author of De monarchiawrongly attributedto Justin, builds his case for monotheism out of citations, though not alwaysgenuine ones, from 'Orpheus', Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Menander, andPhilemon, as well as Plato, and Pythagoras3. Minucius instead passes immedi-ately to Virgil, whose semi-divine authority, as we have seen, was well estab-lished by the beginning of the third century4.

Quid? Mantuanus Maro nonne apertius,proximius, verius'principio' ait 'caelum ac terras' et ceteramundi membra'spiritus intus alit et in/usa mens agitat, inde hominumpecudumque enus' et quicquidaliud animalium?

(Oct. I9, I-2).Here we have, partly quoted, partly paraphrased, the beginning of Anchises'great cosmological speech, spoken to Aeneas in the underworld (Aeneid 6,724-728). The philosophical idea put forth in the opening words of the speechquoted by Minucius, namely the existence of a divine World Spirit pervadingthe universe, is of course common coin from the Stoic mint, but it gainsadditional value as an utterance of the inspired bard. It is a matter of indif-(BEAUJEU'S text 23) to carminibus . . . poetarum, qui plurimum quantum veritati ipsi suaauctoritate vocuerunt. The inconsistency reflects sincere confusion over the proper Christianattitude toward pagan letters.

1 Of course Min. also wants to avoid repeating the translation just used, patrem divumatque hominum.2 De civ. Dei 5, 8. 3 Pseudo-Justin, De monarchia (P. G. VI 3I2-325).4 For a recent, authoritative statement on the endlessly argued problem of the date of

the Octavius and its relationship to Tertullian's Apologeticum, see BEAUJEU, Op cit.LIV-LXVIII.


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Virgil,Minucius elix and the Bible 8Iference to Minucius that Virgil was in fact neither a philosophernor a religiousteacher and that the philosophical ideas contained in this passage are notpropounded as the poet's own, but are put into the mouth of a fictitiouscharacter.Nor does it seem to trouble the apologist that the pantheistic conceptof a God immanent in matter is contrary to Christian teaching'. Apologeticproof-texts are commonly lifted from their contexts with little regard for theirauthors' intentions. But there is a special reason, which seems to have gonealmost unnoticed, for Minucius to latch enthusiastically on to Virgil's words,namely their resemblance to the opening passage of Genesis. G. H. RENDALL,in his Loeb translation of the Octavius (London and Cambridge,Mass, I953,p. 364), translates pincipio as 'In the beginning', although in its Virgiliancontext the word is nothing more than a common formula for opening aphilosophic argument and means merely 'to begin' or 'in the first place'2.However, so typical of Christian thinking, so thoroughly stamped upon theearly Christianmind is the habit of looking through the outher shell of paganwords to an inner kernel of Scriptural truth that RENDALL'Sranslation isalmost surely justified. It is indeed scarcely credible that Minucius, whoshared the leading ideas of his day on the divine source of pagan poetic andphilosophic wisdom, could have failed to make the identification betweenGenesis and Virgil. Of the pagan philosophersMinuciusclearly affirms:

Animadvertisphilosophoseademdisputarequae dicimus, non quodnos simus eorum vestigia subsecuti,sed quod lli de divinis praedi-cationibusprophetaryummbram nterpolataeveritatis mitati sint3.

But since later antiquity tended to erase the boundaries between the truthsof poetry and the truths of philosophy, we may conjecture that here in Virgil'sphilosophic speech was found 'the shadow of a garbled truth'.

The Christian speaker, it will be recalled, had introduced the quotationunder discussion by praising Mantuanus Maro, in contrast to Homer, forspeaking apertius, proximius, veyius, even though Virgil's Stoic mingling ofGod and matter, when literally understood, is far removed from Christianteaching on the relationshipof God and the world. Yet the mind of the exegete,

1 See Lactantius, Div. inst. 7, 3, I, where this very passage of Virgil is cited as an exampleof the Stoic error of mingling God with matter. Cf. also Aug. Conf. 7, I, 1-2. Min. is soheavily indebted to his Stoic sources that the doctrine of divine immanence also occurs inOct. 32, 7-9, a passage in which the apologist is using material drawn from both Virgil andSeneca. See P. COURCELLE,irgile et l'immanence divin chez M. F., Mullus, FestschriftTheodor Klauser, Murnster I964, 34-42 and M. SPANNEUT,Le stoicisme des Peres del'Eglise, Paris, I957, 263-266.

2 Lucretius I, 27I; 503; 2, 589. Also Cicero, De nat. d. 2, 62, I54.3 Oct. 34, 5. Cf. 20, i: aut nunc Christianos philosophos esse aut philosophos fuisse iam

tunc Christianos.Hermes 99, 1 6


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82 DAVID S. WIESENin eager search of similarities, observes that Scripturedoes recount, and Virgilseems to recount, how in the beginning God, who is described as spiritus inboth Genesis and Virgil1, created or caused to move and grow (alit and agitatin Virgil; the present tense would not be a serious embarrassmentto an exegete)the heaven, the earth, and the other members of the universe, and how fromthis divine Creatorcame hominumpecudumque enus et quicquidaliud animali-um. Our argument, that Minucius is making tacit allusion to the parallelsbetween the depiction of creation in a pagan writer and true Scriptural account,seems to be confilmed by the favorable judgment that Octavius passes a bitlater (Oct. I9, 4) on the cosmogony of Thales:

Iste Milesiuts Thales rerutm nitium aquam dixit, deumautemeammentem quae ex aqua cuncta formaverit.Esto altior et sublimioraquae et spiritus ratio, quam ut ab homine potuerit inveniri a deotraditum:videsphilosophiprincipalis nobiscumpenitus opinionemconsonare2

There is virtually unanimous agreement among scholars that in these wordsOctavius is subtly pointing out the similarity between the cosmogony ofThales and that of Scripture, as expressed in the words of Genesis, Et Spiritusdei ferebatur uper aquas. Thales, suggests the Christianinterlocutor, could nothave arrived by reason alone at so close an approximation of divine truth; hemust have received enlightenment from God3. The concessive esto clausegrants the point but puts off its further discussion. Surely if the very slightresemblance between the pre-Socratic philosopher's theory of the beginningof things and the sentence of Genesis-a resemblancehardly noticeable exceptto one convinced beforehand that philosophy and revealed truth must oftencoincide-if this scarcely visible similarity indicates to Minucius that Godinspired Thales, then surely when the apologist cites the passage from Virgil,in which there is an actual verbal resemblance to Genesis, he must intend tosuggest that biblical truth is reflected in the pagan poet.

1 Min. may possibly have known a Latin translation of the Bible. On the date of theVetus Latina, Bonifatius FISCHER, the leading authority says, )>TheOld Latin translationof the Bible came into being little by little during the second century, perhaps in Africa,perhaps in Rome or Gaul, probably in different places((. See New Cath. Encyclopedia II436-437.

2 RENDALL brackets the words Esto ... traditum on the grounds that they read 'likean appended gloss'. This opinion is in line with a tradition reaching back ultimately to theseventeenth-century scholar GRONOVIUS, who was subsequently followed by HALM, DOM-BART, CORNELISSENand BAEHRENS. But J. VAHLEN convincingly argues for the genuinenessof the passage (Ges. Phil. Schriften, Vol. I, Leipzig and Berlin, i9iI, 65I-657 [orig.published in Hermes 30, I895]), and his views are followed in the editions of WALTZING(I909 and I9I2), PELLEGRINO (I950), and BEAUJJEU (I964).3 Some scholars also find an allusion to baptism in these words of Oct., while others,with greater probability, deny it. See VAHLEN, Op. cit. 653 and BEAUJEU I09.


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Virgil, Minucius Felix and the Bible 83The question immediately arises why MinuciusFelix did not go so far as to

produce his conclusion openly before his pagan opponents, triumphantlyshowing that the revered bard too had learned from Scripture. The answer is,of course, that the apologist is at pains throughout his polished and elegantdiscourse to avoid resting his argument upon specifically Christian beliefs ordocuments; he must present his case to cultivated Romans, who probablyheld the Bible in the utmost contempt (especially the Old Testament, theliterature of a people whom the Romans found alien, bizarre,and unpleasant 1).For Minucius' purpose, it sufficed to indicate tacitly to his more learned andmore Christian readers that Virgil reflects biblical truth. Direct allusions toScripturehad to be kept at a minimum when a writer was trying to reach anaudience whose reaction to the strange language of Scripture,if they ever cameinto direct contact with it, must have been similar to that of the young St.Augustine, who found the Bible indigna quam Tullianae dignitati compararem(Conf. 3, 5). (The only other verbal recollection of a specific Scriptural passagein the Octavius may possibly occur at 33, I: non solum in oculis eius, sed insinu vivimus, which could be a recollection of Act. I7, 28: in ipso enim vivimuset movemuret sumus. But the resemblanceis not close2).

Other citations from the speech of Anchises in patristic literature (it was afavorite passage with the Fathers) tend to confirm the argument that Minuciusis linking Virgil and the Bible3. For example, Lactantius, like Minucius, passesin review the pagan witnesses to monotheism, and he too quotes the beginningof Anchises' discourse . But Lactantius does so in a context that makes it clearthat he takes Virgil's words to be a description of the divine act of creation.First he speaks of Orpheus, oldest of the poets, who attributed the origin ofeverything to the true and great god, 'the first born', before whom there wasnothing. Homer is then quickly dismissed as having nothing to say on divinematters-a surprising judgment, but comprehensible once we see that Lac-tantius is concentrating on pagan accounts of creation. He passes on to Hesiod,and is at paiinsto refute the Hesiodic view that chaos was the beginning of allthings. He then continues: Nostrorumprimus Maro non longe afuit a veritate,cuius de summodeo, quemmentemac spiritum nominavit,haecverba unt. At th'spoint Lactantius quotes Aeneid 6, 724-727, and then goes on to cite Ovid'saccount of creation by a God whom that poet named mundi fabricatorand

1 Note that in Oct. 33, 4, the Christian coldly refers to the Old Testament as Scriptaeorum.

2 Cf. Oct. 32, 9, Non tantum sub illo agimus, sed et cum illo, ut prope dixerim, vivimus,H. J. BAYLIS, Minucius Felix, London, I928, I50-I51, gives a list of supposed parallelsbetween the Bible and Oct. But these seem to be correspondences between general ideasrather than direct references to Scriptural passages.

3 See P. COURCELLE, Les Peres de lEglise (see above, p. 7I n. 2), PP. 37-42; H.HAGENDAHL, Latin Fathers pp. I24, I27, 134, 23I, 242. 4 Div. inst. I, 5.

6*


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84 DAVID S. WIESENopifex reryum Sandwiched between the Hesiodic and Ovidian descriptions ofthe origin of the universe, Virgil's words are surely understood by Lactantiusas a description of the primal act of creation and as a parallel to the beginningof Genesis.

St. Ambrose too interprets the beginning of Anchises' speech in this way.In his treatise De Spiritu sancto, Ambrose sets out to prove that the HolySpirit, as well as the Father and the Son, was creator of the universe. Evengentile writers, he declares,had an inklingof truth. Gentileshominesper umbramquandam nostros secuti, quia veyitatemSpinitus hauyire non poterant, quodcaelumac terras,lunae quoquestellarumquemicantiumglobosSpiyitus intus alatsuis versibus ndideryunt.rgo illi per Spiyitumnon negantvirtutem ubsistere rea-turae: nos qui legimus, denegams2? >>But(,Ambrose imagines his opponentsobjecting, Athepagans meant by this only a windy or airy spirit?, flatilemspiyitum. Ambrose's reply to this objection shows conclusively that he inter-prets the Virgilianpassage, to which he has just alluded, as a description of thedivine act of creation: Si illi auctoremomniumflatilemspiyitumdeclarant,nosdubitamusSpiritutmdei esse omntium reatorem?3

To conclude our argument we introduce the evidence of Falconia Proba'sChristianVirgil-cento, a kind of poem which cannot fail to seem preposterousto the modern reader-'genre absurde', exclaims H. DE LUBAC-, although itwas unquestionably put together with wholly serious and pious intention. Suchwas the intellectual climate of the fourth century4. Far from being an idle

1 OVID, Met. I, 57 and 79. Cf. the reference to Aeneid 6, 726-727 in Div. inst. 7, 3,where Lactantius, more careful than Minucius, expresses disapproval of the Stoic view ofdivine immanence.

2 De Spiritu Sancto 2, 5, 36 (P. L. XVI 78i b). Cf. also the allusion to Aeneid 6, 726 inAmbrose's description of the fifth day of creation, Exameron 5, I (C. S. E. L. XXXII pt.I, P. I40): Vestita diversis terra germinibus virebat omnis, caelum quoque sole et luna geminisvultus sui luminibus stellarumque insignitum decore fulgebat. Supererat elementum tertium,mare scilicet, ut et ipsi gratia vivificationis divino munere proveniret. Aetherio etenim spirituomnes terrarum fetus aluntur, terra quoque semina resolvens universa vivificat . . .3 Has P. COURCELLE misread Jerome, In Isaiam 6, sI; P. L. XXIV 558a (7g7a) ? Hegives the impression (Les Peres de lEglise, p. 4I) that in this passage Jerome gives twodifferent interpretations of the spiritus of Aen. 6, 727, one of which would identify it withthe Stoic spiritum quo omnis mundus inspiratur, the other with the creative sanctum Spiri-turn of Genesis I, 2. But in fact, Jerome is offering two interpretations not of Virgil, but ofthe Spiritus and flatus in the Isaiah passage he is discussing: quia spiritus a facie meaegredietur, et flatus ego faciam. Jerome cites Aen. 6, 723-727 only to illustrate the Stoicview, and he does not at all link the spiritus of Virgil to the sanctum Spiritum ... qui inprincipio ferebatur super aquas et vivificabat omnia.4On Falconia and the history of the cento, see F. ERMINI, Il Centone di Proba, RomeI909; LUBAC, Op. Cit. 245-246, P. COURCELLE, Les Ex6geses 307-3IO; A. G. AMATUCCI,Storia della Letteratura, 2nd ed., Turin I955, I30-I3I. AMATUCCI would relate Falconia'scento to the edict of the Emperor Julian, ))con cui si proibiva ai maestri cristiani di leggeree spiegare Omero e gli altri autori antichi .


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Virgil, Minucius Felix and the Bible 85exercise, an exhibition of cleverness, the Christiancento was a relative of theallegorical exegesis which sought to disclose in respected writings occultmeanings not visible on the surface. St. Jerome suggests this relationshipwhenhe compares the over free interpretations of certain biblical exegetes with themethods of the cento writers'. (He means Falconia specifically; he quotes lines404 and 624 of her work). Now Falconia, immediately after the end of herproemium, launches into an exposition of Creation. Under her practised handthe opening of Genesisis transformed into a mosaic of Virgilianbits and pieces:

Principio caelum ac terrascamposque iquenteslucentemque lobum lunae solisquelaboresipse pater statuit ...2

Although before the second line is finished Falconia veers off to Aeneid I,742, according to the rules of the genre (as set forth by Ausonius in the dedi-cation to his Cento Nuptialis), she nevertheless makes it clear that she gazedthrough Aeneid 6, 724-725 and underneath discovered Genesis i, I. And so,inevitably, must many other Christian readers of Virgil. It is possible thatMinucius Felix was one of the first to do so.

We proceednow to a considerationof the words of Octavius that immediate-ly follow the Aeneid quotation:

Idem alio loco mentem stam etspiritumdeumnominat.Haec enim verba unt:deumnamque re per omnesterrasque ractusquemaris caelumquepro/undum,unde hominumgenus etpecudes,unde imber et ignes.Quid aliud et a nobis deus quammens et ratio et spiritus praedicatur?3

We have here a remarkable conflation of Georgics 4, 220-22I and Aeneid i,473. The verse which actually follows the two lines quoted from the Georgics,

hincpecudes, armenta,viros, genus omne ferarum,is omitted and replaced by a line from Virgil's epic; the two passages arethen run together as if Virgil had so written them. Now almost all scholars whohave commented on this confusion attribute it to a lapse of memory: Minucius,they claim, did not bother to check his quotation and combinedthe two passagesinadvertently4. But this supposition is inherently unlikely. In the first place,the Octavius does not at all give the reader an impression of hasty or carelesscomposition-quite the opposite. Secondly, the educated reader who must haveknown Virgil nearly by heart, the very reader at whom the apologist is aiming

1 Jerome, Letter 53, 7. 2 lines 56-59. 3 OCt. I9, 2-3.4 So BAYLIS, Minucius, p. I28; WALTZING (ed. of I909), p. Io6; BEAUJEU, P. Io8.


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86 DAVID S. WIESENhis Christian message, would have detected the error immediately. Further-more, the memory lapse, if this is one, would be of a most unusual and unnaturalkind. In quoting a passage from memory a writer might easily err by changingthe originalorderof words or by inadvertently replacing a word with its syno-nym. But to take a passage from one poem and to glue into it a line from adifferent work and from a wholly different context-this is surely an improbableaccident. In spite of the superficialsimilarity between the original line and theone that replaces it, the passage of the Georgicsto which Octavius refers wouldnot naturally call to mind that section of Aeneid i in which line 743 is found.The former citation is taken from Virgil's reflectionson the intelligence of beesand the source of that intelligence; the latter comes from the song of the bardlopas sung at the banquet that Dido gives for her Trojan guests. Both passagestouch vaguely upon cosmology; that is the only link between them.

We must, then, consider the possibility that Minucius has knowinglycombined two passages that do not belong together and thus created a briefVirgilian cento. P. COURCELLEas suggested this: #La citation ... est uncenton ou le vers 743 ... est substitue volontairement a Georg. IV, 224 .. .


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Virgil, Minucius Felix and the Bible 87and affirmsthat man was made in the image of God,and that God )>breathedntohis nostril the breath of life; and man became a living beinga (Genesis I, 27and 2, 7). This vital distinction is lost in the poet's description of a God fromwhom each living thing at birth ))draws ts slender lifea(.However, with theomission of life 223 and the substitution of,

unde hominumgenus etpecudes,unde imber et ignes,Virgil's meaning is subtly but significantly altered. The poet may now beunderstood to be saying, not that animals as well as men receive a portion ofthe divine at birth, but merely that God is the author of all nature. Theimportant words are imberand ignes, for they broaden the meaning, changingthe original, limited description of living creatures to a more inclusive de-scription of the natural world. The new meaning achieved by the replacementof line 223 eliminates from Virgil a jarringdisagreement with Scripture.

A passage from Tertullian supports this conjecture. In his treatise Deanima, Tertullian attacks those thinkers who, like Aristotle, degrade thehuman soul by attributing substantiaanimalis to all living creatures; Christianson the other hand believe, he says, that the soul in homineprivata res est, thatis, it is the breath of God with which man alone among created things isendowed'. Minucius may well have had the same point in mind when healtered the passage from the Georgics .

We must of course reject any suspicion that Minucius' tampering withVirgil had a dishonest purpose, first because his procedure was transparent,and secondly because he is apparently employing in defense of Christianity atechnique that by the late second century of our era was beginning to winacceptance in certain circles as a legitimate method of exegesis. The locusclassicus on the origins and development of the cento, both the pagan and theChristian, is Tertullian's De praescriptione haereticorum 38-39. In thispassage Tertullian is attacking the Gnostics for abusing Scripture to suit the

1 Tert., De anima I9, 2, ed. J. WASZINK P. 27. Cf. A. HARNACK, History of Dogma, trans.by N. BUCHANAN, Boston I90I, Vol. II, p. i9i, n. 4; iTatian denied the natural immortalityof the soul, declared the soul (the material spirit) to be something inherent in all matter,and accordingly looked on the distinction between men and animals in respect of theirinalienable natural constitution as only one of degree #.

2 It is furthermore possible that Min., in spite of his apparent acceptance of divineimmanence, rejected the idea-implicit in the Georgics passage as originally written-thatthe soul is corporeal in nature. Tert. argues strongly in De anima for the corporeity of thesoul, but the question was obviously much debated and long unresolved. It is perhapsnoteworthy that Christian writers often allude to Georg. 4, 22 1-222, but omit the follow-ing lines. So, e. g., Jerome, In Epist. ad Ephes. 4, 5-6. (P. L. XXVI 529 a, p. 6ii); Aug.,De civ Dei 4, ii; Salvian, Gub. Dei I, I, 4 (C. S. E. L. VIII p. 4). Cf. AMBROSE, Deofficiis I, I3, 49 (P. L. XVI 42 a). But Lact. Div. inst. I, 5 does not hesitate to quote thewhole of Georg. 4, 22I -224.


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88 DAVID S. WIESENneeds of their perverted doctrines. Marcion, he says, excised such portions ofthe Bible as did not agree with his views. Valentinus, in contrast, forcedScripture to produce a desired meaning, auferens proprietates singulorumquoque verborum et adiciens dispositiones non comparentium rerum1. Thistechnique Tertullian compares to the creation of centos from Homeric andVirgilian material:

Vides hodie ex Virgilio fabulam in totum aliam componi, materiasecundum versus et versibus secundum materiam concinnatis.Denique Hosidius Geta Medeamtragoediamex Virgilio plenissimeexsuxit. Meus quidam propinquus ex eodempoeta inter cetera stilisui otia Pinacem Cebetisexplicuit. Homerocentones tiam vocarisolent qui de carminibus Homeri propria opera more centonarioex multis hinc inde compositis n unum sarciunt corpus.Et utiquelecundior divina litteratura ad facultatem cuiusque materiae *

Tertullian goes so far as to claim that the Scriptureswere actually arranged bythe will of God to supply material to the heretics, cum legam oporterehaeresesesse (i. Cor. ii, I9) quae sine scripturis esse non possunl3. As we can see fromthis passage, the cento had from its beginnings a twofold character: the seriousbiblical cento was used to support religious opinion, while the formal, secularcento was a clever exercise intended merely to amuse. But not all serious,religious centos were built of biblical materials. Certain heretical Christiansects apparently employed Homer for this purpose. The Gnostic sectaries,whatever the doctrinal differencesseparating their many schools, were unitedin their devotion to Homer. As J. CARCOPINOell puts it: )4Indistinctement,ils partageaient la conviction qu'ils n'avaient qu'a se pencher sur les poemesde l'aede pour y decouvrirdes attestations suppI6mentaireset des illuminationsnouvelles de leur foi chretienne. Afin de la nourrir,ils pratiquaient la methodeallegorique dont les palens avaient us6 avec l'epopee et que Philon le Juifavait 6tendue, corr6lativement, 'a l'Ancien Testament4 (. Thus, when Homerrecounted in the twenty-fourth Odyssey how Cyllenian Hermes, wielding agolden wand, guided the souls of the dead suitors to the asphodel meadow, theNaassenes understood this as a description of the incarnate Logos of Godescorting the blessed souls of the just back to their true home above5. Onceit had been granted that the true meaning of Homer is so far removed from theliteral, there was but a small step to rearrangingthe text in order to extractthe true meaning. This step the Gnostics took, as we learn from Irenaeus,and from a passage of Epiphanius based upon Irenaeus. Both Fathers, in

1 Tert., Traite de la Prescription, ed. by R. F. REFOULt, trans. by P. de LABRIOLLE,Sources Chretiennes No. 46, Paris 1957, I4I-I42. 2 Ibid., I42-I43.

3 Ibid., I43-I44. 4 J. CARCOPINo, De Pythagore aux Apotres, Paris I956, I89.5 Hippolytus, Philos. 5, 7. CARCOPINO,Op. Cit., i8o-i8i.


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Virgil, Minucius Felix and the Bible 89orderto illustrate the kind of garbled and foolish texts upon which the hereticsrelied, record the same Homeric cento employed by the Valentinian Gnostics.In this cento, five scattered lines from the Iliad and five from the Odyssey aresewn together to produce a description of Heracles descending to the under-world at the orders of Eurystheus to bring back the dog of hateful Hades. Thehero is escorted on his way by maidens, youths, and old men, as well as byHermes and Grey-eyed Athena'. Neither Irenaeus nor Epiphanius states whatsense or use the Gnosticsmade of this fabrication. However, CARCOPINO,drawingupon descriptionsof Valentinian theology in Irenaeusand furthermorecompar-ing the cento with an important symbolic fresco found at the tomb of a Gnosticbrotherhood in Rome, on the Viale Manzoni, interprets as follows: ))A moinsde considerer le docteur de la gnose [Valentinus] comme un champion dupolytheisme, force nous est de supposerqu'il avait en vue, a travers Eurysthee,un des eons de son Pl6rome et qu'il lui avait subordonne,heros comme Herac-les, dieux et d6esses comme Hermes et Athena, tous les Olympiens de lafable; et, dans ces conditions, nous ne pouvons reconnaitre en cet Eon que leChrist, que la doctrine valentinienne d6pechait du ciel sur la terre au secoursd'une humanite corrompue par le peche, guett6e par la mort et preservee parla charite dont debordait le cceurde J6sus2?.

The use of centos to support theological arguments was in vogue, we see,during the late second and early third centuiries. But if heretics could usecentos of hallowed pagan verse to support false teachings, why should not theorthodox too support true? The technique is readily justifiable provided thatneither the writer who uses it nor his reader believes that a passage of poetrymust carry a specific meaning within its context. Minucius,we can see, freelyadapted Virgil to his convenience and ignored wholly the context from whichhe borrowed his quotation, for in the passage of the Georgics to which herefers, Virgil does not actually affirm the doctrine of the anima mundi as hisown but merely quotes it as the opinion of some thinkers and as one possibleexplanation for the intelligence of bees. In the apologist's citation, all traceof the original context of the passage is lost.

1 Irenaeus, Haer. I, 9, 4., Epiphanius, Panarion 2, 3I, 3I (ed. K. HOLL, Griech. christl.Schrift., Epiphanius I 430). CARCOPINO, Op cit. I9I. The Homeric verses employed are,in this order, Od. x 76; 9 26, I1. T I23; 0 368, Od. q 130, I1. Q 327, Od. X 38, II. Q2328,Od. X,626, IL. B 409.

a CARCOPINO, Op. cit. I9I-I92. On the Pythagorean background of this occult sym-bolism, see CARCOPINO, I89-22I and the resum6 of P. COURCELLEin Rev. des Et. Ancien-nes 59, I957, IO8-iI2. One naturally defers to the learning of CARCOPINo. And yet adoubt remains. Are Irenaeus and Epiphanius actually saying that the Valentinian Gnosticscomposed and made use of the Homeric cento that they both cite ? Or do the Fathersmerely quote the cento by way of comparison, to show how foolishly and unnaturally theGnostics forced the Scriptures to support their doctrines ?


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90 DAVIDS. WIESEN: Virgil, Minucius Felix and the BibleAnd yet Minucius' method of citing Virgil as a Christian proof-text is,

after all, not far differentfrom the way in which the New Testament writersuseOld Testament passages in support of the gospel message. When Christianitywas at first proclaimedexclusively to Jews, the Old Testament was the naturalsource of proof texts cited to show that Jesus, in his life, death, and resurrec-tion, had fulfilled the ancient Messianichopes and predictionsof the Pentateuchand Prophets. But the apostles were under no obligation to examine carefullythe context of the passages they cited, nor were they bound by any theory ofliteral interpretation.The rabbis of Palestinian Judaism had long since develop-ed midrash, or the non-literal method of interpreting Scripture'. A recognizedtype of rabbinical midrash was the eschatological predictive interpretation,which found in a biblical passage referencesto the Messiah and the MIessianicage. Sometimes the New Testament writers, while interpreting Scriptureaccordingto this method, juxtapose Old Testament proof texts so closely as tocreate virtual centos. To cite but one example of many: In Acts of the Apostles,after the account of the healing of a lame man by Peter and John, the authortells how Peter addressed to a concourse of marvelling onlookers a speech ofrebuke, in which he upbraided his fellow Jews for having rejected the Messiahand called them to repentance (Acts 3, I2-26). In support of his assertions hequotesMoses:M&uc v el7rv 6Tt 7rpOcpT-yV D4LVMVaCCT6 x6ptoqooeex -cov &Xac(pV VUC9V,w ?. ocrUroU &xoiaEaOexo&ra a6vaoo &z v XaOvX\ e , N v tt~~~N t 5 Irp6O; lU;OE. e:Tr= a' =5(71WTt 6XVP,v? OCXOUCay6OV 7CpOp7)TOU ?X?LVOU5oOpeuO'cre,raL 'x -oi5?xo5 (Acts 3, 22-23). We observe that Peter, or theauthor of Acts, has here put together Deuteronomy i8, I5 and Leviticus 23, 29as if they were part of one continuous text, a single Messianic prophecy. Theprocedurehas led to the hypothesis ))thatJews and Christians used 'Books ofTestimonies' in which proof texts were arranged under suitable headings2(.But the important point is that any text believed to be charged with occultmeaning, whether Sacred Scripture, Homer, or Virgil, lends itself to this kindof cento treatment. And certainly the Christian writers who sought for theprofound truths latent in 'gentile' poetry could not fail to be influencedby theexegetical methods they found in the New Testament3. The centos foundscattered through the New Testament, the Virgil citations in Minucius Felix,and the full cento of Falconia Proba are all manifestations of the belief thatthe greatest prophets and poets saw far beyond their times and concealed

I See H. WOLFSON,Church Fathers Vol. I 24.2 K. LAKE, The Beginnings of Christianity, London I933, Vol. IV, P. 38, n. 22. Cf. A. D.NOCK, St. Paul New York I938, P. 237.3 For other such juxtapositions of proof passages in virtually cento form, see Acts. I, 20

and Romans 3, II-i8. H. MARROU, illustrating how St. Aug. weaves together Biblicalpassages in his Conf., remarks, >Onle voit, nous touchons presque ici au centon (, St. Aug.et la Fin de la Culture Ant., Paris I938, 501.


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HERBERT JUHNKE: Zum Aufbau des zweiten und dritten Buches des Properz 9I

their deeper and more esoteric wisdom in symbols and riddles which only thespiritually gifted could read. Certainly the seriousness with which Falconiaundertook to show Virgil's true meaning is indicated by her declaration:

Vergiliumcecinisse loquarpia munera Christi(line 23)and the seriousness with which her poem was read is proved by the strengthof St. Jerome's attack against it1, and by the pronouncementof Pope Gelasiusin the year 494: centimetrumde Christo, Vergilianis compaginatumversibus,apocryphum . We may be scornfulof the naivete of some of Virgil's interpreters,but the belief in the sacred character of the greatest poetry has a long history.And lest we think that the desire to find hidden profundities in Virgil is com-pletely dead in the historically aware twentieth century, we may be remindedthat in I9I2 a book was published purporting to show that all the Ecloguescontain the message of Christianity concealed by an extremely complexcipher3.

Brandeis University DAVID S. WIESEN1 Letter 53, 7- 2 P. L. LIX I62 and 179. Cf. Isidore, De vir. ill. 22, I8.3 V. A. Fitz SIMON,M. D., The Ten Christian Pastorals of Vergil, New York I9I2.

ZUM AUFBAU DES ZWEITEN UND DRITTEN BUCHESDES PROPERZEine Gedichtgruppe kann als zeitliches Nacheinander und als raumliches

Nebeneinander aufgefaBtwerden; dem Dichter eroffnensich entsprechendzweiGrundrichtungender Anordnung: Aufbauformendes Nacheinander lassen sichals 'musikalische', solche des Nebeneinander als 'architektonische' bezeichnen.Den kenntlichsten Rahmen jeglicher Gedichtanordnung bilden - zumal inBiuchern,die sich nicht durch metrischen Wechsel gliedern lassen - die Buch-gienzen: die Frage nach der Gedichtanordnungverwandelt sich vielfach in dieFrage nach dem Buchaufbau.

FormbewuBte Zeiten bilden Gedichtbeziehungen offensichtlich zu so be-deutsamen Seiten dichterischer GesamtauBerungaus, daB der Nachweis derGliederungsverbande, n denen das Einzelgedicht steht, zu dessen vollstandigerErhellung erforderlich wird. Dem Aufbau der Gedichtbiicher eines so form-bewuBten Abschnitts der Dichtungsgeschichte wie der Augusteerzeit muBfraglos besondere Bedeutung beigemessen werden1.

1 Eine Zusammenstellung wichtiger Arbeiten auf diesem Felde gibt E. BURCK. ZurKomposition des vierten Buches des Properz, WS 79, I966, 405 A. i; vgl. ferner W. LUD-WIG, Die Komposition der beiden Satirenbucher des Horaz, Poetica 2, I968, 304-325 (s.

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"Virgil, Minucius Felix and the Bible"