376 Mr MUNRO, on A METRICAL 



days of Homer and ploughmen in those of Plautus had imbibed with their mother's milk and 

 could discriminate with the nicest precision. 



As soon as I had seen it too, I looked for an acrostich. The habit of writing acrostichs 

 is very ancient in some kinds of Latin poems. Cicero in the de divin. ii, 54, tells us that 

 the Sibylline verses and some of the poems of Ennius were so composed. Commodian's 

 longer poem, the Instructiones, containing more than 1200 verses, forms eighty sections, each 

 of which is an acrostich, and denotes its title by its initial letters. The last section of all, 

 read backwards, gives Commodianus Mendicus Christi. In the second line of our inscription 

 we find Luc. Praecilius plainly enough, and the initial letters of the last ten compose the 

 word Fortunatus. Perhaps the initial letters of the first three verses H. L. C. may stand 

 for hoc loco cubat, or conditus est, or hunc locum consecravit, or hunc lapidem condidit : 

 these or similar expression being common enough in epitaphs. It is no wonder then that, 

 cramped by the requirements of metre and the necessities of the acrostich, the style is some- 

 what stiff and crabbed. Yet the Latin, making the due allowances, is not bad or ungram- 

 matical, and is very superior to many inscriptions of a late date. Indeed it is very much 

 better than Commodian's, and gives in my opinion a far correcter representation of this 

 kind of verse. Of the two poems of Cominodian the one I have just mentioned has often 

 been printed, but always after one very corrupt manuscript, and is therefore in many parts 

 mutilated and imperfect. The other poem was first published a few years ago by Dom 

 Pitra in the first volume of his Spicilegium Solismense, and is still more corrupt than the 

 former. For this, as well as other reasons, our inscription is a more trustworthy represen- 

 tation of this style of verse. 



Commodian is supposed by Cave and Dodwell, whose opinion has been generally 

 acquiesced in, to have written about a.d. 270. Dom Pitra in his introduction to Com- 

 modian's second poem places him as early as 250. Clinton in his Fasti Romani, Vol. 2, 

 p. 450, puts him more than a century later, for the following reasons: 1. Jerome who wrote 

 in 392 makes no mention of him in his catalogue. 2. Gennadius who wrote in 493 places 

 him after Evagrius who lived in 388, and after Prudentius who lived in 400. 3. Gennadius 

 observes that he followed Lactantius, and Lactantius lived in the reign of Constantine. The 

 first two reasons seem to me of no weight. Jerome passed over many more important 

 writers ; and the work of Gennadius, Presbyter of Marseilles, was intended as a mere sup- 

 plement to Jerome ; so that Commodian would have a place in the one list, because he was 

 excluded from the other. Gennadius observes, so far as I can see, no chronological order 

 whatsoever. Audentius, a Spanish Bishop, who comes immediately before Commodian in the 

 list, is placed by Cave, I know not how rightly, in the year 260. Honorius merely repeats 

 Jerome and Gennadius. The third argument would have more weight, if we suppose that 

 Gennadius wrote with accurate knowledge of those times. But proud of his own Gallic 

 culture, he speaks of Commodian as a worthy man, but talks contemptuously of his ' quasi 

 versus'; and says ' TertuUianum et Lactantium et Papiam auctores secutus', 'he followed 

 the doctrines of Tertullian etc' ; meaning merely, I presume, that there was a resemblance 

 between Commodian and these fathers. Now Tertullian he certainly did follow; but no 

 two styles can be more different than those of Lactantius and Commodian. I cannot there- 



