§ 172. EPHKJEM THE SYEIAJS". 953
original Hebre-^v, but from tlie old S3a'iac trauslation, the Peshito.'
His sermons and homilies, of which, according to Photiiis, he composed more than a thousand, are partly expository partly polemical, against Jews, heathen, and heretics." They evince a considerable degree of popular eloquence; Ihey are full of pathos, exclamations, apostrophes, antitheses, illustrations, severe rebuke, and sweet comfort, according to the subject ; but also full of exaggerations, bombast, prolixity, and the superstitions of his age, such as the over-estimate of ascetic virtue, and excessive veneration of the Virgin Mary, the saints, and relics/ Some of his sermons were publicly read after the Bible lesson in many Oriental and even Occidental churches/
His hymns were intended to counteract the inflnence of the heretical views of Bardesanes and his son Harmonius, which spread widely by means of popular Syrian songs. "When Ephrtem perceived," says Sozomen, " that the Syrians were charmed with the elegant diction and melodious versification of Harmonius, lie became apprehensive, lest they should imbibe the same opinions ; and therefore, although he was ignorant of Greek learning, he aj)plied himself to the study of the metres of Harmonius, and composed similar poems in accordance v.'ith the doctrines of the church, and sacred hymns in praise of holy men. From that period the Syrians sang the odes of Ephrsem, according to the method indicated by Harmonius." Theodoret gives a similar account, and says, that tne hymns of Ephrgem combined harmony and melody with piety, and subserved all the purposes of valuable and efficacious
' He refers, however, occasionally to the original, as, for instance, ad Gen. i. 1 : " Interjecta particula px , quas in Hebraico textu hac loco legitur, idem valet, quod Byriacus articulus •^ ." (Opera, vi. 116.) But such references prove no more that i superficial knowledge of Hebrew.
* Opera, torn. i. ii. iii. and iv. Compare Photius, Bibl. cod. 196.
' There is even a prayer to the holy Virgin (in Latin only) in his Works, torn, iii p. S'JY ; if it be genuine ; for there are no other clear traces of such prayers before the fifth century. Mary is there addressed as " imraaculata . . . atoue ab orani Bordc ac labe peccati alienissima, virgo Dei sponsa, ao Domina nostra," etc.
* Hieron. De script, eccl. c. 115.
954 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
medicine against the heretical hymns of Harmonius. It ia itj* ported that he wrote no less tlian three hundred thoiisand verses.' But, with the exception of his commentaries, all hia Syriac works are written in verse, i. e., in lines of an equal number of syllables, and with occasional rhyme and assonance, though without regular metre.*
' Sozomen, iii. 16: rptaKocrlas nvptdSas iTTciiv, — tirt) and (ttixo' is equivalent to verses or lines. Origen says of the Book of Job that it contains nearly 10,000
' Comp. RoDiGER, in Herzog's Encycl. vol. iv. p. 89, and the Observationes pro lodicae of Hahn and SiKFFERr in their Chrestomathia Syriaca,
]L — The Latik Fathers.
§ 173. LadoMtius.
L Lactantius, Lucius Cascilius Firmianus : Opera. First editioi in venerabili monasterio Sublacensi, 1465. (Brunet: "Livre pr^oieux, qn. est en raeme temps la premiere edition de Lactance, et le premier ouvrage impr. en Italie avec date.") Later editions by /. L. BrunC' mann^ Lips. 1739; Le Brun and N. Lenglet Du FresnoT/, Par. 1748, 2 vols. 4to; F. E. a S. Xaverio, Rom. l754-'9, and Migne, Par. 1844, in 2 vols. A convenient manual edition by 0. Fridol. Fritzsche, in Gersdorf's Bibliotbeca Patrum ecclesiast. selecta, Lips. 1842, vol. x. and xi.
II. The introductory essays to the editions, Jekome : Cat. vir. illustr. c. 80. Notices in Dupkt, Ceilijee, Gave (vol. iii. pp. 373-384), Sohone- MANN (Biblioth. Patr. Lat. i. 177 sqq.), &c. Mohler: Patrologie, i. pp. 917-933. On the Christology of Lactantius, comp. Dokner: Entwicklungsgeschichte der Lehre von der Person Ohristi. Th. i. p. 761 ff.
FiRMiAisrus Lactantius stands among tlie Latin fathers, like Eusebius among the Greek, on the border between the second period and the third, and unites in his reminiscences the personal experience of both the persecution and the victory of the church in the Koman empire ; yet in his theological views he belongs rather to the ante-Nicene age.
According to his own confession he sprang from heathen parents. He was probably, as some have inferred from his name, a native of Firmnm (Fermo) in Italy ; he studied in the school of the rhetorician and apologist Arnobius of Sicca, and on this account has been taken by some for an African ; he made himself known by a poetical work called Symposion, a collection of a hundred riddles in hexameters for table aransement ; and he was called to Nicomedia by Dioclesian to teach Latin eloquence. But as this city was occupied mostly by Greeks, he had few hearers, and devoted himself to author