Fragments

I. Fear, love, joy, sorrow, desire, concupiscence, anger, compassion, zeal, wonder—these motions of the soul, or affections, exist as established by the Lord from the beginning of man, and have been usefully and wholesomely implanted in human nature, so that through them, governing himself in an orderly and rational manner and vigorously performing good virtues, man might be able to exercise those virtues, through which he would have justly merited to receive eternal life from the Lord. For those motions of the soul, confined within their proper bounds—that is, placed on the good side—prepare good virtues in the present and eternal rewards in the future; but flowing beyond their own limits—that is, inclining toward the evil side—they become vices and iniquities and bring forth eternal punishments.

II. Lactantius also, within our own memory, speaking of metres, says: the pentameter and the tetrameter.

III. Firmianus speaks thus to Probus concerning the metres of comedies: "For as to what you asked about the metres of comedies, I too know that very many people think that the plays of Terence especially do not have the metre of Greek comedy—that is, of Menander, Philemon, and Diphilus, which consist of trimeter verses. For our ancient writers of comedy preferred, in composing their plays, to follow Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes, as has been said above." That there is measure in the plays—that is, μέτρον—of Terence and Plautus and the other comic and tragic writers, these men affirm: Cicero, Scaurus, Firmianus.

IV. We shall set down the words of our Lactantius, expressing his opinion concerning this people in the third volume addressed to Probus. The Gauls, he says, were in ancient times called Galatae from the whiteness of their bodies; and the Sibyl calls them by this name. This is what the poet wished to signify when he said: Then their milk-white necks are bound with gold, when he could have said "bright." Hence indeed the province of Galatia, into which the Gauls at one time came and mingled with the Greeks. Whence that region was first called Gallogrecia, and afterwards Galatia. Nor is it surprising if he said this of the Galatians, and recorded that western peoples, passing over so great expanses of land in between, had settled in the region of the east.