(NOTE: The electronic text obtained from The Electronic Bible Society was
not completely corrected. EWTN has corrected all discovered errors.)


FRAGMENTS OF LACTANTIUS
[Translated by the Reverend William Fletcher, D.D.]

   I. FEAR, love, joy, sadness, lust, eager desire, anger, pity,
emulation, admiration,--these motions or affections of the mind exist from
the beginning of man's creation by the Lord; and they were usefully and
advantageously introduced into human nature, that by governing himself by
these with method, and in accordance with reason, man may be able, by
acting manfully, to exercise those good qualities, by means of which he
would justly have deserved to receive from the Lord eternal life. For these
affections of the mind being restrained within their proper limits, that
is, being rightly employed, produce at present good qualities, and in the
future eternal rewards. But when they advance(1) beyond their boundaries,
that is, when they turn aside to an evil course, then vices and iniquities
come forth, and produce everlasting punishments.(2)

   II. Within our memory, also, Lactantius speaks of metres,--the
pentameter (he says) and the tetrameter.(3)

   III. Firmianus, writing to Probus on the metres of comedies, thus
speaks: "For as to the question which you proposed concerning the metres of
comedies, I also know that many are of opinion that the plays of Terence in
particular have not the metre of Greek comedy,--that is, of Menander,
Philemon, and Diphilus, which consist of trimeter verses; for our ancient
writers of comedies, in the modulation of their plays, preferred to follow
Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes, as has been before said." That there
is a measure--that is, metre(4)--in the plays of Terence and PIautus, and
of the other comic and tragic writers, let these declare: Cicero, Scaurus,
and Firmianus.(5)

   IV. We will bring forward the sentiments of our Lactantius, which he
expressed in words in his third volume to Probus on this subject. The
Gauls, he says, were from ancient times called Galatians, from the
whiteness of their body; and thus the Sibyl terms them. And this is what
the poet intended to signify when he said,--

   "Gold collars deck their milk-white necks,"(6)

when he might have used the word white. It is plain that from this the
province was called Galatia, in which, on their arrival in it, the Gauls
united themselves with Greeks, from which circumstance that region was
called Gallograecia, and afterwards Galatia. And it is no wonder if he said
this concerning the Galatians, and related that a people of the West,
having passed over so great a distance in the middle of the earth, settled
in a region of the East.(7) THE PHOENIX


Taken from "The Early Church Fathers and Other Works" originally published
by Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. in English in Edinburgh, Scotland beginning in
1867. (ANF 7, Roberts and Donaldson). The digital version is by The
Electronic Bible Society, P.O. Box 701356, Dallas, TX 75370, 214-407-WORD.

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