Volume 154, Issue 01 -

This article explores the extent to which pagan hexameter hymns were a model for St. Gregory of Nazianzus’ so-called Poemata Arcana. Gregory cannot, as has recently been suggested, be said to have modelled the collection of Arcana as a whole after the Homeric Hymns . Nonetheless, echoes of pagan hexameter hymns, in particular those of Callimachus, feature prominently at the beginning of the first three Arcana . These three poems treat the Trinity, a natural subject of hymns, and Gregory’s allusions to earlier pagan hymns suggest a hymnic inception to his collection of Christian didactic poetry, a feature also of pagan didactic poetry.

Jerome was very familiar with the writings of Lactantius, yet strikingly few instances of his appropriation of specifically Lactantian phraseology have been brought to light. The present study adduces three new verbal echoes in three different writings to show that Jerome’s literary imitation of the North African Father was slightly more extensive than has hitherto been thought.

Among Greek grammarians a distinction is recognized between a class of nouns capable of referring to several nouns and a class referring to just one proper name. This distinction is very poorly (and problematically) attested in the works of Latin grammarians. This paper explores and discusses some connections so far overlooked, and tries to correct some misinterpretations. In the light of the distinction of proper vs. common epithets, the controversial phrase mediae potestatis is elucidated, by stressing that it refers to the ‘semantic incompleteness’ of the adjective. Finally, the assumption that the concept of ‘adjective’ was not known within Latin grammatical tradition before the fourth century is revised. We bring forward evidence against this assumption implying an early ‘linguistic’ tradition with respect to the adjective which was to some degree independent from the well-known ‘rhetorical’ doctrine on epithets.