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Lactantius
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Introductory Notice To Lactantius.
[112] [See Tertullian, vol. iii. p. 176, this series.]
[113] Nomen. Another reading is numen, deity.
[114] It was a custom among the heathen nations to crown the images of the gods with garlands of flowers.
[115] The allusion is to the upright attitude of man, as compared with other created beings. The argument is often used by Lactantius.
[116] This sentence is omitted in some editions.
[117] Ovid, Metamorphosis [book i. 85.
Os homini sublime dedit: cœlumque tueri
Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus].
[118] The allusion is to the supposed derivation of the word ἄνθρωπος, from ἀνὰ, τρέπω, ὤψ, to turn the face upwards.
[119] The word temples is not here applied to the buildings which the faithful set apart for the worship of God, but to the places used by the heathens for their rites and sacrifices. [For three centuries templa was the word among Christians for the idolatrous places.] That buildings were set apart by Christians from the earliest ages for their religious assemblies, is gathered from the express testimony of Tertullian, Cyprian, and other early writers. They were called ecclesiæ; churches, not temples. [For κυριακὸν, dominicum, basilica, etc., see Bingham, book viii. cap i. sec. 2.]
[120] The heathens thought that the souls of the unburied dead wandered about on the earth, until their remains were committed to the tomb.
[121] The words simulacrum, “an image,” and similitudo, “a likeness” or “resemblance,” are connected together through the common root similis, “like.”
[122] Materia is especially used in the sense of wood or timber.
[123] Stipem jaciunt, “they throw a coin.” The word properly means a “coin,” money bearing a stamped impression; hence stipendium, “soldiers’ pay.”
[124] Fucus, “colouring juice;” hence anything not genuine, but artificial. Others read succum, “juice.”
[125] Persius, Satire 2d, 6. Lactantius uses the testimony of heathen writers against the heathen.
[126] Or wallow—“voluto.”
[127] Ludicra, “diversions.” The word is applied to stage-plays.
[128] Adjudicavit, adjudged, made over. Cf. Hor., Ep., i. 18: “Et, si quid abest, Italis adjudicat armis.”
Chap. III.—that cicero and other men of learning erred in not turning away the people from error.
[129] Fill up and complete the outline which he has conceived.
[130] Lactantius charges Cicero with want of courage, in being unwilling to declare the truth to the Romans, lest he should incur the peril of death. The fortitude with which Socrates underwent death, when condemned by the Athenians, is related by Xenophon and Plato.
[131] Lactantius here follows Plato, who placed the essence of man in the intellectual soul. The body, however, as well as the soul, is of the essence of man; but Lactantius seems to limit the name of man to the higher and more worthy part. [Rhetorically, not dogmatically.]
[132] Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, vi. 5. [“Premunt ad terram.”]
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