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Lactantius
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Introductory Notice To Lactantius.
[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.”]
[133] Lucretius, v. 1197.
[134] Odor quidam sapientiæ.
[135] Rom. i. 22: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”
[136] The apostle teaches the same, Rom. i. 19-21.
[137] Divini sacramenti. 1 Cor. ii. 7: “We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery.”
[138] 1 Cor ii. 14: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”
[139] [2 Pet. iii. 16. Even among believers such perils exist.]
[140] De Natura Deorum, lib. i. [cap. 32. Quam falsa convincere].
[141] Horat., 1 Serm. 8. 1.
[142] The wood of the fig-tree is proverbially used to denote that which is worthless and contemptible.
[143] The Georgics, which are much more elaborately finished than the other works of Virgil.
[144] Priapus was especially worshipped at Lampsacus on the Hellespont; hence he is styled Hellespontiacus.
[145] Compositum jus, fasque animi. Compositum jus is explained as “the written and ordained laws of men;” fas, “divine and sacred law.” Others read animo, “human and divine law settled in the mind.”
[146] Persius, Sat., ii. 73.
[147] Pupæ, dolls or images worn by girls, as bullæ were by boys. On arriving at maturity, they dedicated these images to Venus. See Jahn’s note on the passage from Persius.
[148] The allusion is to the proverb that “old age is second childhood.”
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