Note 454 — Chapter IV · LATER WRITERS.

The edition of the Instructiones and the Carmen Apologeticum which I use is the most accessible, and I think the most recent, that of E. Ludwig (two parts, Leipsic, 1877-78). But I must own that a certain compunction invades me at finding any fault with the shortcomings of ancient critics, when I find in this edition, at the end of the nineteenth century, great care about the text, but not a single word about the date, the person, or the circumstances of Commodianus, and an utter ignoring of the literary position and interest of the matter edited. Commodian’s form may be barbarous, and his matter may be respectably ordinary; but he is, at any rate, on a not yet disturbed hypothesis, the ancestor—or the earliest example—of the prosody of every modern language which combines (as some at least of us hold that all modern languages do) quantitative scansion with a partly or wholly non-quantitative syllabic value. And one might at least have expected a few facts, if not a little discussion, to butter the bread of the bare text in such a case. But the fetish of the letter has been too much for this editor also.