Note n — Chapter IX · [a]
Reading edition
No description can give so adequate a notion of this extraordinary performance as a short specimen. Take the introductory lines; which really, prejudices of education apart, are by no means inharmonious:—
Præfatio nostra viam erranti demonstrat, Respectumque bonum, cum venerit sæculi meta, Æternum fieri, quod discredunt inscia corda. Ego similiter erravi tempore multo, Fana prosequendo, parentibus insciis ipsis. Abstuli me tandem inde, legendo de lege. Testificor Dominum, doleo, proh! civica turba Inscia quod perdit, pergens deos quærere vanos. Ob ea perdoctus ignoros instruo verum.
Commodianus however did not keep up this excellence in every part. Some of his lines are not reducible to any pronunciation, without the summary rules of Procrustes; as for instance:—
Paratus ad epulas, et refugiscere præcepta; or, Capillos inficitis, oculos fuligine relinitis.
It must be owned that this text is exceedingly corrupt, and I should not despair of seeing a truly critical editor, unscrupulous as his fraternity are apt to be, improve his lines into unblemished hexameters. Till this time arrives, however, we must consider him either as utterly ignorant of metrical distinctions, or at least as aware that the populace whom he addressed did not observe them in speaking. Commodianus is published by Dawes at the end of his edition of Minucius Felix. Some specimens are quoted in Harris's Philological Inquiries.