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THE CLASSICAL REVIEW "37 qualities with which he had impressed his author lays out his proofs in a convincing manner. Augustine certainly did think in contemporaries. Apart from inaccuracy in his narrative terms of the successive stages of human life. and intentional vagueness about long yet At the beginning of Book vii is to be found, crucial periods of his life, the Confessions fall 'lam mortua erat adulescentia mea mala et patently into two distinct parts, the first nefanda, et ibam in iuventutem', and the nine books largely autobiographical and the end of Book xiii contains the plea, 'Domine last four devoted to a meditation on the Book deus pacem da nobis . . . pacem quietis, of Genesis. How did Augustine come to in- pacem sabbati, pacem sine vespera' (xiii. 35. 50). Augustine was only 43 at the time, clude such apparently discordant themes in one work? Many critics, including Courcelle but in that age could well begin to look and Kramer, have seen two halves written forward to senectus. As always he was too pessimistic. Other features of the Confessions, consecutively, comprising Books i-ix and xi-xiii, loosely knit together by Book x. such as the almost perverse selection of For Augustine, it seemed that even the events which makes much of trivialities such aetema Hierusalem attained at the end of as the affair of the pear tree (ii. 4. 9), could book ix (ix. 13. 37) could not be the end. be explained by Augustine's need to find He was tempted continuously to set down the some incident in each epoch of his life vanities of his daily life (x. 35. 57). If he where his unregenerate wickedness could be now rested in God, his thanksgiving must evidenced. On the other hand, one must end by contemplating the 'eternity of God' beware of overstressing this undoubted aspect shown in 'the wondrous things out of thy of the Confessions. A critic might ask why so law' (Ps. 119. 18) which he found in the much space has been given by the author to 'adolescence', no less than four books, ii-vi, story of creation. Other critics, particularly F. Cayre ('Mystique et Sagesse dans les while the even more important 'manhood' Confessions de saint Augustine', Recherches and 'maturity and decline' are telescoped de Science Religiense, xxxviii [1951], 443-60), and even jumbled together in books vii, have emphasized the unity of the work and viii, and ix. The writer perhaps should have pointed to the last three books as the climax given more weight to P. R. L. Brown's and crown of the whole. assessments, particularly regarding the inThe author has developed Cayre's thesis fluence of Neoplatonism on Augustine's and added some important insights of his writing at this time. The anti-Manichaean own. He first points to the fact that Augustine strand that makes the Confessions a pair with was working on the De Genesi Contra Mani- De Genesi contra Manichaeos is present, but chaeos about the period he was meditating it is only one of the factors that produced on the Confessions, c. 396-7, and with com- the Augustinian masterpiece. mendable shrewdness he has looked for Whatever the criticisms in detail, howpossible clues in the De Genesi which might ever, the author has thrown new light on shed light on the motives behind the Con- Augustine's ideas as he wrote the Confessions, fessions. His search has not been in vain. and this is no mean achievement. This fine Apart from some interesting verbal agree- work by a young scholar fully deserves the ments between the two works, where both, warm praise of Professor Guiseppe Lazzati, for instance, characterize infancy as a time who contributes the foreword. 'tanquam oblivionis' {De Gen. 1. 23, 35; W. H. C. FREND compare Confess. 1. 7. 12, 'illud tempus . . . University of Glasgow cuius nulla vestigia recolo'), he can point to the arrangement of both works as being based on a conception of the seven ages of man, extending from infancy to old age. EBERHARD OBERG: Amphilochii IcoAn attentive investigation into the structure niensis Iambi ad Seleucum. (Patristiof the Confessions shows how Augustine has sche Texte und Studien, 9.) Pp. vii divided his narrative into phases of infancy, + 105. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969. boyhood, adolescence, first manhood (iuvenCloth, DM.28. tus), maturity and decline, and finally old age. The peace of this last period of human THE iambic poem addressed by Amphilolife—for Augustine it was to last no less than chius of Iconium to Seleucus, the nephew of thirty-five years—was occupied rightly in Olympias, is an interesting testimony to the the meditation of God's wondrous creation. tensions created by the spread of ChrisHence the final books of the Confessions de- tianity among the educated upper classes of voted to Genesis. the Roman empire in the second half of the This is obviously an important study. The fourth century A.D. Its closest parallel is Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. INSEAD, on 20 Dec 2018 at 08:36:16, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009840X00263774

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THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

St. Basil's address to the young on how to read pagan literature. The poem itself is attributed in some manuscripts to Gregory of Nazianzus, but the authorship of Amphilochius is now generally accepted. This is the first critical edition of the complete poem, which was first edited by Zehner in 1609, and again by Morellius in 1611, in both cases under the name of Gregory of Nazianzus. Migne reprints Morellius's text. The so-called canonical verses (251—319) have more than once been edited separately, the last time by Th. Zahn,

the references to the literature on the circus factions are very incomplete, omitting even Manojlovid's paper, which has been the starting-point for all subsequent discussion. On w . 172 ff. the statement that circus races lead to murder of Swdorai and mass executions must refer to some concrete instance. The date of composition of the poem is very uncertain—Oberg inclines to date it in the years 379-81. Can the present passage refer to Theodosius' punitive measures at Thessalonica in 390? On v. 228 the argument for the reading ayychov based on the feminine gender of jSaroj is unsound, since Geschichte des neutestamentluhen Kanons, 2. Bd., Leipzig, 1890, 217-19. Oberg has collated in the LXX account of the Burning Bush eleven manuscripts of the entire poem (in- (Exod. 3. 2) JSOTOS is in fact masculine, as cluding that used by Zehner and Morellius, often in KOIVTJ Greek. The text is very obscure which he identified as Monacensis gr. 582, and possibly unsound in this passage. On s. xvi), forty containing the canonical verses p. 23—the list of manuscripts not collated— only, and two containing lesser excerpts. Eton College is not in Cambridge. He knows of ten other manuscripts of the The text is followed by a list of parallel whole poem—all in Athos or Jerusalem— passages in Cyril of Jerusalem and Basil. as well as twenty-eight of the canonical verses. There are plenty of common ideas but no The manuscripts not collated are mostly close verbal echoes. Next come a brief list late, and there is no reason to doubt the of rhetorical figures and an appendix on the soundness of the base on which he constructs metre of the poem. In discussing lengthening his text. The stemma which he displays on of short syllables and vice versa Oberg does p. 2a is the result of a careful examination of not distinguish between &lxf>°va a n ^ other distinctive errors. Much as one may suspect vowels. There is no comparison with the neat bifid stemmata in general, this one is practice of Gregory of Nazianzus: it would acceptable. have been interesting to know whether the Oberg's text differs from that of Migne in curious preference for lengthening naturally forty-seven places, mostly clearly for the short syllables in the fourth foot disclosed better and never obviously for the worse. by the table on pp. 88-9 is also found in The commentary, which is presented in a Gregory's iambic poems. There follow lists very compressed form, contains a great deal of testimonia, of editions and translations, of information in its thirty pages. Indeed it and a bibliography. An index verborum follows contains too much, e.g., in the long note on the text. vooos = vitium (v. 15), or that on the heresies Oberg's edition is a scholarly and useful of Sabellius and Arius (w. 204-7). Need one piece of work. expound at length matters of common ROBERT BROWNING knowledge ? In general, however, the reader Birkbeck College, University of London will find all that is necessary for the understanding of the text, with references to discussions in the literature. A few small points call for mention. On v. 2. evyevovs plt,V! J. W. JAMES : Rhigyfarch's Life of St. jcAaSov is probably an echo of Eur. I.T. David. The basic mid-twelfth-century 609—10 ws an' zvyevovs TWOS pt£fS ir4VKas',

so the long discussion of philosophical and theological conceptions of nobility is largely beside the point. On v. 28 the interesting reference to barbarian invasions might have been discussed. On w . 90-9 Oberg cites a series of passages on the playing of female parts by male actors, beginning with Plato; but the reference is much more specifically to the lascivious representation in dance of female characters by the pantomimus. In v. 99 dvSpdmv is not an instrumental dative; the line means 'men in the eyes of women and women in the eyes of men'. On w . 150—7

Latin text with introduction, critical apparatus, and translation. Pp. xliii +49. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 1967. Cloth, £1-25.

THIS edition of the Vita Davidis (ascribed by the editor to about A.D. 1095) is the fruit of over thirty years' study of thefiverecensions. Mr. James sets out clearly their relation to each other, and his reasons for basing his text on B.M. Cotton Nero E. i. The Latin is beautifully set out, with the additional sections from the Vespasian recension printed at the foot of each page. The text is followed

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. INSEAD, on 20 Dec 2018 at 08:36:16, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009840X00263774