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Commentary on Galatians: Book Two
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1. Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC) was known as Rome’s greatest scholar. Of his almost five hundred books, only fifty-five titles are known. He wrote on nearly every branch of inquiry: history, philosophy, music, medicine, architecture, literary history, religion, agriculture, and language. The achievements of the Augustans are scarcely conceivable without the foundation that Varro laid. 2. Lit. “uncircumcised men.” Commentary on Galatians b o o k t w o Preface It seems that now in the second book of the Commentary on Galatians I need to return to things I left untouched in the first book, when I was discussing the unique characteristics of the nations: Who are the Galatians ? Where did they come from and migrate to? Did the land they now inhabit produce them as natives, or did it receive them as foreigners ? Did they lose their language by intermarriage, or learn a new one and lose their own? Marcus Varro,1 a very careful investigator of all antiquities, and others who have imitated him have handed down many things about this nation that are worthy of remembrance. But because it is not our purpose to introduce heathen writers2 into the temple of God, and 125 126 St. Jerome’s Commentaries on Galatians, Titus, and Philemon 3. Lactantius (260–330) was a well-known Christian apologist of the beginning of the fourth century. His most famous work was The Divine Institutes. Cf. Vir Ill 80. V. Loi, EEC 1.470, writes: “But despite the deficiencies of a theological thought which is neither acute nor systematic, despite the limits imposed on stylistic and linguistic originality by his deliberate imitation of Cicero, Lactantius has great importance in the history of Western literature and culture: he was the first Western writer who attempted a systematic exposition of Christian doctrine addressed to the cultivated classes of the Roman world.” 4. In Vir Ill 80 Jerome reports that Lactantius wrote four books of epistles to Probus. They are not extant. 5. The name first used in Hellenistic Greek of an inspired prophetess, who was localized in several places, until its use became generic. Varro lists ten Sibyls. The most famous was the Sibyl of Cumae in Campania, who tells Aeneas in Aeneid 6 how to enter the Underworld. 6. Virgil, Aeneid 8.660–61. 7. A Greek colony on the southern coast of Gaul (modern Marseilles). because, as I freely confess, it has now been many years since I stopped reading such things, let us record the words of our Lactantius.3 In the third volume to Probus,4 he has conjectured the following about this nation when he says: The ancient Gauls were named Galatians from the whiteness (candore ) of complexion of their bodies. Also the Sibyl5 calls them this. The poet wanted to indicate this when he said: “their milky-white necks are entwined with gold,”6 though he could have said “bright” (candida). Surely the province of Galatia is derived from this, into which the Gauls once came and settled among the Greeks. This is why that region was named first Gaulo-Graecia, and afterwards Galatia. It is not surprising that he should say this about the Galatians and record that the western peoples settled in the region of the east, having passed over such great stretches of land in between. For it is an established fact that throngs from the east and from Greece had reached the limits of the west. The Phocians founded Massilia7 whom Varro says were trilingual, because they spoke Greek, Latin, and Gaulic. Colonists [3.235.227.36] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:05 GMT) Commentary on Galatians, Book 2 127 8. Cf. Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis 3,4,5.33. 9. Cf. Virgil, Aeneid 1.20. 10. Agenor was a son of Belus, king of Phoenicia, father of Cadmus and Europa and ancestor of Dido. Hence the city of Agenor is Carthage; cf. Virgil, Aeneid 1.338. 11. An old Italian deity who presided over planting and fructification; afterwards identified with the Greek Bacchus. 12. A city on the east coast of Spain which Hannibal attacked, thus bringing on the First Punic War. Cf. Liv 21.7, 18; Juv 15.114 13. Cf. Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis 3,1,3.7. 14. St. Hilary, bishop of Poitiers (315–68), was a great opponent of Arianism. See Vir Ill 100. 15. This work is mentioned by Jerome in Vir Ill 100. Only three incomplete hymns of Hilary are...