Preface
PREFACE exter,1 you urge me that I, following the example of Tranquillus,2 prepare an orderly presentation of the ecclesiastical writers, and do for our writers what he did in chronicling eminent secular authors, that is, that I set forth for you a brief treatment of all those who have published anything memorable on the Holy Scriptures from the time of Christ’s passion down to the fourteenth year of the emperor Theodosius.3 2. Among the Greeks this same sort of enterprise has been carried out by Hermippus the Peripatetic, Antigonus Carystius, the learned Satyrus, and Aristoxenus the musician, by far the most learned of them all.4 Among the Latins were Varro,5 Santra,6 Nepos,7 Hyginus,8 and the one whom you would like me to emulate, Tranquillus. 3. But their working conditions and mine are not quite the same, for they had at their disposal ancient histories and chronicles , and could, as if [gathering] from a great meadow,9 weave a small crown for their task. As for me, what am I to do, in that I have no predecessor10 and follow the worst teacher possible, as the saying goes, my own poor self? Still, Eusebius Pamphilus, in the ten books of his Ecclesiastical History, has been of the greatest help to me, and the volumes of the individuals about whom I propose to write often provide insights into the lives of their authors . 4. Therefore I invoke the Lord Jesus that by listing the writers of his church I may satisfy your exhortation in a fashion worthy of what your Cicero, who stood at the pinnacle of Roman eloquence, did not disdain to do when weaving a catalogue of Latin writers in his Brutus.11 5. If, however, some of those who down to the present continue to write have been passed over by me12 in the present volume , they should blame themselves rather than me. 1 6. For from what I have not read I could not know the ones who are hiding their own writings, and what was perhaps known to others remained unknown to me in this corner of the earth.13 Certainly when they become illustrious by their writings they will not heave any deep sighs because of [any] losses through my silence. 7. Let Celsus, then, learn, and Porphyry and Julian,14 those rabid dogs barking15 against Christ; let their followers learn— those who think that the church has had no philosophers, no orators, no men of learning;16 let them learn the number and quality of the men who founded, built, and adorned the church, and let them stop accusing our faith of such rustic simplicity ,17 and recognize instead their own ignorance. Salutations to you in the Lord Jesus Christ. notes 1. For Dexter, see Q 4, 135; PLRE 1, 251; Stefan Rebenich, Hieronymus und sein Kreis: prosopographische und sozialgeschichtliche Untersuchungen (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1992), 214f. Dexter (DVI 132) was a son of Pacian, bishop of Barcelona (DVI 106). For possible literary activity of Dexter, cf. W. Berschin, Greek Letters and the Latin Middle Ages: from Jerome to Nicholas of Cusa, trans. J. C. Frakes (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 302 n. 25 and 295 n. 41, citing in the latter reference G. Morin, “L’opuscule de soi-disant Hégesippe sur les Machabées,” RevBén 31 (1914–19): 83–91. See also John Matthews, Western Aristocracies and Imperial Court, a.d. 364–425 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 133, 149. 2. C. Suetoni Tranquilli, Praeter Caesarum Libros Reliquiae, Pars Prior De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus, ed. G. Brugnoli (Leipzig, 1960); Suétone, Grammarien et rhéteur, ed. M.-C. Vacher (Paris, 1993); Suetonius: De grammaticis et rhetoribus, ed. and trans. with notes by R. A. Kaster (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); R. A. Kaster, Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); A. Wallace -Hadrill, Suetonius (London, 1983); W. Steidle, Sueton und die antike Biographie (Munich, 1951), 142f.; Augusto Rostagni, Suetonio, De Poetis e Biografi Minori, Restituzione e Commento (Turin, 1944), VIII–XVIII; C. Suetonius Tranquillus, ed. Ceresa-Gastaldo, 21; J. W. Duff, A Literary History of Rome in the Silver Age (London, 1967), 631ff., esp. 633. 3. S. Williams and G. Friell, Theodosius: The Empire at Bay (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), for contemporary setting. 4. P. Courcelle, Late Latin Writers and their Greek Sources, trans. H. E. Wedeck (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard...
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