"rude and repellent." At last, during a fever, he dreamed that, at the Last Judgement, Christ
asked him who he was, and he replied that he was a Christian. The answer came: "Thou liest,
thou art a follower of Cicero and not of Christ." Thereupon he was ordered to be scourged. At
length Jerome, in his dream, cried out: "Lord, if ever again I possess worldly books, or if ever
again I read such, I have denied Thee." This, he adds, "was no sleep or idle dream." *
After this, for some years, his letters contain few classical quotations. But after a certain time he
lapses again into verses from Virgil, Horace, and even Ovid. They seem, however, to be from
memory, particularly as some of them are repeated over and over again.
Jerome's letters express the feelings produced by the fall of the Roman Empire more vividly
than any others known to me. In 396 he writes: â€
"I shudder when I think of the catastrophes of our time. For twenty years and more the blood of
Romans has been shed daily between Constantinople and the Julian Alps. Scythia, Thrace,
Macedonia, Dacia, Thessaly, Achaia, Epirus, Dalmatia, the Pannonias--each and all of these
have been sacked and pillaged and plundered by Goths and Sarmatians, Quadi and Alans, Huns
and Vandals and Marchmen.... The Roman world is falling: yet we hold up our heads instead
of bowing them. What courage, think you, have the Corinthians now, or the Athenians or the
Lacedaemonians or the Arcadians, or any of the Greeks over whom the barbarians bear sway? I
have mentioned only a few cities, but these once the capitals of no mean States."
He goes on to relate the ravages of the Huns in the East, and ends with the reflection: "To treat
such themes as they deserve, Thucydides and Sallust would be as good as dumb."
Seventeen years later, three years after the sack of Rome, he writes: ‡
"The world sinks into ruin: yes! but shameful to say our sins still live and flourish. The
renowned city, the capital of the Roman Em-
* This hostility to pagan literature persisted in the Church until the eleventh century, except
in Ireland, where the Olympian gods had never been worshipped, and were therefore not
feared by the Church.â
€
Letter LX.â
€
¡Letter CXXVIII.