Chapter 39: On metres

4. Whatever is measured by verse feet is a poem (_carmen_). It is thought that the name was given because it was pronounced rhythmically (_carptim_), or ... because they who sang such things were supposed to be out of their minds (_mente carere_).

9. ... [The hexameter] excels the rest of the metres in authority, being alone of them all fitted as well to the greatest tasks as to the small, and with an equal capacity for sweetness and delight.... It is also older than the other metres. It is proved that Moses was the first to use it in the song of Deuteronomy, long before Pherecydes and Homer. Whence also it is evident that the making of poems was older among the Hebrews than among the nations. Since Job, too, who goes back as far as Moses, sang in hexameter verse, [using] the dactyl and the spondee.

12. Hecataeus of Miletus is said to have been the first among the Greeks to compose this metre; or, as others think, Pherecydes of Syros, and this metre before Homer was called Pythian, after Homer, heroic.

17. It is manifest that David the prophet was the first to compose and sing hymns in praise of God. Later among the nations Timothoe who (_quae_) lived in the time of Ennius, long after David, wrote the first hymns in honor of Apollo and the Muses. _Hymni_ is translated from the Greek to the Latin as _laudes_.

25. Among grammarians they are wont to be called _centones_ who [take] from the poems of Homer and Virgil with a view to their own works, and put together in patchwork fashion many bits found here and there to suit each subject.

26. Proba, wife of Adelphos, composed at great length a cento from Virgil about the structure of the universe and the gospels,[189] the subject-matter being made up verse by verse, and the verses being arranged appropriately to suit the subject-matter. And a certain Pomponius, among other poems (_otia_) of his own pen, wrote _Tityrus_ from the same poet in honor of Christ.

[189] _De Fabrica mundi et Evangeliis._

Chapter 41. On history.

1. History is the story of what has been done, and by its means what has taken place in the past is perceived. It is called in the Greek _historia_, ἀπὸ τοῦ ἱστορεῖν, that is from seeing (_videre_) and learning (_cognoscere_). For among the ancients no one wrote history unless he had been present and witnessed what was to be described. For we understand what we see better than we do what we gather by hearsay.

2. For what is seen is told without lying. This discipline belongs to grammar because whatever is worth remembering is entrusted to letters....

Chapter 42. On the first writers of history.

1. Moses was the first among us to write a history of the beginning of the world. Among the nations Dares Phrygius was the first to publish a history of the Greeks and Trojans, which they say was written by him on palm-leaves.

2. And after Dares, Herodotus is considered the first historian in Greece. After whom Pherecydes was famous, at the time when Esdras wrote the law.

Chapter 43. On the usefulness of history.

1. Histories of the heathen do no harm to their readers where they tell what is useful. For many wise men have put past deeds into their histories for the instruction of the present.

2. Besides, in history the total reckoning of past times and years is embraced and many necessary matters are examined in the light of the succession of consuls and kings.

Chapter 44. On the sorts of history.

1. There are three sorts of history. The doings of one day are called _ephemeris_. Among us this name is _diarium_....

2. What is arranged according to separate months is called _kalendaria_.

3. _Annales_ are the deeds of the years, one by one. For whatever was related in the commentaries from year to year as worthy of memory, in peace and war, by sea and land, they named annals from the deeds of a year.

4. But history is a thing of many years or times, and through diligence in it the yearly commentaries are put into books. Between history and annals there is this difference, that history belongs to the times which we see, and annals belong to years which our age does not know. Whence Sallust is made up of history; Livy, Eusebius and Hieronymus of annals and history.

BOOK II

ON RHETORIC