1. Christianity and Classical Culture 355. Study and re-evaluation of ‘Antike und Christentum’ is flourishing. See now Judge E. A. , ‘“Antike und Christentum”: Towards a Definition of the Field, A Bibliographical Survey,’ Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II 23.1 (1979) 3–58.
2. The date of De nuptiis remains controversial. Until quite recently, the consensus of scholars seemed to favor a date of c. 410–439 (see MCSLA 1.12–16, where Professor Stahl can claim that ‘to assign the work to a date after 439 calls for extravagant assumptions’). Now Willis J. A. would place Martianus ‘under the Vandal occupation of Carthage,’ that is, after 439; see his review of Lenaz, Gnomon 49 (1977) 626, where he refers to his own statement of the case for that dating (in ‘Martianus Capella und die mittelalterliche Schulbildung,’ Das Altertum 19 [1973] 165) and asserts that ‘a forthcoming article of Préaux's will place this dating beyond doubt.’ The only chronological certainty important to my argument is that Martianus wrote after Prudentius, and there no longer appears to be any substantial doubt about that.
3. Horace, Odes 2.11.13–17; Martial 5.64 and 2.59.
4. ‘The Demise of Paganism' 51, et pass.
5. A hundred years earlier, a letter of Constantine I stated that Porphyry's ‘impious compositions have been destroyed,’ and Theodosius II condemned them in 448 and again in 449 or 450; see Coleman-Norton P. R. , Roman State and Christian Church: A Collection of Legal Documents to A.D. 535 , 3 vols. (London 1966), Documents Nos. 66, 422, 446, and 459. Nor was Porphyry alone; see Coleman-Norton's subject index s.v. ‘book–burning.’ Christians were not the first to consign offensive writings to the flames, however. The tradition reaches back to the first Roman emperor. See Coleman-Norton , Document 382 n. 1 (below, n. 74).