, adds: "Sed ista parva: tu pius mystes sacris | teletis reperta
mentis arcano premis, | divumque numen multiplex doctus colis" (_CIL_, 1779
= Dessau, _Inscr. sel._, 1259).

14. Pseudo-August. [Ambrosiaster], _Quaest. Vet. et Nov. Test._, (p. 139,
9-11, Souter ed.): "Paganos elementis esse {283} subiectos nulli dubium
est.... Paganos elementa colere omnibus cognitum est"; cf. 103 (p. 304, 4
Souter ed.): "Solent (pagani) ad elementa confugere dicentes haec se colere
quibus gubernaculis regitur vita humana" (cf. _Rev. hist. lit. rel._, VIII,
1903, p. 426, n. 3).--Maximus of Turin (Migne, _P. L._, LVII, 783): "Dicunt
pagani: nos solem, lunam et stellas et universa elementa colimus et
veneramur." Cf. _Mon myst. Mithra_, I, p. 103, n. 4, p. 108.

15. Firmicus Maternus, _Mathes._, VII prooem: "(Deus) qui ad fabricationem
omnium elementorum diversitate composita ex contrariis et repugnantibus
cuncta perfecit."

16. _Elementum_ is the translation of [Greek: stoicheion], which has had
the same meaning in Greek at least ever since the first century (see Diels,
_Elementum_, 1899, pp. 44 ff., and the Septuagint, Sap. Sal., 7, 18; 19,
17.) Pfister, "_Die [Greek: stoicheia tou kosmou] in den Briefen des
Paulus_," _Philologus_, LXIX, 1910, p. 410.--In the fourth century this
meaning was generally accepted: Macrobius, _Somn. Scipionis_, I, 12, Sec. 16:
"Caeli dico et siderum, aliorumque elementorum"; cf. I, 11, Sec. 7 ff.
Martianus Capella, II, 209; Ambrosiaster, _loc. cit._; Maximus of Turin,
_loc. cit._; Lactantius, II, 13, 2: "Elementa mundi, caelum, solem, terram,
mare."--Cf. Diels, _op. cit._, pp. 78 ff.

17. Cf. _Rev. hist. litt. rel._, VIII, 1903, pp. 429 ff.--Until the end of
the fifth century higher education in the Orient remained in the hands of
the pagans. The life of Severus of Antioch, by Zachariah the Scholastic,
preserved in a Syrian translation [_supra_, ch. VII, n. 81], is
particularly instructive in this regard. The Christians, who were opposed
to paganism and astrology, consequently manifested an aversion to the
profane sciences in general, and in that way they became responsible to a
serious extent for the gradual extinction of the knowledge of the past (cf.
_Rev. hist. litt. rel._, _ibid._, p. 431; Royer, _L'enseignement d'Ausone a
Alcuin_, 1906, p. 130 ff.). But it must be said in their behalf that before
them Greek philosophy had taught the vanity of every science that did not
have the moral culture of the ego