COMMODIANUS, a Christian Latin poet, who flourished about A.D. 250. Commodianus is supposed to have been an Afri can. As he himself tells us, he was converted to Christianity when advanced in years, and felt called upon to instruct the ignorant in the truth. He was the author of two extant Latin poems, Instructiones and Carmen apologeticum. The lnstructiones consist of 8o poems, each of which is an acrostic (with the excep tion of 6o, where the initial letters are in alphabetical order). The initials of the 8o, read backwards, give Commodianus Men dicus Christi. The first part is addressed to the heathens and Jews, and ridicules the divinities of classical mythology; the sec ond contains reflections on Antichrist, the end of the world, the Resurrection, and advice to Christians, penitents and the clergy. In the Apo/ogeticum all mankind are exhorted to repent, in view of the approaching end of the world. To the classical scholar the metre alone is of interest. The rules of quantity are sacrificed to accent. The first four lines of the Instructiones may be quoted by way of illustration: Praefatio nostra viam erranti demonstrat, Respectumque bonum, cum venerit saeculi meta, Aeternum fieri, quod discredunt inscia corda: . Ego similiter erravi tempore multo.
These versus politici (as they are called) show that the change was already passing over Latin which resulted in the formation of the Romance languages. The use of cases and genders, the construction of verbs and prepositions, and the verbal forms exhibit striking irregularities.