Neither the rough landscape of thick woods and high mountains, nor powerful rivers with their rushing whirlpools, nor fortresses protected by their sites, nor cities by their walls, nor trackless stretches at sea, nor dismal expanses in the wilderness, nor hollows, nor even caverns beneath forbidding cliffs could baffle the barbarian hordes.I don't have access to Mildred Dolores Toobin, Orientii Commonitorium: A Commentary with an Introduction and Translation (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1945 = Patristic Studies, 74).
non densi nemoris, celsi non aspera montis,
flumina non rapidis fortia gurgitibus,
non castella locis, non tutae moenibus urbes,
invia non pelago, tristia non eremo, 170
non cava, non etiam tetricis sub rupibus antra,
ludere barbaricas praevaluere manus.
167 non densi Ellis: condensi codd.
171 tetricis Ellis: metuendis codd.: nudis Bury
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Friday, March 19, 2021
The Invasion Cannot Be Stopped
Orientius, Commonitorium 2.167-172, ed. Robinson Ellis in
Poetae Christiani Minores (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1888 =
Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, XVI.1), p. 234
(my translation):