In prose and verse alike, the second century after Christ was a period of innovations. The new methods of Fronto and Apuleius did not hold their own for any great length of time, but they serve as symptoms of the decay of Latin speech, and may even have hastened that decay by turning men away from the continued imitation of the classic writers. The history of classical Roman literature may be said to end with Suetonius. But something of the old spirit survived even into the period of the Middle Ages and affected strongly the literature of the Christian church. For this reason it is well to give a brief sketch of early Christian literature in Latin, and of the surviving remnants of pagan literary activity in the third and fourth centuries. CHAPTER XVIII EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITERS Minucius Felix, about 160 A. D.—Tertullian, about 160 to about 230 A. D.—St. Cyprian, about 200-258 A. D.—Commodianus 249 A. D.—Arnobius, about 290 A. D.—Lactantius, about 300 A. D. [Sidenote: The beginning of Christian literature in Latin.] The Christians are mentioned by Tacitus, the younger Pliny, and Suetonius, but in such a way as to show that their religion was misunderstood and their growing importance little appreciated. But as time went on, Christianity and the Christians became more and more important. Various means were tried to suppress them, for their belief and their practises were opposed to the state religion and seemed inimical to the state itself. Yet the new religion continued to gain in the number and influence of its converts, and in the second century Christian writings begin to appear in Latin. The new religion had been founded in the eastern part of the empire, and its first literary productions were in Greek, a language which continued for many years to be the chief medium of expression for Christian thought. No sketch of the development of Christianity, even in the western part of the empire, could be given without more than a mere mention of the early Greek Christian writings; but the development of Christianity is a subject quite outside of the scope of this book, which is concerned with Christian literature only in so far as it was written in Latin. Nor is it possible in a book of this kind to do more than mention briefly the chief Christian writers and their works, leaving all discussion of their doctrines to the historians of the church.