days of Hadrian had educated society throughout the Empire been so nearly bilingual. It was not only that the Latin-speaking West had still to turn for its culture and its philosophy to the literature of Greece. Since the days of Diocletian the court, or at least the most import- ant court, had resided as a rule in Asia, and Greek had tended to become, equally with Latin, the language of the courtier and the administrator. The two were of almost equal importance; if an Oriental like Ammianus Marcellinus could write, and write well, in Latin, we may be certain that, in return, Greek was familiar to educated Westerns. To Hilary it was certainly familiar from his youth; his earlier thoughts were moulded by Neoplatonism, and his later decisively influenced by the writings of Origen4. His literary and technical knowledge of iii Latin was also complete5. It would require wide special study and knowledge to fix his relation in matters of composition and rhetoric to other writers. But one assertion, that of Jerome6, that Hilary was a deliberate imitator of the style of Quintilian, cannot be taken seriously. Jerome is the most reckless of writers; and it is at least possible to be somewhat familiar with the writings of both and yet see no resemblance, except in a certain sustained gravity, between them. Another description by Jerome of Hilary as ‘mounted on Gallic buskin and adorned with flowers of Greece’ is suitable enough, as to its first part, to Hilary’s dignified rhetoric; the flowers of Greece, if they mean embellishments inserted for their own sake, are not perceptible. In this same passage7 Jerome goes on to criticise Hilary’s entanglement in long periods, which renders him unsuitable for unlearned readers. But those laborious, yet per- fectly constructed, sentences are an essential part of his method. Without them he could not attain the effect he desires; they are as deliberate and, in their way, as successful as the 4 It is impossible to agree with Zingerle (Comment. Wölfflin. p. 218) that Hilary was under the necessity of using a Greek and Latin Glossary. Such a passage as Tract. in Ps. cxxxviii. 43, to which he appeals, shows rather the extent than the smallness of Hilary’s knowledge of Greek. What he frankly confesses, there as elsewhere, is ignorance of Hebrew. The words of Jerome (Ep. 34, 3 f.) about Hilary’s friend, the presbyter Heliodorus, to whom he used to refer for explanations of Origen on the Psalms, are equally incapable of being employed to prove Hilary’s defective Greek. Heliodorus knew Hebrew, and Hilary for want of Hebrew found Origen’s notes on the Hebrew text difficult to understand, and for this reason, according to Jerome, used to consult his friend; not because he was unfamiliar with Greek. 5 His vocabulary is very poorly treated in the dictionaries; one of the many signs of the neglect into which he has fallen. There are at least twenty-four words in the Tractatus super Psalmos which are omitted in the last edition of Georges’ lexicon, and these good Latin words, not technical terms invented for purposes of argument. Among the most interesting is quotiensque for quotienscumque; an unnoticed use is the frequent cum quando for quandoquidem. Of Hilary’s other writings there is as yet no trustworthy text; from them the list of new words could at least be doubled. 6 Ep. 70, 5,ad Magnum. 7 Ep. 58, 10,ad Paulinum. 8 The Life and Writings of St. Hilary of Poitiers.