In AD 362 - only fifty years after Constantine's conversion to Christianity - the pagan Emperor Julian, hoping to undermine the privileged position of this new religion, banned Christian rhetoricians from teaching the pagan Classics. In a spectacular act of literary futility, the Syrian poet Apollinaris and his son, determined to retain a Classical gloss to Christian education, at once translated nearly the whole of the Bible into Greek epic verse.

LRB 4 November 1993 | PDF Download