Hildebert was a classical scholar, and in his time unmatched as a writer of Latin prose and verse. Many of his elegiac poems survive, some of them so antique in sentiment and so correct in metre as to have been taken for products of the pagan period. One of the best is an elegy on Rome obviously inspired by his visit to that city of ruins:
"Par tibi, Roma, nihil, cum sis prope tota ruina."
Its closing lines are interesting:
"Hic superûm formas superi mirantur et ipsi,
Et cupiunt fictis vultibus esse pares.
Non potuit natura deos hoc ore creare
Quo miranda deûm signa creavit homo.
Vultus adest his numinibus, potiusque coluntur
Artificum studio quam deitate sua.
Urbs felix, si vel dominis urbs ilia careret,
Vel dominis esset turpe carere fide!"
Such phrases, such frank admiration for the idols of pagan Rome, are startling from the pen of a contemporary of St. Bernard. The spell of the antique lay on Hildebert, as on others of his time. "The gods themselves marvel at their own images, and desire to equal their sculptured forms. Nature was unable to make gods with such visages as man has created in these wondrous images of the gods. There is a look (vultus) about these deities, and they are worshipped for the skill of the sculptor rather than for their divinity."[1] Hildebert was not only a bishop, he was a Christian; but the sense and feeling of ancient Rome had entered into him. Besides the poem just quoted, he wrote another, either in Rome or after his return, Christian in thought but most antique in sympathy and turn of phrase.
"Dum simulacra mihi, dum numina vana placerent,
Militia, populo, moenibus alta fui;
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ruit alta senatus
Gloria, procumbunt templa, theatra jacent."
The antique feeling of these lines is hardly balanced by the expressed sentiment: "plus Caesare Petrus!"[2] And again we hear the echo of the antique in
