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The Carmen de Christo is a short hexameter poem of some thirty lines addressed to Christ as the true offspring of God, older than all ages yet newly born, the creator of light who was sent from the stars to dwell in a virgin’s womb. It praises the paradox of the Incarnation, the infinite God contained in a small dwelling. The poem is transmitted under the name of Merobaudes, but whether it is by the panegyrist of Aetius is debated.
If it is his, the poem shows that the court poet of Valentinian III also wrote Christian verse, in a polished classical style close to that of Claudian’s Christian pieces. It belongs to the tradition of short theological poems that applied the language of Virgil and Lucretius to Christian doctrine. Its rhetoric of paradox is typical of fifth-century hymnody and of Christmas poetry.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Musisque Deoque, the digital archive of Latin poetry (edition: J. B. Hall, 1985), licensed CC BY-SA. Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.