Apologetic Poem, or Poem on the Two Peoples

Carmen apologeticum (also transmitted as Carmen de duobus populis) · Commodian (Commodianus) · c. 250-260 (mid-3rd century, Roman Africa) · poetry

Latin · domain: latin-patristic-pre-nicene · researched 2026-11-14

Why this is in the register

No English translation exists. HOLLIS returns only Latin editions under 'Carmen apologeticum' - Dombart's Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum text (Vienna, 1887), the Corpus Christianorum Series Latina edition (Turnhout, 1960) and a 2025 Brepols/CTLO text - together with an Italian verse translation (Turin, 1977) and German-language studies. The Ante-Nicene Fathers volume that carries Commodian, ANF 4, prints only the Instructiones, not the Carmen. The Latin text can be verified in the archive.org scan of the CSEL 15 edition, which prints the Carmen apologeticum alongside the Instructiones.

About 1,060 hexameters of deliberately popular, often unmetrical Latin verse, the earliest Latin Christian poem of any length, and the only pre-Nicene Latin apology written for the poor and uneducated rather than for senators. Without an English rendering, the surviving picture of third-century African Christianity is drawn entirely from the literary elite (Tertullian, Cyprian) and the voice of the ordinary convert is simply absent from English.

Existing translations recorded

Electronic text

Scanned witnesses

Scan search: not checked. Not searched in the scan pass: this dossier was outside the 121-work scan target set.

Harvard Hollis

Hollis query: Commodian — 60 record(s); match basis author_only.

Sources checked

• https://archive.org/details/commodianicarmin15comm
• https://ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04/anf04.v.ii.html
• HOLLIS search — Carmen apologeticum

Cite: Tergwame, “Apologetic Poem, or Poem on the Two Peoples” (latin gap dossier), 2026. https://naxiai.com/christian/gaps/latin-commodianus-carmen-apologeticum