[Text used: Bright's _Anglo-Saxon Reader_. The Latin source is also
printed there.
Alliterative translations: Pancoast and Spaeth, _Early English Poems_;
William Rice Sims, _Modern Language Notes_, vii, 11-13; Hall, _Judith_,
_Phoenix_, etc.
Source: First part, Lactantius, _De Ave Phoenice_; second part,
application of the myth to Christ based on Ambrose and Bede.
In summing up scholarly opinion up to the date of his own writing (1910)
Mr. Kennedy says [_The Poems of Cynewulf_, pp. 58-59]: "In general,
however, it may be said that, while the question does not submit itself
to definite conclusions, the weight of critical opinion leans to the side
of Cynewulf's having written the _Phoenix_, and that the time of its
composition would fall between the _Christ_ and the _Elene_."
The first part of the poem is among the most pleasing pieces of
description in Anglo-Saxon.]