EUGENIUS OF TOLEDO. — Called the poet, to distinguish him from his contemporary and immediate predecessor, EUGENIUS the astronomer. King Chindasuinth transferred EUGENIUS from the see of Sásago, where he was archdeacon, to the metropolitan see of Toledo. He attended the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Councils of Toledo.
Apart from a lost treatise *De Trinitate*, his literary activity was entirely devoted to poetry. Invited by Chindasuinth, he revised and published Dracontius’s *Hexameron*. EUGENIUS composed one hundred epigrams on various subjects, which attest to his broad and versatile inspiration. He versified with great skill and not inconsiderable elegance. A naïve musicality pervades his entire output, marked by simple themes. He relies solely on rhyme and other lesser artifices and displays the romantic boldness of altering the meter in his compositions. His reminiscences are numerous and draw on almost all the Christian poets who preceded him; from the pagan classics he echoes Virgil, Horace, Martial, Ovid, and others. He died in 657.