Prudentius has known a more consistent readership than any other late Latin poet. Literary theory and current fascination with the late antique cult of the saints have brought him a new generation of readers (especially of the Peristephanon), whhe his allegorical epic, the Psychomachia (‘‘Battle in/for the Soul’’), widely read and imitated in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, is again an object of close scrutiny and provocative assessment (e. g., Smith 1976; Nugent 1985; James 1999; Gnhka 2000, 2001). After serving in the imperial civil service, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (348 - after 405), a native of Roman Spain, devoted himself to Christian poetry. He visited Rome, probably between 400 and 405, and in the latter year, at age 57, wrote the preface to an edition of his works that provides our limited biographical information. Like Paulinus of Nola, Prudentius composed in a variety of meters to produce a richly textured body of Christian poetry. Yet hexametrical verse occupies a central position in Prudentius’ oeuvre, while Virgil’s influence has infiltrated virtually every cranny of his lyrical verse (e. g., Mahoney 1934; Roberts 1989: 92-9; Castelli 1996; Lukhen 2002: 90-104). Both of Prudentius’ book-long didactic (or dogmatic) poems, the Apotheosis, on the nature of Christ’s divinity, and Hamartigenia, on the origins of sin, employ hexameters (and recall Lucretian didactic (Fontaine 1981: 195-206)), as do his two polemical books Contra Symmachum. But Prudentius’ epic tour de force was the Psychomachia, which, though perhaps composed shortly after 405, in the manuscripts falls between his didactic poems and the Contra Symmachum (Fontaine 1981: 195-209; Bastiaensen 1993: 108-13). As the first “fully-fledged allegorical poem’’ in western literature (Lewis 1938), as well as for reasons that should become obvious, the Psychomachia has had an abiding influence upon art and literature and has ineluctably attracted literary scholars.
The Psychomachia extends to 915 hexameters and is prefaced by 68 iambic lines, a formal innovation of continuing popularity. This Praefatio, echoing Ambrose and initiating the poem’s catena of Pauline allusions (Hanna 1977), introduces the Psychomachia's subject matter and interpretive strategies by presenting the tale of Abraham’s faith, victory over wickedness, and reward as a ‘‘form’’ (figura) of the Christian’s combat against enslaving desire (libido) waged in preparation for Christ’s entry into the heart ( cor) and the fruitful marriage of Spirit and soul ( anima). Prudentius’ opening hexameters (1-20) then call upon Christ to ‘‘tell’’ (dissere) how the soul (mens) is equipped with mighty Virtues (virtutes) capable of driving the Vices (vitia, culpae) from the ‘‘hollow of our breast’’ (nostri de pectoris antro). This inner space, stark and bereft of physical description, is the field (campus) upon which Prudentius’ personified (female) Vices and Virtues swagger, vaunt, and pursue their deadly struggles. The body of the poem is structured as a series of discreet episodes. Particular Virtues step out to vanquish their natural enemies in bloody combat: Fides, first, overcomes ‘‘Worship of the Gods of Old’’ (veterum cultura deorum); then Pudicitia (Chastity) defeats Libido (Lust); and so on for a total of six set pieces before Pax (Peace) takes the stage (631). But the lull is only momentary, for as the Thunderer (Tonans) smiles down from above, treacherous Discord (known also as Heresy) unexpectedly steps from the throng to wound Concord. Only when Heresy has been pinioned with a javelin through the tongue by Faith and torn limb from limb by countless hands is order truly established. Now the poem can draw to a close with the construction of a great jewel-encrusted temple (of the heart) fit to receive the Son of Man ( hominis Filius), a new city of God. Prudentius’ final prayer-like address to Christ (888-915) both recalls the opening invocation and once more draws the poem’s allegory back into the present time of the reader: the soul is indeed such a battlefield as that depicted in these verses, where the battle lines will inevitably waver to and fro until Christus Deus arrives to set in order all the ‘‘jewels of the Virtues’’ ( virtutumgemmae).
Prudentius' theme was eminently suited to engage Virgilian epic at multiple levels (Mahoney 1934: 47-80). The poet’s very first hexameter line, ‘‘Christe, graves hominum semper miserate labores’’ (‘‘O Christ, who has ever had pity upon men’s deep sufferings’’) boldly echoes Aeneas’ invocation of Apollo in the Sibyl’s cave (Aen. 6.56): ‘‘Phoebe,
Gravis Troiae semper miserate labores’’ (‘‘O Phoebus, who has ever had pity upon Troy’s deep sufferings’’). Virgil’s well-known line had prefaced the revelation of personal and Roman destiny that awaited Aeneas in Book 6 of the Aeneid; Prudentius’ usurpation challenged not only Apollo as the source of poetic inspiration but also Virgilian-derived conceptions of the relationship between man, history, and god (Smith 1976: 271-6; Lukhen 2002: 45-6). Similarly the Psychomachia’s combat scenes draw heavily and often subversively on epic battle imagery, not to portray the manliness of narrowly selfinterested heroes but rather to demonstrate the capacity of Virtus to vanquish Vice, a victory with universal implications for salvation history as well as for the ultimate deserts of every soul. Consider, for example, Fides’ early dispatch of‘‘Worship of the Gods of Old’’ (veterum cultura deorum)
Illa hostile caput falerataque tempora vittis altior insurgens labefactat, et ora cruore de pecudum satiata solo adplicat et pede calcat elisos in morte oculos animamque malignam fracta intercepti commercia gutturis artant, difficilemque obitum suspiria longa fatigant.
(30-5)
But she [Fides], rising higher, smites her foe’s head down, with its fillet-decked brows, lays in the dust that mouth that was sated with the blood of beasts, and tramples the eyes underfoot, squeezing them out in death. The throat is choked and the scant breath confined by the stopping of its passage, and long gasps make a hard and agonizing death. (trans. Thomson 1949)
Each of these six lines contains a Virgilian quote or echo (in italic), producing a web of ironies that, though hardly unambiguous, encourages the knowing reader to participate in the construction of meaning, in part, by recalling the words’ original context (Smith 1976: 282-5; Nugent 1985: 17-25; Lukhen 2002: 57-8). For example, with the expression veterum cultura deorum (which appears in the line preceding those just quoted), Prudentius points to a speech of Evander in Book 8 of the Aeneid. Evander’s words, appropriately, appear in the context of the ritual scene, a sacrifice to Hercules, that greets Aeneas upon his arrival at the (future site) of Rome. But the full force of Prudentius’ allusion to this speech is generated by Evander’s particular use of the words, for the Arcadian king, prefacing his story of Hercules and Cacus, informed Aeneas that the rites he was witnessing had not been imposed upon the Arcadians by any ‘‘empty superstition, unmindful of the gods of old’’ (8.187: ‘‘vana superstitio veterumque ignara deorum’’). Of course, many of Pru-dentius' Christian contemporaries had come to see such pagan cultura and animal sacrifice as, at best, nothing more than vana superstitio. This ironic reversal prepares for the elision, several lines later, of paganism and the mindless brutality exemplified by the monster Cacus himself, for Prudentius’ ‘‘pede calcat / elisos in morte oculos’’ (32-3), describing Fides’ dispatch of‘‘Worship of the Gods of Old,’’ echoes Evander’s (etiological) account of Hercules slaying Cacus (Aen. 8.261; cf. Courcelle 1984: 572-7).
Woven through the Psychomachia in this manner, Virgilian allusions fashion the soul into an epic battlefield, where Christian Virtues and pagan Vices harangue and duel in an eerily familiar manner, but whereupon any superficially ‘‘Virgilian’’ worldview rooted in pagan sacrifice, false gods, and the alleged sins of Lust, Anger, Pride, and Greed is also challenged and rejected. Such blows surely resonated deeply for Prudentius' educated contemporaries; read against the background of recent and ongoing imperial initiatives to eviscerate paganism, a program explicitly paralleled by Prudentius' own Contra Symma-chum, they impart distinct ‘‘historical’’ overtones to an epic that initially seems to float free from temporal entanglement (Smolak 2001). Yet in the opening years of the fifth century, with the increasing ‘‘breakdown of civility’’ between pagans and Christians and with Augustine soon to publish the first books of the City of God and Orosius his History against the Pagans, Virgil’s language and ideas were too deeply embedded in contemporary minds ever to be simply a neutral medium (MacCormack 1998: quote 139).
Prudentius now seems the Latin Christian poet par excellence, master of creative reception and brilliant composition. Widely read in classical, biblical, and Christian literature and committed to honoring God through his poetry, Prudentius expressed his ideas with a depth of feeling, a command of media, and a flair for the dramatic as well as the grotesque that set him apart. And yet Prudentius’ aims and achievements remain controversial. Some have seen the Psychomachia as a radical and sophisticated assault upon the Aeneid, using Virgil to subvert Virgil and banish all potential sympathy for the Augustan poet’s historical and transcendental vision (Smith 1976). Others emphasize the tensions and ambiguities that seem to signal the poet’s own intellectual uncertainties or the fondness for wordplay and verbal manipulation that firmly align him with the poetic tradition (Nugent 1985; Malamud 1989). If the heroic posturing, graphic violence, and bloodletting perpetrated by Prudentius’ feminine Christian Virtutes have dismayed some readers (e. g., Lewis 1938: 68-70), others have found ways to salvage the poet’s aesthetic sensibility and Christian credentials (e. g., Nugent 1985: 19-20; James 1999). Such ongoing debates signal not Prudentius’ failure but his poem’s engagement with issues of historical moment and universal scope. His popularity in the Middle Ages speaks for itself.
World History
