THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY FOUNDED BY JAMES LOEB, IX.D. ^^ .-. ,- / ^- EDITED BY tT. E. PAGE, C.H., LITT.D. E. CAPPS, PH.D., IX.D. W. H. D. ROUSE, litt.d. L. A. POST, M.A. E. H. WARinNGTOX, M.A., F.K.HIST.SOC. PRUDENTIUS I y-n- PRUDEI x^IUS WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY H. J. THOMSON, D.LiTT. LATE PBOFESSOR OF LATIX IS THE inaVERSITT COLLEGE OP XOBTH WALE3, BASGOK Un two volumes I 499010 LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS MOMXLIX Printed in Great Britain (o(oLp'S V.l CONTENTS PACK IXTRODXTCnON vii PBAEFATIO ........ 2 ^ LIBEB CATHEMEBIXO?T 6 APOTHEOSIS 116 HAMABTIGENIA . 200 KYCHOMACHIA 274 COSTBA OKATIONEM SYMMACHI, LIBEB I . 344 INTRODUCTION AuRELius Prude:itius Clemens, like a number of eminent Latin ^Titers of the classical age, was bom in Spain; unlike them, although he visited Rome, he appears to have hved and Avorked in his native land.** In the prefatory verses which, in his fifty- seventh year, he WTote for an edition of his poems,* he indicates (at line 24) that he was born in the consulship of SaUa, that is, in the year 348 . He does not name his birth-place, and there is no con- clusive evidence to determine it ; but his oaati words associate his life with the north-eastern part of Spain, and on such evidence as we have it seems •liost likely that he was born at Caesaraugusta Saragossa)/ From the fact that, while he laments an ill-spent youth, he does not accuse himself of paganism or speak of ha\-ing been converted, it is inferred that his parents were Christians. The preface goes on to tell that after receiving the usual literary and rhetorical education (lines 7-10) he became a barrister (13-15) and then an adminis- " Cf. Perist. u, 537-548; for the visit to Rome, Perist. ix, xi, xii; its date must have been before 405, the year of the preface to the collected poems, but after 400, since he describes the Basilica of St. Paul, evidentlj- as completed. * Lines 34 ff. profess to be a programme of work still to be lone, as if the preface had been written first ; but this must irely be a literary artifice. ' The question is discussed by Bergman in the prolegomena to his edition, pp. ix, x. >ii INTRODUCTION trator (16-18) ; and his career was crowned with an honour to which he refers (19-21) in terms somewhat vague, but probably meaning that he received from the emperor the rank of " comes primi ordinis," which may have entailed special duties in the province or have been merely titular." The date and place of his death are unknown. Prudentius, then, is an example of the industrious public servant who is also a man of letters ; and although in much of his writing he handled matters of Christian doctrine, it is not as a theologian that we must think of him, but as a man of letters and a whole-hearted Roman who is enthusiastic for the faith. Fervent Christian as he is, at a time when the hold of Christianity on the cultivated classes seems to have been very insecure, when the spirit of literature, even in a nominal Christian like Ausonius, is still essentially pagan, and when serious Christians are tending to separate themselves from the world, he has not cut himself off from the old culture nor from the patriotism of the citizen. He is steeped in the work of the classical Latin poets and suffers no qualms of conscience over his love for them, such as afflicted some of the Fathers of the Church. He regards the pagan literature and art not as things to be rejected but as part of the inheritance into which Christian Rome enters ; and in appropriating Latin poetic forms, lyric, epic, didactic, he is willing to show the world that the subject-matter of the new faith can fill the ancient moulds. At times, it is true, his enthusiasm for " The word militia (19) was used with reference to civil as well as to military service. For the " comites " see J. S. Reid in the Cambridge Medieval History, I, pp. 46-48, viii INTRODUCTION the old masters carries him too far. Discordia, who in Virgil is the personification of strife, naturally enough becomes Heresy and may still wear her " scissa palla," and Fides is easily recognised as the CathoUc Faith ; Phlegethon and Styx and Acheron had, no doubt, in the educated circles for which Prudentius ^\Tote, become harmless names with only literary associations ; but we feel that the limit has been passed when Jupiter's epithet " Tonans " is used to designate the Christians' God. Still, it is as a poet in whom is embodied a reconciliation be- tween the new faith and the old culture, and in whom Christian thought claims rank in the world of letters, that Prudentius is historically important. A similar quality is seen in his thoughts of Rome and the empire ; he is intensely Roman and patriotic, but there is a new character in his patriotism. The Christian poet, far from denying Rome's divine mission, sees farther into its meaning than ^ irgil did. The purpose which he discerns in Roman history from Aeneas onwards was not merely to unite the world in peace and good government, but to prepare it for the coming of Christ and for the r)iritual empire in which Rome is to attain her _reatest glory." The change from paganism to Christianity is not a breach >rith the past, but only the last stage of a development which reached its ideal completion when the far-off successor of Aeneas bowed the knee to Christ ; * and for Prudentius, as for Aeneas in Mrgil, Tiber is still a sacred stream, not, however, because it is associated with a river- • Cf. Aeneid, VI, 847-853; Contra Symm. I, 287-290, > 7-590; II, 583fF.; PemMi, 425 ff. Afoth. 44&-8. ix INTRODUCTION god, but because it flows through Christ's earthly capital and past the tombs of Christian martyrs.** When Prudentius wrote, the Church had tri- umphed ; but even at the end of the fourth century paganism, though disestablished and officially banned, was not dead,* and there were dangers of heresy within. In both respects he appears as a defender of the faith. The two poems entitled Apotheosis and Hamartigenia are indeed concerned with the refuta- tion of false doctrine, but even more with the exposition of the true ; in the former case with reference to the divine nature of Christ, in the latter to the question of evil. Modern writers have remarked that the particular heresies which Pruden- tius chooses to attack had for the most part, at any rate in these precise forms, become by his time matters of the past. The explanation is probably to be found in the fact that he is not really a theolo- logical controversialist but a poet, and more at home in setting forth the positive faith of the Catholic Church with all the aids of his poetry and rhetoric. Had his interest lain primarily in theology, he would scarcely have begun the Apotheosis with the state- ment that he will only deal with a few out of many heretical doctrines, for fear of sullying his orthodox tongue. His concern is rather to present the literary world with a poetical treatment of Christian truth, following the long tradition of didactic poetry, and I he is content to take a background from past writings of professed theologians. In the two books against Symmachus we have an echo of what has been " Aeneid, VIII, 72; Perist. xii, 29-30. * See Dill, Book I, ch. ii. (Particulars of works which are re- ferred to will be found in the Select Bibliography, pp. xvi-xvii.) X INTRODUCTION called " the last great battle for the official recog- nition of paganism." " It arose out of the stoppage of state payments for the upkeep of old priesthoods and their rites, and the removal of the statue and altar of Victory which had stood for centuries in the senate-house at Rome. An appeal for restoration and toleration was presented to Valentinian II on behalf of the senate, whose pagan members had carried a motion to that effect, by Quintus AureUus Symmachus, prefect of the city and the most admired orator of the day, of whose ability and eloquence Prudentius speaks with the greatest respect ; but the intervention of Ambrose, bishop of Milan, secured its rejection. This was in 384, but it was neither the first nor the last attempt of the persistent pagan party, and the reign of Eugenius gave them a brief success, soon to be reversed by Theodosius' defeat of the usurper in 394. It was not till the early years of the new century that Prudentius wrote his Contra Oratianem Symmachi ; in Book II the reigning emperors are Honorius and Arcadius,* the youthful sons of Theodosius, who had succeeded him in 395, and Une 720 refers to the battle of Pollentia, which was fought in 402 or 403. Symmachus, it seems, died about this time. If we ask why at so late a date Prudentius composed this reply to a document of 384 and in it speaks of Symmachus as if he were still aUve, two facts may provide the answer. First, in spite of imperial edicts against paganism many men in the upper classes were still unwilling to abandon their old ideas, and the emperor's efforts were often • Accounts of it are given in Dill, l.c.