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Prudentius' Agnes and the Elegiac Puella

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Prudentius' Agnes and the Elegiac Puella Mnemosyne (2020) 1-21 brill.com/mnem Prudentius’ Agnes and the Elegiac puella Generic Interactions in Late Antique Christian Poetry Thomas Tsartsidis Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany [email protected] Received September 2019 | Accepted March 2020 Abstract In Peristephanon 14, Prudentius creates an inventive verse rendering of the martyrdom of Agnes. Interestingly, in this poem, the portrayal of Agnes shares many features with the elegiac puellae of Roman love elegy. Prudentius’ classicising poetry is characterised by the mixture of genres and literary traditions, one of them being Roman love elegy. The affinities, however, between Prudentius and the latter tradition deserve closer at- tention. In this paper, by identifying vocabulary, themes and motifs of Roman elegy in Peristephanon 14, I will illustrate ways in which Prudentius’ Agnes can be read as a Christianised elegiac puella. Keywords Prudentius – Agnes – Latin love elegy – elegiac puella 1 Introduction Classical literature is genre conscious. Literary genres, though defined by certain key features, are not static but susceptible to evolution and inter- action. The literature of Late Antiquity is characterised by the mixture of genres and literary traditions.1 This is of course not something novel but a 1 For genre and the mixing of genres in the literature of Late Antiquity, see Fontaine 1977 and 1988; Charlet 1988, 77-78, 81-82; id. 2008, 162; Formisano 2007, 282-283; Fuhrer 2013; Pollmann 2017, 19-36. © Thomas Tsartsidis, 2020 | doi:10.1163/1568525X-bja10011 This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0Downloaded license. from Brill.com10/02/2021 08:44:35PM via free access 2 Tsartsidis phenomenon that we also come across in earlier periods such as the Hellenistic and Augustan era. When it comes to discussing the mixture of genres in Late Antiquity, the Christian poet Prudentius presents an excellent case study.2 At the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century, Prudentius composed a series of poems in various metres. More specifically his oeuvre, bracketed in modern editions by a Praefatio and an Epilogus, poems with both autobiographical and programmatic interest, includes the Cathemerinon, a collection of twelve poems on various hours of the day and occasions, varying upon Ambrose’s hymns, the didactic and anti-heretical Hamartigenia and Apotheosis, the al- legorical epic Psychomachia, the two books of Contra orationem Symmachi, a response to Symmachus’ plea for the restoration of the altar of Victory, the Peristephanon, a collection of fourteen poems on various martyrs, and the Dittochaeon, a collection of epigrams narrating famous scenes from the Old and the New Testament. Many of these poems are preceded by prefaces writ- ten in metres different from those of the poems proper. Walther Ludwig has argued that Prudentius’ oeuvre (with the exception of the Dittochaeon) forms a mega-poem (“Supergedicht”),3 in which Christian alternatives to Classical literary genres are represented, organised in a sym- metrical pattern.4 Ludwig’s view underscores the fact that Prudentius’ poems markedly and simultaneously engage with both Christian ideology and distinct Classical genres. Even if this is not true, as Ludwig argues, about Prudentius’ oeuvre collectively,5 it can at least be said to be true about individual poems and such readings have been the subject of many recent studies. A characteristic example of this approach is the Hymn to Romanus, printed as the tenth in the Peristephanon collection,6 a poem that has often been read as a Christian tragedy.7 This poem, consisting mainly of dialogue, is written in 1140 iambic trimeters. In other words, it has the ideal length for a tragedy and it is composed in a metre commonly used in Greek and Roman tragedies. There 2 For the mixture of genres in Prudentius, see Fontaine 1975. For a more recent discussion on the same issue, taking cue from the Hamartigenia, see Dykes 2011, 174-244. 3 Ludwig 1977. 4 Ludwig 1977, 304: “Prudentius gibt ein christliches mythologisches Epos, christliche Lehrepen, christliche Lyrik, Hymnen und Epinikien, eine christliche Elegie und ein christli- ches Epigramm, einen christlichen Mimus und sogar eine christliche Tragödie”. 5 See the caveats of Cameron’s reaction to the paper by Ludwig 1977, 367. 6 However, this is not its original position in the manuscripts, in which it is placed either at the beginning or at the end of the Peristephanon poems but never among them. In 1527, Sichard was the first to place this poem as the tenth in his edition, and subsequent editors have kept the same order ever since. 7 Ludwig 1977, 336-337; Henke 1985; Fux 2005; Tsartsidis 2016, 67-72. DownloadedMnemosyne from Brill.com10/02/2021 (2020) 1-21 08:44:35PM via free access Prudentius’ Agnes and the Elegiac puella 3 are other features that seem to adhere to the conventions of tragedy, but an important cue pointing to this genre is that towards the end of the poem the poet refers to the events of Romanus’ martyrdom as ‘tragedy’ (tragoedia, 1113). There are also notable examples among the poems of the Peristephanon, where prominent affiliations from different Classical genres coexist. One of these is Perist. 3, the hymn on the virgin martyr Eulalia. In Perist. 3, the portray- al of Eulalia as a heroine of epic dimensions and the allusions to Vergil’s Aeneid testify to Prudentius’ engagement with epic.8 However, language and themes of Perist. 3 also evoke associations with comedy.9 Further, in the representation of Eulalia rushing to meet her end there are other verbal and thematic associa- tions, often underlying the allusions to epic, that make her resemble a puella from Catullus and Latin love elegy.10 The symbiosis of all these different genres and literary traditions shows that, on the one hand (regardless of conscious or subconscious appropriation of earlier literature) Late Latin poets are building upon a pre-existing literature, which does not cease exerting its grasp one way or another. On the other hand, this symbiosis also testifies to the hybridity and experimental character of these poems, a feature that becomes all the more prominent in the literature of Late Antiquity. Regarding Prudentius’ Perist. 14, the poem on Agnes, scholarship has noted its epic and tragic associations.11 In this study, I wish to shed new light on the underexplored affinities with Roman love elegy. Here, I will explore how Prudentius engages with Classical love elegy in Perist. 14, and more specifically, how the portrayal of Agnes corresponds with and responds to that of the elegi- ac puella, with the effect that Agnes is turned into a Christianised elegiac mis- tress. James Uden has argued persuasively that in his portrayal of Aquilina in his third elegy the mid-sixth century poet Maximianus, the last representative of personal love elegy, blurs the boundaries between the elegiac puella and the virgin martyr.12 As I shall argue, Prudentius, from an almost reverse standpoint, employs a similar blurring of boundaries for the representation of Agnes in Perist. 14. In order to facilitate a reading of Prudentius’ Agnes as a Christianised elegiac puella, first I will offer an overview of elegy in Late Antiquity in general, and in Prudentius more specifically. This will concern both the engagement of late Latin poets with Classical love elegy and poems written in elegiacs in that period. Subsequently, I will survey the literary representations of Agnes in 8 Palmer 1989, 154-177; Castelli 1996; O’Hogan 2016, 41-48. 9 Kubiak 1998, 316-324. 10 Baker 1993. 11 For Perist. 14 and epic, see Palmer 1989, 178-179. For Agnes’ tragic models, see Malamud 1989, esp. 154, 161-166, 170-171, and Burrus 1995. 12 Uden 2009. Mnemosyne (2020) 1-21 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 08:44:35PM via free access 4 Tsartsidis Late Antiquity, focusing on Prudentius’ ‘innovations’. Then, I will address fea- tures of the text that recall the genre of love elegy, focusing on the elegiac themes we find in Agnes’ interaction with the examining authorities, on her sexualization and sexuality, and on her name and other characteristics that point to her ‘literary constructedness’. 2 Elegy in Late Antiquity Although it appears that the interest in Tibullus and Propertius wanes during the period of Late Antiquity, Ovid’s presence continues to make an impact, but not so much through his love poetry as through the Heroides and his poems of exile (Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto).13 The elegiac couplet, a constitutive feature of Latin love elegy, is used in Late Antiquity, but is much less concerned with the erotic themes that occupied the poetry of Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid.14 With the exception of Maximianus in the mid-6th century, personal love elegy does not carry on into this era. Although some of the elegiac poems written in Late Antiquity contain themes or scenes revolving around love and lament, the thematic horizons of the elegiac couplets are broadened in order to ac- commodate the ideological and aesthetic concerns of late antique poets from a different milieu. A survey of Late Antique poems written in elegiacs shows us a sheer variety of themes indicating that elegiacs become increasingly open to multiple thematic possibilities, thus being transformed into “a multi-purpose metre”.15 When it comes to Prudentius’ engagement with Classical love elegy, the poet appears to follow the trend of his era. That is, Prudentius does not engage with the Classical elegists (at least not in a striking manner), with the excep- tion of Ovid, with whom, however, it seems easier to detect thematic affinities rather than intertextual relationships.16 Discussions about elegy in Prudentius and his connection to or reconfiguration of Latin love elegy have focused on a poem he composed in elegiac couplets, Perist.
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