¹ Raby, F. J. E., A history of Christian Latin poetry from the beginnings to the close of the Middle Ages, Oxford 1953, ii. 51.Google Scholar

² Eusebius, Ecclesiastical history x.8.18.

³ The next closest is Peristephanon xiii, based in part on AC, to which Prudentius adds at least two other less reliable traditions, both of which are actually unrelated to the martyrdom: Palmer, Anne-Marie, Prudentius on the martyrs, Oxford–New York 1989, 235–6Google Scholar. See also Petruccione, John, ‘Prudentius’ portrait of St Cyprian: an idealized biography’, Revue des études augustiniennes xxxvi (1990), 225–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Tino Alberto Sabbatini, P., ‘Storia e leggenda nei Peristephanon di Prudenzio i,’ Revista di studi classici (1972), 47–53Google Scholar.

⁴ Scholars concur that Prudentius hailed from this province. The precise city provokes debate. Palmer and Roberts are convinced that it is Calahorra (Callaguris): Palmer, Prudentius, 21; Roberts, Michael John, Poetry and the cult of the martyrs: the liber Peristephanon of Prudentius, Ann Arbor 1993, 1Google Scholar. Bergman and Thomson favour Saragossa (Caesaraugusta): CSEL lxi, pp. ix–x; LCL cccxcviii, p. vii. In Peristephanon self-involved language is applied to cities throughout Tarraconensis. Given the plurality of evidence, the positions taken in the debate about his hometown seem a bit too certain. What emerges clearly is that the poet's literary persona is at home in the entire province. Even the hymns to Roman martyrs read as pilgrimage journey narrative and summons for adopting Roman martyr-cults throughout Tarraconensis.

⁵ See, for example, Palmer, Prudentius, ch vii; Roberts, Poetry, passim; Sabbatini, ‘Storia e leggenda’, 37–43; Franchi de’ Cavalieri, P., ‘Gli atti di S. Fruttuoso di Tarragona’, Note agiografiche viii (Studi e Testi lxv, 1935)Google Scholar, 136ff. Martha Malamud ignores Peristephanon vi in her analysis of the poetics of martyrdom in Peristephanon: a poetics of transformation: Prudentius and classical mythology, Ithaca 1989.

⁶ In regard to PF i–iv, Musurillo grants a terminus ad quem as late as around 313 but favours an earlier date: Acts of the Christian martyrs, Oxford 1972, p. xxxiiGoogle Scholar. He attributes v–vii to a ‘later, more pious hand’, though how late he does not say: ibid. In his footnotes (183 n. 13) Musurillo avers that Prudentius does refer to content in PF v: he follows de’ Cavalieri by omitting from the main text a long legend about Fructuosus appearing to believers to have his martyrs' remains gathered under the altar: ibid. 182 n. 21; cf. de’ Cavalieri, ‘Gli atti’, 163. Whether Prudentius knows this legend seems quite debatable, but the analysis below will presume de’ Cavalieri's conclusion here. Regarding PF vii, Musurillo sympathetically alludes to Alonso's theory of a fifth-century interpolation: cf. Acts of the Christian martyrs, 185 n. 16, and J. Fernández Alonso, ‘Fruttuoso, vescore di Tarragona, Augurio ed Eulogio, diaconi, santi, martiri’, in Bibliotheca sanctorum (Rome 1964), v. 1297. Musurillo's general assessment represents something of a consensus in recent decades: Sabbatini, ‘Storia e leggenda’, 37–8; Harries, Jill, ‘Review of Anne-Marie Palmer, Prudentius on the martyrs’, Classical Review n.s. xl (1990), 39Google Scholar; Haas, Christopher J., ‘Imperial religious policy and Valerian's persecution of the Church, a.d. 257–260’, Church History lii (1983)Google Scholar, 140 n. 39; Keresztes, Paul, ‘Two edicts of the Emperor Valerian’, Vigiliae Christianae xxix (1975)Google Scholar, 85 n. 36; Mangas, Manjarrés and Hervás, Roldán, España Romana (218 a. de J.C.–414 de J. C.): la sociedad, el derecho, la cultura, Madrid 1982, ii. 416–17Google Scholar; Palmer, Prudentius, 207–8.

⁷ Palmer, Prudentius, 21; Musurillo, Acts of the Christian martyrs, p. xxxii. PF notes how this happened ‘die dominica’: i.1. The reference to the Lord's Day stands in the tradition of Polycarp xxi, Pionius xxiii and Martyrdom of Apollonius xlvii, which very intentionally make reference to the dominion of Christ when dating the events. See also ‘the Eternal King’: Polycarp xxiii. Such references demonstrated a ‘scorn for the temporal sub specie aeternitatis’: Workman, Herbert B., Persecution in the early Church, Oxford 1980, 41Google Scholar. Such a defiant reference may have been even more poignant if the Lord's Day happened to coincide with a major pagan festival, as Robin Lane Fox argues of Polycarp: Pagans and Christians, New York 1987, 485.

⁸ This ordered ‘all those who do not practice Roman beliefs to acknowledge the Roman rites’: AC i.1; Musurillo, Acts of the Christian martyrs, 169.

⁹ Musurillo, Acts of the Christian martyrs, 179 n. 1.

¹⁰ Johannes Quasten puts hymns i–vii prior to his journey to Rome around ad 401–3: Patrology, Westminster–Utrecht 1986, iv. 281, 293–4.

¹¹ Nicola Denzey has shown convincingly that Damasus devoted to male martyr patronage many sites traditionally associated with female martyrs. The few sanctioned female cults that remained exemplified the virtue of virginity: The bone gatherers: the lost worlds of early Christian women, Boston 2007Google Scholar, ch vii. Prudentius' martyr compendium seems to mirror these reforms. The stories are predominantly about men, while the two female accounts are expressly dedicated to ‘virgin’ martyrs, respectively Eulalia and Agnes: Peristephanon iii, line 3; xiv, line 4. Seen as a whole, the Peristephanon seems to echo Rome's promulgation of a virgin martyr, Agnes, with an Iberian counterpart in Eulalia. Prudentius even makes this Lusitanian an anonymous adoptee of Caesaraugusta in Tarraconensis: Peristephanon iv, lines 177–8.

¹² Barnes, T. D. and Westall, R. W.raise the possibility for a date as early as 384 for that text: ‘The conversion of the Roman aristocracy in Prudentius’ “Contra Symmachum” ’ Phoenix xlv (1991), 61Google Scholar.

¹³ See Sabbatini, ‘Storia e leggenda’, 34–5.

¹⁴ Cf. Peristephanon vi, title, and PF, title. All Latin quotations from PF are taken from Musurillo, Acts of the Christian martyrs, 176–84, and follow chapter and subsection format. All Latin quotations from Prudentius are taken from Bergman's CSEL lxi, and follow book and line format. For a discussion of the widespread scrutiny of Cunningham's text in CCSL cxxvi see A. A. R. Bastiaensen, ‘Prudentius in recent literary criticism’, in Jan den Boeft and Anthony Hilhorst (eds), Early Christian poetry: a collection of essays, Leiden–New York 1993, 101ff. Even so, in the main text at hand, Cunningham's edition only varies from Bergman's in three places, two of which are of little consequence. The first is a spelling variant in line 61 in which Cunningham opts for ‘rotunda’ over ‘rutunda’: CCSL cxxvi. 316; CSEL lxi. 357. Second, Cunningham favors ‘tunc’ instead of ‘tum’ in line 127: CCSL cxxvi. 319; CSEL lxi. 360. Finally, in the title Cunningham opts for the lesser represented manuscript tradition of removing the place name and the reference to the deacons, ‘ECCLESIAE TARRACONENSIS, ET… DIACONORUM’: CCSL cxxvi. 314; CSEL lxi. 355. Their inclusion certainly fits the poem's emphasis. All English translations of PF and Peristephanon vi are this author's.

¹⁵ ‘privileged soldiers’, ‘bodyguards’ or ‘orderlies’, namely, ‘Aurelius, Festicius, Aelius, Pollentius, Donatus, et Maximus’: PF i.2.

¹⁶ Ibid. i.3.

¹⁷ ‘Blood-fed executioner’: Peristephanon vi, line 17. The topos of the executioner as a wild and hungry animal occurs throughout Peristephanon: iii, line 87; v, lines 152, 331. Roberts notes its previous use, citing Silius vi.531 and 4 Maccabees ix.28; xii.13: Poetry, 65 n. 66.

¹⁸ PF vi.4.

¹⁹ Peristephanon vi, lines 22–3. This may evoke Job xxvi.13, which says, in reference to El's killing of Leviathan in creation, ‘manu eius eductus est coluber tortuosus’. Martyrs of Lyons i.42 speaks similarly of the fragile martyr Blandina as gaining victory over ‘the crooked serpent’.

²⁰ PF ii.2.

²¹ Peristephanon vi, lines 34–6, demonised with asyndeton: ‘The judge Aemilianus was threatening / – the cruel, the frantic, the arrogant, the profane –,/was ordering [them] to worship at demonic altars.’

²² ‘nescio quid praeceperunt’: PF ii.3. This is not in the sense of sheer ignorance of the well-known decree of Gallienus to worship the numina, but rather of obstinate defiance, a refusal to recognise imperial authority. Thus, ‘nescio’, responding to the question, ‘scis esse deos?’, conveys the same lack of respect and recognition: ibid. ii.5. And ‘ego Christianus sum’ echoes a topos of defiance that runs across early martyria: cf. ibid. ii.4; Polycarp x; Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus and Agathonice v, xxii, xxxiv; Martyrdom of Justin and Companions iii.4; iv.1–6; iv.9; Martyrs of Lyons i.19, 20; Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs ix–x, xiii; Martyrdom of Apollonius ii; Passion of Perpetua iii.2; vi.4; Pionius vii.5; viii.2; ix.5; xv.2; AC ii.

²³ Peristephanon vi, line 45.

²⁴ Cf. PF ii.9, ‘fuisti’; Peristephanon vi, line 48, ‘iam fuisti’.

²⁵ ‘et iussit eos vivos ardere’: PF ii.9. The tone here suggests that being burned alive was not expressive of special malice, but rather common in the execution of Christians, which other evidence confirms: Polycarp xv; Martyrdom of Carpus, Papylus and Agathonice xxxviff.; Pionius xx. Musurillo (Acts of the Christian martyrs, p. lii), absents PF from those acta demonstrating ‘special cruelty’ by the soldiers or prison guards. Cremation could also serve as an intentional strategy to curb the would-be cult of the martyr, perceived as a potentially seditious alternative to emperor worship: Martyrs of Lyons i.61–3.

²⁶ ‘nec differt furor aut refrenat iram,/saevis destinat ignis cremandos’: Peristephanon vi, lines 49–50. Ira takes over the proconsul's character. Ira characterises the presiding officials throughout Prudentius' writings: Cathemerinon xii, lines 109–10 (Herod's slaughter of innocents) and Peristephanon x, lines 111, 547 (Asclepiades's execution of Romanus). Jan den Boeft and Jan Bremmer note how early Christian martyr stories consistently have Christians on the receiving end of accusations of rage and madness, rather than the Roman officials deciding their cases: ‘Notiunculae martyrologicae’, Vigiliae Christianae xxxv (1981), 45. They cite, among others, Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs i. viii; AC iv.1; Martyrdom of Agapes iii.7; iv.2; v.1; Pionius xx.2–3; Passion of Saint Irenaeus iii.4; Acts of Euplus ii.3. Pliny's ep. x.96.4 shows the same, as do 4 Macc. viii.5; x.13 and Acts xxvi.24. Prudentius reverses the traditional script and thus illustrates Christian triumph in a contest of virtue.

²⁷ ‘niger minister’: Peristephanon vi, line 67.

²⁸ PF iv.2. Daniel's companions are pictured as martyrs elsewhere in early Christian and Jewish literature: see, for example, Hilary, Trinity x.45; Augustine, ep. clxxxv.8; 4 Mac. xvi; Gen.Rab. xxxiv.13; b. Taan. fo. 18b (told by Trajan).

²⁹ Peristephanon vi, lines 109–11. Prudentius pictures the three companions of Daniel, and the three martyrs like them, ‘cantantes’ in the fire, participating in the heavenly liturgy at the moment of fiery disaster: Peristephanon vi, lines 110–11; also Apotheosis, lines 147–52. Prudentius envisions the devil himself as a ‘tyrant’ ‘who has usurped the rule of man from God and control of the world from man’: see Petruccione, John, ‘The persecutor's envy and the rise of the martyr cult: Peristephanon hymns 1 and 4’, Vigiliae Christianae xlv (1991), 333Google Scholar.

³⁰ PF iii.1.

³¹ Peristephanon vi, lines 62–3.

³² Ibid. vi, lines 64–6.

³³ Cf. ibid. vi, line 84, and PF iii.5–6. The older likely echoes the sympathetic, converted soldiers in Mark xv. 39; Matthew xxvii. 54; and Luke xxiii. 47.

³⁴ PF iv.1. Fructuosus apparently reciprocates the kindness shown at his arrest, including them proleptically in his flock, leading even his executioners to salvation.

³⁵ ‘Babyla et Mygdonio fratres nostri ex familia Aemiliani’: ibid. v.1. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, favours the variant ‘Babylon’ over ‘Babyla’: ‘Gli atti’, 191. Boeft and Bremer follow suit, sharply dissecting Musurillo's text at this point: ‘Notinculae’, 51.

³⁶ PF v.2.

³⁷ ‘praesidis ex domo satelles’: Peristephanon vi, line 121.

³⁸ ‘haec tum virginitas palam videre/per sudum meruit’: ibid. vi, lines 127–8.

³⁹ ‘parente caeco,/ut crimen domini domus timeret’: ibid. vi, lines 128–9.

⁴⁰ At the end of the passion, the three martyrs appear to Aemelianus in order to rebuke the proconsul and vindicate themselves: PF vii.1. Scholars have debated whether this part dates to before or after Prudentius; see n. 6 above. Some parallels may suggest dependence and thus a date before Prudentius. ‘Fructuosus pariter cum diaconibus’ appeared to rebuke Aemelianus: PF vii.1. ‘[p]ariter’ may have evoked Prudentius' word choice near the poem's end, ‘reddamus paribus pares camenas’: Peristephanon vi, line 153. An overt Trinitarian benediction closes the source: PF vii.2. The poem's conclusion may respond antiphonally, ‘triplex’ and ‘triforme’: Peristephanon vi, line 142. Also, the latter may mirror the former in the concluding shift of focus to the martyrs as a group, and their direct invocation: PF vii.2 repeats ‘o beati martyres’ twice. Peristephanon vi, lines 142–4, invokes them as a group, then proceeds to participate in their congregational veneration in lines 145–62. If Prudentius knew of the appearance to Aemilianus, the poet had ample reason to omit it intentionally. It contradicted itself within the source, and it ran counter to the poet's caricature of guilty blindness. The evidence simply does not allow for certainty on this point, however.

⁴¹ Peristephanon vi, line 6.

⁴² Louis Wilken, Robert, The spirit of early Christian thought, Cambridge, Ma 2003, 224Google Scholar, citing De civitate dei x.21.

⁴³ ‘Stand with me, heroes’: Peristephanon vi, line 22.

⁴⁴ PF iii.5. Fructuosus and his deacons are addressed (vii.2) as ‘beati martyres’. Elsewhere (vi.3) he is simply ‘Fructuosum martyrem’.

⁴⁵ Ibid. vi.1.

⁴⁶ Implicitly in the quotation of 1 Cor. ii.9: ibid. iii.3. Breaking the fast ‘martyribus et prophetis in paradiso’ also motivates the bishop: ibid.

⁴⁷ PF iv.1. See also how, at iii.5, Fructuosus addresses the eager Augustalis as ‘fili’.

⁴⁸ Peristephanon vi, line 47.

⁴⁹ The designation of ‘priest’ (ibid. vi, lines 14, 43, 52), occurs most, followed by ‘bishop’ (vi, line 11).

⁵⁰ Cf. PF iii.2–3; Peristephanon vi, lines 52–60.

⁵¹ ‘caelum martyribus patere apertum/insignesque viros per astra ferri’: Peristephanon vi, lines 122–3. ‘[P]er astra’ may allude to Statius, who describes the flight of birds ‘per astra’, ‘through the skies’: Statius i.6.75; iv.3.38. The phrase signifies post-mortem deification for Prudentius. He also uses the phrase, probably at least partially as a reference to his own poetic and mnemonic technique, to describe the geographical flights possible only by the mind and soul: Hamartigenia, line 895.

⁵² Peristephanon vi, line 149. Thomson translates ‘heros’ as ‘grown men’: LCL cccxcviii.212. Prudentius uses the term in a wide variety of applications, for example, of John the Evangelist/Revelator for his mental flight (Cathemerinon vi, lines 113–16), probably understood by Prudentius as parallel to his own inspired, hymnic geography; of Tobit for his burial (martyr-cult) piety: Cathemerinon x, lines 69–76; and of Romanus for his calm during torture: Peristephanon x, lines 455–6. But none justify Thomson's translation here. The Oxford Latin dictionary and Oxford classical dictionary entries also mention no such connotation in classical literature. Thomson also translates ‘virgo’ as ‘girls’. In the ecclesial context, and given Prudentius' own ascetic discipline of fasting during the day, this first pairing of adjacent identifiers, ‘heros'/‘virgo’, probably does not merely point contrastingly to male and female, but also identifies them as ascetics, and thus also as heroes of the faith. The next grouping draws a similar pair of opposites, ‘puer’/‘senex’.

⁵³ ‘exercent ibi mysticum lavacrum,/et purgamen aquae stupent tenebrae’: Peristephanon vi, lines 29–30. Palmer notes the miraculous connotation of ‘mysticum’: Prudentius, 213.

⁵⁴ Likely an omage to Polycarp, which in turn mirrors Moses in Exodus iii.5: Polycarp xiii.

⁵⁵ ‘atquin ipse meos pedes resolvam,/ne vestigia praepedita vinclis/tardis gressibus inruant in ignem’: Peristephanon vi, lines 79–81.

⁵⁶ Prudentius explicitly likens him to Moses entering the presence of God: Peristephanon vi, lines 85–90. The passion perhaps hints at this motif, calling close attention to the removal of sandals as a would-be martyr relic, but does not make the Moses comparison explicit: PF i.3; iii.4. Prudentius also intertextually re-narrates the story of Moses as a would-be martyr contest. Moses takes off his sandals en route to Pharoah's court in Dittochaeon viii, line 32: ‘solvit vincla pedum; properat Pharaonis ad arcem’.

⁵⁷ Peristephanon vi, lines 100–1.

⁵⁸ PF iv.1–2.

⁵⁹ Peristephanon vi, lines 91–9. The reference to a spirit and voice from heaven combines the baptism of Jesus (Mark i.10–11; Matt. iii.16–17; Luke iii.22), with a common topos in Homer and his heirs, for example Iliad viii, lines 169–71, where a three-fold thunderclap of Zeus marks the turning of the battle tide. Prudentius elsewhere employs this common Latinised title for Zeus as a name for the Christian God (Hamartigenia, line 669), and for Christ as the Thunderer's son (Cathemerinon xii, lines 81–4; Apotheosis, line 171). Thomson passingly notes this as a crass sort of imitation: LCL ccclxxxvii, p. ix. However, Prudentius had worked through a biblical and theological rationale for even this omage that verges on syncretism. In Apotheosis, lines 313–20, Prudentius explicitly ties the divine title to the Father and the Son in connection to Genesis xix 24, which has an odd repetition of the divine name, present in MT, LXX and the Vulgate. That ‘Dominus pluit super Sodomam et Gomorram sulpher et ignem a Domino de caelo’ reveals not only that the Jewish-Christian God wields the weapons of Zeus, but also that a certain doubling applies to the inner life of God. Given that Prudentius also uses Tonans perjoratively of pagan religion elsewhere (Peristephanon x, lines 222, 277) the combined evidence suggests that his overall usage was more careful than crass. If Prudentius has the intertext of Gen. xix 24 in mind here, ‘Tonantis’ evokes divine judgement and victory over the evil persecutors of the faithful.

⁶⁰ Peristephanon vi, lines 109–14; PF iv.2. PF actually uses their Hebrew names here. Incidentally, the Hebrew names do appear in Daniel 1–2, but not Daniel 3, the story recounted here. In that chapter, the Babylonian names are given, both in the MT and LXX. Peristephanon papers over the issue, augmenting the list of anonyms elaborated below with these figures well-known to popular Christian memory.

⁶¹ ‘illis sed pia flamma tunc pepercit’: Peristephanon vi, line 112.

⁶² ‘orant, ut celer ignis advolaret’: ibid. vi, line 116.

⁶³ Ibid. vi, line 105. This miracle allows the martyrs to assume the orans posture.

⁶⁴ PF i.4, one that ‘refreshes’ their bishop: ‘refrigerans’. Prudentius’ bishop would seem to be beyond receiving human help.

⁶⁵ Aemilianus is ‘fratrum nostrum’: PF ii.1. Felix is ‘frater noster’: ibid. iii.5. Augustalis is ‘lector eiusdem’: ibid. iii.4.

⁶⁶ Peristephanon vi, line 29, does not even mention a recipient of baptism, only its performance. Peristephanon vi, line 75, turns Augustalis and Felix into a vague ‘unus’, to whose combined request Fructuosus responds negatively, perhaps even critically, ‘cur vestri memor ut fiam rogatis?’: Peristephanon vi, line 83.

⁶⁷ PF iii.1.

⁶⁸ Ibid. iii.2.

⁶⁹ Or Babylon, the more difficult reading for which Jan den Boeft and Jan Bremmer argue, following de’ Cavalieri: ‘Notiunculae martyrologicae’, 51. Ruinart, cited in Boeft and Bremmer, at p. 51, and Musurillo, Acts of the Christian martyrs, 182, favour Babylas. The precise name does not sway the argument, that Prudentius makes named characters anonymous.

⁷⁰ ‘fratres tergeminos tremunt catastae’: Peristephanon vi, line 33.

⁷¹ ‘fratru tantus amor domum referre/sanctorum cinerum dicata dona/aut gestare sinu fidele pignus’: ibid. vi, lines 133–5.

⁷² ‘companions vie over pious services’: ibid. vi, line 73.

⁷³ Even the earlier text has ample evidence of a strong martyr-cult. Note PF i.4, which calls attention to the sandals of Fructuosus as a martyr-relic. The plea of Felix to secure the martyr's mindful intercession in iii.6 certainly qualifies. Also note vi, lines 2–3, in which Fructuosus appears to order that his remains be brought to one location, after some of them had been taken by over-zealous members of the church. The archeological discovery of a three-naved necropolis and baptismal piscina in Tarragona dating to this period confirms the presence of a late third- /early fourth-century martyr cult. It includes an inscription, ‘Memoria sanctorum Fructuosi, Augurii et Eulogii’: Palmer, Prudentius, 269–70. Prudentius echoes the same concern for the common and centralised placement of relics, but embellishes by having all three martyrs appear not only for the purpose of staunching the private disbursement of relics but also to establish their shrine: PF vi, lines 130–41. In other words, Peristephanon has the threesome play a coordinated administrative role in the formation of their own cult and shrine.

⁷⁴ PF vi.2, echoing the common motif of the imitatio Socrati across Christian martyria: cf. Martyrdom of Apollonius xxxix–xli; Pionius xvii.2–4.

⁷⁵ PF vi, line 3.

⁷⁶ Peristephanon vi, line 10.

⁷⁷ Ibid. vi, line 20.

⁷⁸ Fructuosus is worried ‘ne quis socios timor feriret’: ibid. vi, line 19. He then gives a heroic summons, ‘indenditque fidem calore Christi’: ibid. vi, line 21.

⁷⁹ ‘[L]et us pay back equal poems to the equal ones’: ibid. vi, line 153.

⁸⁰ The Roman synod of 368 sought to promulgate broadly Damasus' pro-Nicene, anti-Arian position, and his insistence on agreement with Rome as the touchstone of Orthodoxy found its way into Theodosius’ Cunctos populos in 380. The Roman synod of 382 added to Rome's official list of errors, a list perhaps authored by Ambrose of Milan. This now included the teachings of Sabellius, Eunomius and the Macedonians, apparently showing basic agreement with Constantinople's novel formulation regarding the Spirit, while still presuming that event as an Eastern decision that was measured by Rome's Orthodoxy, not vice-versa. See Baus, Karl and others, The imperial Church from Constantine to the early Middle Ages, trans. Anselm Biggs, New York, 250–2Google Scholar. It was Ambrose, more than Pope Siricius (384–99), who continued the legacy of Damasus: Baus, Imperial Church, 254. While Prudentius' poetry lacks specificity in its description of heretical views, his most dogmatic text, the Apotheosis, focuses significantly on refuting the errors of Arius and Sabellius, stressing the co-equality and co-existence of Son with Father: see line 255, ‘nec enim minor aut Patre dispar’, and lines 272–3, ‘sed nec decisus Pater est, ut pars Patris esset/Filius’. This locates Prudentius in the broad wake of the pro-Nicene theology of Damasus and Ambrose, connected to the east but perhaps more sensitive to Arianism as a live threat in the 380s and after by virtue of Justina's presence as well as the nearby Goths.

⁸¹ Peristephanon vi, lines 145–7, where the three are identified as the ‘tribus patronis … quorum praesidio fovemur omnes/terrarum populi Pyrenearum’ (‘the three patrons … under whose protection are kept safe all/the people of the Pyrenean lands’). Roberts notes that the use of patronus for martyrs was a fairly recent development, starting with Ambrose in his Homilies on Luke, ad 378: x.12, CSEL xxxii.4.460; then his letter to his sister Marcellina regarding the discovery of the remains of Protasius and Gervasius: epp. lxxvii(xxii), CSEL lxxxii.3.132; xi, CSEL lxxxii.3.119–20. It was quickly picked up by Ambrose's biographer, Paulinus of Nola, whose poetry may well have directly influenced Prudentius at this point. See Roberts, Poetry, 21. This suggests that Prudentius' work complemented, even extended that of Ambrose and his circle, rather than working contrary to it; contra Malamud, Poetics, 92.

⁸² John Petruccione sees in Peristephanon iv the martyrs playing the role of co-redeemers with Christ, not only in the foundation of the local church but also in the final salvation at the last judgement: ‘The martyr death as sacrifice: Prudentius, Peristephanon 4, 9–72’, Vigiliae Christianae xlix (1995), 250. This is echoed at the very end of Peristephanon vi. His initial plea (lines 157–9) is for the final salvation of the people of the region at the judgement: ‘olim tempus erit ruente mundo/cum te, Tarraco, Fructuosus acri/solvet supplicio tegens ab igni’. At last (lines 160–2) he beseeches the martyrs for himself: ‘meis medellam/formentis dare prosperante Christo’.

⁸³ ‘noli verba auscultare’: PF ii.6.

⁸⁴ Ibid. ii.7.

⁸⁵ Ibid. ii.8.

⁸⁶ Augustine, Sermo cclxxiii.3.

⁸⁷ ‘Hi audiuntur, hi timentur, hi adorantur; si dii non coluntur, nec imperatorum vultus adorantur’: PF ii.6.

⁸⁸ Throughout his literary corpus Prudentius frequently alludes to Vergil, Juvenal, Seneca, Lucan, Statius and Claudian. For a full summary of allusions see Palmer, Prudentius, ch vi.

⁸⁹ For example, in Peristephanon iv, line 163 the poet intentionally strays from the Sapphic metre to accommodate the names of the eighteen; he acknowledges the knowing slip in lines 165–6. See Thomson, LCL cccxcviii.167 n. a.

⁹⁰ Roberts convincingly contends that Prudentius follows a consistent sequence of contest and victory throughout Peristephanon, the very same plot repeated throughout the Psychomachia: Poetry, 44ff. Even the sequence of a verbal then physical battle runs reptitively through both texts. This broad-based narrative parallel is complemented by connections of theme, imagery and word-choice. The battle between Fides and Veterum Cultura Deorum is reflected in the extended back and forth of Romanus and Asclepiades in Peristephanon x. The madness of the persecutors (see pp. 224–5 above) finds an analogy in the battle between Mens Humilis and Superbia, which falls victim to madness: Psychomachia, line 203. The fight between Pudicitia and Sodomita Libido has a concrete example in the contrast between the governor and his virgin daughter here in Peristephanon vi: see p. 226 above. Most poignant is the parallel between the martyr-dramas and the battle of Patientia and Ira. The former ‘quieta manet’ to win victory, and Anger's spear bounces off harmlessly: Psychomachia, lines 128ff. So Romanus overcomes his enraged torturers as a ‘quietus heros’: Peristephanon x, lines 455–6. Here, Fructuosus responds to the official's taunt as a ‘placidus … sacerdos’: Peristephanon vi, line 43.

⁹¹ Robert Grant sees a similar characterisation of vice in the Historia ecclesiastica of Eusebius, which has the effect of vindicating the legitimate Christian rule of Constantine and his followers: ‘Eusebius and imperial propaganda’, in Eusebius, Christianity, and Judaism, Detroit 1992, 665.

⁹² Everett Ferguson brings out this nuance of the significance of martyrdom in ‘Early Christian martyrdom and civil disobedience’, Journal of Early Christian Studies i (1993), 73–83Google Scholar. Defiance of the ‘imperial decrees’ and the summons to emperor worship ‘made Christians guilty of civil disobedience, or even of treason’: ibid. 80.

⁹³ Peristephanon vi, line 42.

⁹⁴ Peristephanon vi. does not deal with this as does the story of Lawrence: Peristephanon ii, lines 1–4, 410–11, 432–5, 443–4, 469–72. Yet, it is still a part of his all-encompassing narrative of the conversion of Rome, so that Rome ‘can now be seen as the head of an empire, founded providentially by Christ for the promotion of universal conversion’: Palmer, Prudentius, 122. Wilken also notes this in his discussion of Peristephanon ii: Spirit, 224. Rome's martyr-cult centrality is evidenced by the proportion of verses given to Rome-affiliated martyrs in Peristephanon (2,275 out of 3,763 verses, or 60%, by my calculation) as well as by the fact that the two longest hymns (x and ii) are thoroughly preoccupied with the narrative of Rome's conversion. The Apotheosis actually yields the theological background for this idea. There Prudentius avers that the Incarnation itself brought about the effective end of polytheistic religion (lines 435–43) throwing the constellations into disarray (lines 617–26), inevitably leading to the heir of Aeneas worshipping in Christ's basilica (lines 446–8). All of this bespeaks the success of the vision of Damasus and his successors to promote Rome's mythic status as the ultimate pilgrimage centre in the west and beyond.

⁹⁵ Palmer, Prudentius, 142–3.

⁹⁶ See the image of the martyr-pyre as a pilgrim-guiding lighthouse in Peristephanon vi, line 3. See especially Peristephanon iv, lines 5–52, which elaborates a massive exchange of martyr relics between Carthage, Corduba, Tarraco, Gerunda, Calagurris, Barchinon, Narbo, Arelas, Emerita, Complutum and Tingis.

⁹⁷ Palmer, Prudentius, 4, 123. ‘The martyr becomes the embodiment not simply of religious faith but also of civic devotion, even of patriotism in the new Christian and Roman civitas’: Wilken, Spirit, 226.

⁹⁸ Martyrs such as Polycarp fundamentally challenged this union. ‘He and the host of faithful witnesses before and after him gave a testimony to the supreme claims of God and the limitations of the State … [T]he early Christian witness was an important step in desacralizing the State’: Ferguson, ‘Early Christian martyrdom’, 83.

⁹⁹ Maureen A. Tilley even claims that ‘the union of state and religion intensified’ with the Constantinian settlement, while noting the inseparability of religious and imperial duty in the person of the emperor: Donatist martyr stories, Liverpool 1996, pp. xxiii–xxivGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰⁰ Prudentius even invokes Romanus as muse, foreshadowing the cutting out of the martyr's tongue and miraculous subsequent speech, ‘Romane …/elinguis oris organum fautor move,/largire comptum carmen infantissimo’: Peristephanon x, lines 1–3.