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Christendom Witnesses to the Martyrs: Modulations of the Acta Martyrum in Prudentius' Peristephanon, vi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2012

MARK GLEN BILBY
MARK GLEN BILBY
Affiliation:
Point Lama Nazarene University, 3900 Lomaland Drive, San Diego, Ca 93106, USA: e-mail: mgb8n@virginia.edu
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Abstract

In hymn vi of his Peristephanon, Prudentius dramatically reworks the plot of the Passio Fructuosi. The poet turns the perpetrators from well-known and dutiful representatives of a transient empire into despicable caricatures of evil and vice, transforms the martyred bishop from a caring pastor into a heroic leader of heroes, re-narrates the roles of Christian family members as anonymous martyr-cult devotees, and shifts the focus from the martyred bishop as a local, beloved model of imitation and encouragement during a time of persecution to the three martyrs together as co-equal objects of worship and patrons and saviours of their region and devotees.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , April 2012 , pp. 219 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012
AC

Acts of St Cyprian

CCSL

Corpus Christianorum series latina

CSEL

Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum

LCL

Loeb Classical Library

Pionius

Martyrdom of Pionius

Polycarp

Martyrdom of Polycarp

PF

Passio Fructuosi

Peristephanon

Prudentius, Peristephanon

If early martyr stories are the beating heart of proto-Orthodox piety, then Orthodoxy's ongoing vitality may well pulse in the later renditions of those very stories, in their shifting cadences and tones. As F. J. E. Raby maintained, ‘[t]he new conception of the martyr, which was to dominate the whole middle ages, was the creation of the post–Constantinian Church’.Footnote 1 Listening to the ways in which a particular example of this ‘new conception’ differs from its pre-Constantinian counterpart should prove a useful exercise in tracing out modulations in Christianity and its relationships to broader society.

Eusebius of Caesarea, both in his Collection of ancient martyrdoms and in the Ecclesiastical history, presents the earliest subject matter for such a project. He explicitly recounts pre-Constantinian martyr accounts, yet places them in the context of post-Constantinian reappraisals of the role of the martyrs. In his life and literature, Eusebius simultaneously reflects the experiences, perspectives and concerns of two eras, that of the great persecutor Diocletian and that of Constantine, his friend and patron, and a ‘savior for all’.Footnote 2

Transformations of earlier stories become even more striking as time passes and Orthodoxy comes into clearer relief. Of particular note here is the poesis of Prudentius in his martyr-compendium, the Peristephanon, or Martyr's crown. Not all of the Peristephanon is suitable for such an inquiry, both because Prudentius did not always closely attend to written sources and because some of those he did use have disappeared. Of the sources he did use, the one he most closely reproduces is clearly the Passion of Fructuosus, Augurius and Eulogius in Peristephanon vi.Footnote 3 His careful reading and recapitulation of the details of this account probably stem in part from his considerable pride in the pious ancestors of his native Hispania Tarraconensis,Footnote 4 as well as the familiarity of the text by virtue of its presence in the liturgy of the martyrs' dies natalis. Yet, even while faithful to this text beyond all others, he alters it in manifold ways in his poetic retelling. Scholars have previously noted many of the similarities and differences between Prudentius and his source here.Footnote 5 However, most of these treatments have not offered a sustained comparative analysis and have only passingly addressed how the cumulative differences illustrate broader changes in Christianity and its relationships to society.

The Passion of Fructuosus and Peristephanon vi obviously come from different periods and contexts. With certain caveats, PF dates to the late third or early fourth century.Footnote 6 While reflective of hagiographical legend, the account does offer a plausible setting for the martyrdom. The bishop Fructuosus and his two deacons, Augurius and Eulogius, suffered death by fire in the Romano-Spanish city of Tarragona (or Tarraco) on 21 January 259.Footnote 7 Following the edict of the emperor Valerian,Footnote 8 co-sponsored by co-emperor Gallienus, the local sentence of execution was passed by Aemilianus, proconsul of Hispania citerior.Footnote 9 Whether written during the reign of Valerian or Diocletian, the early martyr-story came into being in or near a time of heated persecution, when Christians in a precarious situation looked for help from sympathetic Romans and courageous guidance from their local leaders. In terms of literary history, this Spanish martyr-passion has many precedents in the Christian martyr stories of the second and third century. Careful analysis points to numerous parallels.

The second text, hymn vi of Peristephanon, dates to around the turn of the fifth century.Footnote 10 Thus it belongs to a singular moment of western Christian optimism in the wake of Theodosius i and his promulgation of Cunctos populos, yet undisturbed by the imminent barbarian victories within Gaul, Italy and Spain. This creative moment in the formation of Christendom in the west was exemplified and shaped in many ways by the papal career of Damasus.

It was his Orthodoxy, that of the Roman See in tandem with Alexandria, that Theodosius had promulgated in Cunctos populos. While fighting against Arianism among other heresies, and advocating Rome's political-religious centrality, Damasus proved himself an avid promoter and stern administrator of Rome's martyr cults, financially, architecturally and literarily. He took control of Rome's many catacombs, completely remodelling them. He established and embellished martyr shrines and opened the spaces to accommodate a burgeoning influx of pilgrims. In the process he dramatically shifted the gender balance of Rome's martyr cults.Footnote 11 In his own house he had a titular basilica built and consecrated to St Lawrence, whose military career and martyrdom represented Rome's conquest by Christ. In honour of various Roman martyrs he even composed his own Epigrams, which were soon impressed upon many of Rome's martyr shrines and walls, inscribed in a unique style by the expert hand of Furius Dionysius Philocalus.

Damasus died in 384, perhaps about the time when the literary career of Prudentius began to flourish.Footnote 12 As a pilgrim to Rome, Prudentius directly participated in Damasus' unified system of martyr-cultus. This Roman experience and vision saturates the work of Prudentius. Occasional references to the Epigrams even appear in the Peristephanon.Footnote 13 Thus Damasus set the stage for the involved poesis of one of the western empire's first Christian civic poets. Yet, as the pope's brief verses only touch upon traditional texts, the poet's stand out in the way he reflects and transforms earlier texts and traditions, especially that of Fructuosus.

Prudentius' reliance on and modifications to PF are evident from the outset even in the title. The shift from ‘sanctorum’ to ‘beatissimorum’ serves to evoke honorific reverence for the sainted martyrs, while the addition of the church's name and location serves to highlight the place of the martyrdom and the martyrs' shrine.Footnote 14 How else does Prudentius modify the previous account, especially as it redounds to the perceived relationship between Church and Empire?

Numerous examples show that Prudentius turns the perpetrators from known, duty-bound representatives of a transient empire and potential sympathisers into generic yet despicable caricatures of evil and vice. At the beginning of the original story, the group of six, specifically named ‘beneficiarii’Footnote 15 demonstrate kindness and patience by allowing the bishop to put on his sandals, only then leading him to the agora.Footnote 16 But in Peristephanon, they contort into a single, beastly ‘pastus sanguine carnifex’.Footnote 17 The protagonist who in PF prays unceasingly in prison, ‘certus et gaudens de corona domini’,Footnote 18 in Peristephanon informs his jailed companions that these events portend the conspiracy of a ‘cruentus … coluber’,Footnote 19 that is, Satan. When the interrogation begins in PF, the proconsul Aemilianus simply asks the accused, ‘audisti quid imperatores praceperunt’?Footnote 20 In Peristephanon, however, the demonised judge demands the worship of demons: ‘iudex Aemilianus inminebat/atrox, turbidus, insolens, profanus;/aras daemonicas coli iubebat’.Footnote 21

The differing responses of Fructuosus to this inquiry provide further evidence. In the earlier account he defiantly responds that he does not recognise the imperial commands nor the gods whom they reference; rather he seditiously confesses himself a Christian.Footnote 22 In Peristephanon the martyr-to-be does not expose Rome herself, but rather the co-emperor's hubris, pointing out an all-important theological gap, ‘factorem dominumque Gallieni’.Footnote 23 The proconsul's altered response complements the picture. Both accounts recall his acerbic jibe about the termination of the bishop's vocation, ‘fuisti’, along with the sentence of being burned alive.Footnote 24 But while the older account records that sentence nonchalantly,Footnote 25 Prudentius reads it as the official's own sadistic choice, illustrative of a vicious psyche brimming over with fury: ‘he does not defer rage or restrain anger/[but] sends them to be cremated in cruel blazes’.Footnote 26

Regarding the execution of the sentence, while PF remains silent as to how the fires are kindled, Prudentius points to a diabolical agent, a ‘dark officer’.Footnote 27 Both compare the martyr company to the companions of Daniel,Footnote 28 but Prudentius extends the metaphor to identify Aemilianus with Nebuchadnezzar, that ‘Babylonicum … tremens tyrannus’.Footnote 29PF also explains that as Fructuosus and his deacons are escorted to the ‘amphitheatre’, ‘populus Fructuosum episcopum dolere coepit quia talem amorem habebat non tantum a fratribus sed etiam ab ethnicis’.Footnote 30 But Prudentius makes no room for sympathetic outsiders. Instead, he focuses in on the mere mention of the amphitheatre and reimagines it a frenzied mob seething around a spectacle, a place ‘madens ferarum/multo sanguine quem furor frequentat’,Footnote 31 along with roars of delight as would resound over a gladiatorial contest.Footnote 32 Prudentius also leaves out the reference to a Christian soldier named Felix and his supplication, while still paraphrasing Fructuosus' response.Footnote 33 He also absents the carefully constructed reference to Fructuosus preaching even to the same ‘beneficiariis quorum nomina supra memoravimus’.Footnote 34 Where the Passio looked for sympathy and appealed to justice, Prudentius finds only unrestrained malevolence.

After the execution, in PF two male ChristianFootnote 35 attendants from the proconsul's household, along with Aemilianus' daughter, see the heavens opened and the three martyrs rising. Though they point this out to the governor, ‘videre eos non fuit dignus’.Footnote 36 But in Peristephanon, only one unidentified attendant of the governor,Footnote 37 along with the governor's ‘virgin’ daughter,Footnote 38 witness the miraculous flight, in contrast to the ‘blind parent, so that the household was terrified because of the house-lord's guilt’.Footnote 39 A new distinction emerges, not one between insider and outsider revelation, but rather between the optics of virtue and vice.Footnote 40 In sum, participants and functionaries that distract from caricature are removed; those remaining are consolidated and recast as personifications of evil and vice.

Prudentius also transforms the martyred bishop from a loving pastor into a heroic leader of heroes. While he does keep the standard title of martyrs for the three,Footnote 41 Prudentius also unabashedly deploys ‘vir’ in the Vergilian sense. Augustine conscientiously avoided this connotation, since he perceived the Christian life and the ideal of heroism as fundamentally incompatible.Footnote 42 Thus in Peristephanon Fructuosus gives the battle cry to his companions: ‘mecum state, viri’.Footnote 43 In stark contrast, PF nowhere names a ‘vir’, speaking simply of Fructuosus as a ‘beatus martyr’,Footnote 44 and otherwise as a shepherd (‘pastor’)Footnote 45 whose actions in his martyrdom reflect not heroism as much as love for GodFootnote 46 and fatherly love for his ecclesial children.Footnote 47 Only once and briefly does Prudentius have Fructuosus speak of his episcopal vocation as ‘famulus gregisque pastor’.Footnote 48 Otherwise, only officialFootnote 49 and heroic descriptors apply. Both draw a parallel between the bishop's and Christ's refusal of wine, but whereas the first has the bishop look forward to breaking fast at the eschatological feast of the faithful, the second focuses on his exacting self-denial.Footnote 50 After the execution in Peristephanon, the proconsul's attendant beholds the martyrs as ‘insignesque viros’, being ushered into heaven and through the stars.Footnote 51 At the close of the poem, Prudentius also addresses various groups within the congregation who sing the martyr hymn of the dies natalis, including a certain category of persons named ‘heros’. This apparently references a group of male ascetics who stand as counterparts to female ascetics, who are collectively called ‘virgo’.Footnote 52 Apparently even a segment of the bardic choir may become heroes by participation.

Key to this character shift is how the miraculous, while present in PF, superabounds in Prudentius' retelling. Both accounts record six days in prison and a baptism there. But while PF says that Fructuosus enacts the initiation, Peristephanon has the three ‘perform the mystical bath’, and the result is a luminous victory that baffles darkness itself.Footnote 53 Both accounts mention that Fructuosus opts to remove his sandals prior to his execution.Footnote 54 But only Peristephanon points to the otherworldly courage involved, that Fructuosus did this in order to place his feet more quickly in the fire,Footnote 55 drawing near to God in a deed akin to Moses himself,Footnote 56 while all three martyrs enter the fire ‘rapidis … passibus’.Footnote 57 Before this happens, in PF Fructuosus gives a brief yet inspired homily aimed at consoling his people's grief and turning their trust to divine promises.Footnote 58 Yet in Peristephanon, the martyr's last loving sermon becomes an oracle in which a spirit sounds directly from heaven, not as a dove but in a portent that makes all present tremble. It assures that victory belongs to the martyrs, whose dying procession takes them into the realm of the ‘Thunderer’, ‘Tonantis’.Footnote 59 Once the fire begins, both accounts point to the parallel between this trio and Ananias, Azariah and Mishael of Danielic fame.Footnote 60 Yet, Prudentius turns the allusion, a minori ad maius, into a case for miraculous courage: while the ‘pious flame spared’Footnote 61 the readied, ancient trio, the Spanish martyrs eagerly ‘pray the quick flame to fly upon [them]’.Footnote 62 While both accounts relate how the fire burned the bindings off their hands, Prudentius adds the striking detail that this happened ‘intacta cute’.Footnote 63 He everywhere elaborates and augments the miraculous, shifting the focus from the bishop as loving pastor to a heroic leader of heroes.

The heroic drama also re-casts noted members of the bishop's ecclesial family into anonymous martyr-cult devotees. In PF the local church itself is identified as a ‘fraternitas’,Footnote 64 a term absented from Peristephanon. Again in PF, Rogatianus and Felix are each called ‘our brother’, and Augustalis the bishop's ‘lector’.Footnote 65 In Peristephanon these three persons become two anonyms, identified merely by what Fructuosus does for them: one baptised in prison, and the other denied the opportunity to remove the bishop's sandals and refused special favour in view of the martyr's intercession for the Church as a whole.Footnote 66 At the execution, the spectators are moved by the tremendous love ‘fratribus’ for their bishop,Footnote 67 and some, ‘ex fraterna caritate’, offer him wine.Footnote 68 After the martyrdom, ‘fratres nostri Babylas et Mygdonius’,Footnote 69 who are apparently the first ones to have a vision of the ascending martyrs, become a single anonym in Prudentius' account. In Peristephanon the word ‘fratres’ only occurs twice, once in regard to the martyred trio,Footnote 70 and once of their collective devotees.Footnote 71 While PF preserves significant, named parts for the family members of the local church, Prudentius ultimately changes the drama's supporting cast for anonymous devotees vying after the favours and services of their cultic heroes: ‘certant officiis pii sodales’.Footnote 72

Finally, regarding the cult of the martyrs,Footnote 73 Prudentius shifts the focus from the martyred bishop as a local and beloved model of imitation and encouragement during a time of persecution, placing it instead on the bishop as a heroic leader and teacher, and on the three together as co-equal and universal objects of devotion as heavenly patrons and saviours. In PF, after his death the martyred bishop appears alone so as to provide a ‘parvulis … exemplum’Footnote 74 and ‘comprobare’Footnote 75 his blessed vindication by God, encouraging other Christians to stand firm in faith against the looming tide of persecution. In Peristephanon, however, the motif of the local imitation of the martyr disappears entirely. The bishop's encouragement is directed at his deacons, not his flock. As their ‘dux et praevius et magister’Footnote 76 and ‘praeceptor’,Footnote 77 he alleviates their fear and ignites their faith.Footnote 78 After this scene, Prudentius seeks to re-focus the drama so that the unique role of Fructuosus is subsumed by the co-equality of the two deacons with their bishop. Prudentius takes poetic pains to make all three occupants of the Tarragonian shrine equal: ‘reddamus paribus pares camenas’.Footnote 79 In keeping with early Christian exegesis of the Danielic story of the three in the fire, both accounts point to the three as a reflection of the Trinity. Yet Prudentius apparently uses the martyred threesome to reinforce the pro-Nicene and anti-Eunomian Orthodoxy of Rome.Footnote 80 Conversely, this Orthodox Trinitarian imagery helps to sacralise the cult of the martyrs even further. Besides this, the three are now pictured in Peristephanon as patroni Footnote 81 and salvatores who protect their (and the author's) native province of Tarraconensis and save their devotees across the world, both now and at the time of destruction in the final judgement.Footnote 82 The motif of universal patronage and pilgrimage furnishes a dramatic inclusio for the entire hymn, subtle at the outset and overt at the crescendo.

In regard to matters of martyr cult, there are also two noteworthy instances of omission. In PF, the deacon Augurius also is questioned by the proconsul Aemilianus, who prohibits the deacon from ‘heeding the words of Fructuosus’.Footnote 83 After Augurius responds with a standard confession of monolatry, the proconsul asks, ‘Numquid et tu Fructuosum colis?’Footnote 84 Augurius denies the charge, but asserts that he and Fructuosus worship the same God.Footnote 85 In his sermo cclxxiii, while preaching on the martyrdom of Fructuosus, Augustine takes special note of this dialogue. He uses it to highlight the distinction between the worship of God and devotion to the saints.Footnote 86 Prudentius, however, omits it altogether, perhaps finding this exchange unsuited to a poem designed to augment the cult of the bishop Fructuosus, as well as the co-equal status of Augurius.

One other omission may be significant. It consists in the absence of any mention of emperor worship in Prudentius' account. In PF Aemilianus expressly ties the worship of the Roman gods to the worship of the ‘images of the emperor’.Footnote 87 This may provide an explanation as to why the proconsul Aemilianus questions the deacon Augurius about whether he worships Fructuosus. In the proconsul's mind, apparently, the emperor and bishop are potentially competing objects of worship and so also of political devotion. Though emperor worship might have played well in Prudentius' portrayal of imperial hubris, he opts to omit it.

In the way of drawing conclusions, how may the abundant changes in the martyr story of Fructuosus from PF to Peristephanon be summarised and explained? Literary technique and embellishment certainly play a role in much of the colorful elaboration. As any classical poet, Prudentius dramatises events, engages in word play, and offers learned omages to his poetic predecessors at every opportunity.Footnote 88 The differences may also be ascribed to his audience, a readership already familiar with his source, to the metrical difficulties of names,Footnote 89 or a concern to avoid redundancy. However, the recurring de-historisation and preference for a different vocabulary lends an affect far more than merely literary. Prudentius picks up and deploys mythological and even theological and political perspectives and presuppositions from the beautiful letters and now fits these into a Christian triumphalist programme. So what are the theological-political implications of these embellishments and differences?

Since for Prudentius vice is the real culprit, not the empire as such, it becomes clear that Peristephanon actually stands within the theological framework of his more popular Psychomachia. The martyr stories reflect a cosmic battle happening not essentially between Church and Empire as two Kingdoms, or even two societies or cultures, but rather between virtue and vice in their manifold forms. The characters in the martyr dramas thus become embodiments of virtue or vice, and each martyrdom reveals a triumph for good. The numerous literary parallels between Psychomachia and Peristephanon point to this as an intentional project.Footnote 90

Regarding political ideology, this reframing of the battle suggests that the Roman Empire is not evil qua empire, but only insofar as its leaders are ruled by the demonic forces of vice.Footnote 91 One may thus imagine the empire working for good if and when the leadership refrains from hubris and polytheism and submits to the one true God. The absence of the issue of emperor worship seems to contribute to this potentially positive appraisal of the role of the empire and its leadership. It also would seem to call into question civil disobedience as a legitimate expression of Christian piety, as it apparently was in PF. Footnote 92 The principle behind Aemilianus' inquisition in Peristephanon actually fits the Orthodox poet living in the wake of Cunctos populos: ‘quod princeps colit, ut colamus omnes’.Footnote 93

Turning the martyrs into heroes involves something greater than mere entertainment. New heroes augur a new Rome. Just as Aeneas endured many challenges in order to establish the Roman people, so the heroes of the faith now face enormous struggles in order to establish a new Christian-Roman empire.Footnote 94 This explains why the martyr-heroes must play their script, as it were, in an epic battle, even conquest. The recurrent narrative script, together with the extended focus on military martyrs, suggests that the whole collection may be read as a dramatic albeit predictable agon. On stage are the exercitus Christi and the exercitus Caesaris,Footnote 95 or more precisely, the exercitus recti and exercitus viti. The Orthodox triumph vicariously in the martyr-contests of their forebears.

Prudentius' numerous highlights of martyr cultus hold theological and political import as well. The bishop is no longer the central figure around which the church as family is bound together, and his message no longer one of comfort and hope during a time of persecution. Rather, the Church as Distinct Family is replaced by the Church as Roman Society. The martyred threesome together now belong to the cities and regions of their birth or death or both, and so also to the whole of the newly Christian-Roman society. As ever-present patroni of their cities they together form a heavenly army to defend the now Christian empire. The faithful masses take pious pride in their local martyrs as they pay homage to distant ones in pilgrimage. The burgeoning cult of the martyrs and accompanying exchange of pilgrims between Rome, Spain, Gaul and Africa serve to unify the Church as Empire.Footnote 96

The sum effect is to meld religious devotion and patriotism,Footnote 97 quite in keeping with Rome's long history of sponsoring polylatry. It was precisely this ideological union that previously stood as one of the major causes of Christian martyrdom.Footnote 98 Ironically, the poet who sought to elevate his beloved martyrs underwrote the ideology that made new ones.Footnote 99 And somehow, in view of the looming fall of a city and much of an empire, the more ancient and coarse report seems more prophetic than its muse-inspired counterpart.Footnote 100

References

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.