This volume is a useful and responsible addition to the growing body of scholarship on Prudentius in English.Footnote ¹ O'D. offers an up-to-date introduction that surveys the life and poetry of Prudentius. He prints the Latin text of Bergmann and a new English translation of each of the twelve Cathemerinon poems. Each poem is followed by an extended interpretative essay. At the end of the book, there is a short chapter on the reception of the Cathemerinon, a text and translation of Prudentius' Praefatio, a bibliography, an index locorum and a general index. Students who are just beginning to read Prudentius will be happy to have a new, reliable guide to his lyric poetry. Scholars working on specific poems will be thankful for the interpretative essays that are the core of this book. Included in each essay are references to modern scholarship, a thorough discussion of the structure of the poem in question, and comments that mark such points as allusions (to Biblical and Classical sources) and parallel passages in Prudentius. The translation stays close to the Latin original, but without offending modern English usage.

The reader should not come to this book expecting a radically new treatment of the Cathemerinon. O'D. is sceptical of previous arguments that find an overarching structure (p. 17) or a distinctive form of allusion (p. 23) in the poetry of Prudentius. Nor does he spend much time discussing Prudentian symbolism (pp. 24–6). Rather than introducing a novel interpretation, O'D. presents Prudentius as ‘a traditionally educated Roman shaping a Christian way of life, with minimal references to doctrine … or to institutions, using poetry to give new meaning to the tasks and features of the Christian day, and, thus, fashion a Christian identity’ (p. 19). The reliability of O'D.'s book can be traced in no small part to the fact that he does not seek novelty. Instead, he provides full references to previous scholarship and stays focussed for his part on each poem as it unfolds.

I have general praise for this volume and two quibbles. The first concerns the essay form of the individual chapters. The essays describe the poems stanza by stanza, but O'D. does not include conclusions. Given how carefully he has studied these poems, his conclusions would surely have been valuable. On the other hand, if the goal was to publish a series of observations, a commentary would seem to have been more efficient. In particular, it would have been easier to locate specific points in the discussion. However, O'D. does say explicitly that he chose not to write a commentary. At the end of the introduction, he explains,

The ‘received sense’ of a commentary is perhaps too narrow, as a broader interpretative commentary could have included many of O'D.'s insights in a more economical format. Many of these insights concern the structure of the poems or individual points related to theology, predecessors or vocabulary; linking these observations to lemmata would make a text like this more accessible. As it is, the essays will undoubtedly succeed in encouraging further engagement with the Cathemerinon.

The second quibble concerns the lack, at some points, of explanation. Thus, O'D. points out that Cath. 8.65 ‘seems to be a reminiscence’ of Virg. Ecl. 2.65 and leaves it at that (p. 248). Further, in pointing out that christicolarum, the last word of Cath. 8, recalls the poem's first word, Christus, we are told that ‘this Christ is the key to understanding the poem’ (p. 249). These are the last words of the chapter, and the insight is not explained. Does this mean that Christ is the real theme of the poem? That his presence unlocks a further meaning within the individual stanzas? Or perhaps that Christian belief is essential to Prudentius' understanding of poetry? Sometimes the terms in which a question is posed limit discussion. O'D. emphatically denies that the lines tum perennis / gurgitem vivis vitreum fluentis / laurus obumbrat (Cath. 8.46–8) are evocative of the waters of baptism. Although similar metaphors are employed by Ambrose and other exegetes in discussing the sacrament of baptism, this ‘does not require us to assume that Prudentius’ references to the same texts and metaphors are baptismal, particularly when there is no unambiguous allusion to baptism in these stanzas' (p. 246). O'D. is rightly reacting against the impulse to read Prudentius as overwhelmingly ecclesiastical in his focus. However, allusions are notoriously ambiguous, and it would be better to say that the theme is not prominent and to leave it at that. Moreover, at the end of the essay on Cathemerinon 5, there is a short ‘Coda’ revealing the presence in this poem of Horatian lyric. The link to Horace is characterised severally as a ‘contrast imitation’, an ‘aemulatio’, an ‘allusion’ and a ‘reminiscence’ (pp. 169–70); but these terms are not differentiated or explained. Lastly, after giving his division of Cath. 12, O'D. offers a caveat: ‘But the more one reads the poem, the less sense this division seems to make’ (p. 365). O'D. goes on to describe, in an exemplary manner, the symbolic richness of this poem, but his initial comment could easily apply to any division of any of the Cathemerinon poems.

I would emphasise that there is much to praise in this volume. The list of asyndetic lines found in Cath. 1 and 2 is quite useful (pp. 60–1). O'D. helpfully notes that crucifer, lucisator and uerbigena (3.1–2) are all Prudentian coinages (p. 96). In his discussion of Cath. 9, O'D. makes note of several instances of what has been called ‘the Latin poetic koinē’ (p. 278, referring to J.-L. Charlet, La Création poétique dans le Cathemerinon de Prudence [1982], p. 112). Throughout, the Biblical context of individual passages is explained, and Classical antecedents are noted. O'D. pays particular attention to the influence of Ambrose. Several of his hymns are quoted in full and discussed in detail (pp. 55–8, 154–6, 328–31). And, in his discussion of Cath. 3, O'D. notes the high poetic diction of this poem and the fact that Prudentius inverts the Latin poet's normal relation to levia: rather than offer a recusatio, Prudentius suggests that he has found in Christ the highest possible theme for poetry (pp. 99, 102–3, 106–7). These and many other observations will repay the reader's careful attention.

The exigencies of modern publishing have not done much damage. The only casualties are a few typos and the unseemly layout of some pages: thus, the bullet points used throughout the text seem to derive from a common word processing software; in the Latin text and English translation of the poems, the number of lines per page varies widely; and the stanzas of one poem are irregularly indented (pp. 234–5). These infelicities, however, should not be credited to O'D.

These are exciting times to be reading the richly layered poetry of Prudentius. More than a few readers will agree that he is ‘the greatest Latin poet of late antiquity’ (p. vii); and, if such comparisons must be made, there is no reason not to rank him among the first class of Latin poets tout court. O'D. has done a service to every student of late-antique Latin poetry. We can hope that future studies will take up where he has left off, that they will continue to unfold these poems for a modern audience.