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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
Not long ago, the publication of two volumes of essays devoted to a rereading and rethinking of imperial Latin literature would have been held up as a classic example of professional Latinists making a virtue out of necessity — since we cannot all write on Vergil and Horace, some of us must therefore stiffen our upper lips and attempt to produce ‘sound’ scholarship on the reams of inferior poetry that make up the rest of Latin literature. The unspoken assumptions behind this attitude are beginning to be voiced, scrutinized, and rejected. Poetic works that until recently appeared mannered, degenerate, and even perverse are now being interpreted in new ways, and revealing hidden pleasures and unexpected virtues. It is thus an appropriate time to reconsider the work of Prudentius, poet of an age of radical experimentation in both language and culture. I try in this essay to maintain a kind of double vision, for it is important for those unfamiliar with Prudentius' poetry to realize the extent to which shifting cultural paradigms affect and are reflected in the poet's textual strategies. This is a somewhat amorphous task, and the article falls into two main segments whose relationship may not be entirely clear until the end. I begin with some examples of Prudentius' abstract and punning poetic technique, intended to provide the reader with an understanding of how to ‘decode’ the poems; I then offer a reading of two of his poems which illustrate his textual response to a contemporary cultural phenomenon, the increasing popularity of sexual renunciation. My title refers to two attempts at revision: ours, as we attempt to reclaim the ‘perverse’ poetics comdemned by generations of classical scholarship; and that of the men and women of Late Antiquity, who reversed a centuries-old paradigm and created a new virtue, virginity, out of what had been a form of perversity.
1. The text used, with occasional changes in punctuation, is Aurelii Prudentii Clementis Carmina, edited by Cunningham, Maurice (Turnholt 1966)Google Scholar; the notes in Prudence. Oeuvres, edited and translated into French by Maurice Lavarenne (4 vols., Paris 1955) are a useful supplement to Cunningham’s text. Portions of this article are adapted from Malamud, Martha, A Poetics of Transformation: Prudentius and Classical Mythology (Ithaca, New York 1989)Google Scholar. Palmer’s, Anne-MariePrudentius on the Martyrs (Oxford 1989)Google Scholar appeared after this article was completed; so, while I note her discussions of relevant points, I have not addressed her arguments.
2. For Prudentius’ biography and the chronology of his poems, see Lana, Italo, Due capitoli prudenziani: la biografia, la cronologia delle opere, la poetica (Rome 1962)Google Scholar; and Palmer (n.l above) chapter 1.
3. See Alan, Cameron, Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford 1970)Google Scholar; Fontaine, Jacques, ‘La poésie comme art spirituel: les projets poéiques de Paulin et Prudence’ in Naissance de la poésie latine dans I’occident chrétien (Paris 1981) 143–60Google Scholar, and ‘Societé et culture chrétiennes sur l’aire circumpyrénéenne au siècle de Theodose’ in Étude sur la poesie latine tardive (Paris 1980) 267–308Google Scholar; Costanza, Salvatore, ‘Rapporti letterari tra Paolino e Prudenzio’ in Atti del convegno 31 cinquantenario della morte di S. Paolino di Nola (Rome 1983)Google Scholar; Charlet, J.L., L’influence d’Ausone sur la poesie de Prudence (Diss. Sorbonne 1972)Google Scholar; Palmer (n.l above) 33–56.
4. See Matthews, John, ‘Gallic Supporters of Theodosius’, Latomus 30 (1971) 1073–99Google Scholar, and Western Aristocracies and the Imperial Court. A.D. 364–425 (Oxford 1975)Google Scholar.
5. See Matthews, Western Aristocracies (n. 4 above) 98–100 for a discussion of Theodosius’ attitude towards legislating religious behavior, and Codex Theodosianus 16.1.2 and 16.10.10 for the texts of these two edicts.
6. Contra Symmachum 1.502–05.
7. Malamud (n.l above), chapter 3.
8. See Levitan, William, ‘Dancing at the End of the Rope: Optatian and the Field of Roman Verse’, TAPA 115 (1985) 245–69Google Scholar, for a discussion of this peculiar fourth-century poet.
9. The Psychomachia has received more critical attention than Prudentius’ other works. Recent studies include: Gnilka, Christian, Studien zur ‘Psychomachie’ des Prudentius (Wiesbaden 1963)Google Scholar; Haworth, Kenneth, Deified Virtues, Demonic Vices, and Descriptive Allegory in Prudentius’ ‘Psychomachia’ (Amsterdam 1980)Google Scholar; Herzog, Reinhart, Die allegorische Dihtkunst des Prudentius (Munich 1966)Google Scholar; Georgia Nugent, S., Allegory and Poetics: The Structure and Imagery of Prudentius’ ‘Pychomachia’ (Frankfurt 1985)Google Scholar; Smith, Macklin, Prudentius’ ‘Psychomachia’: A Reexamination (Princeton, N.J. 1976)Google Scholar.
10. See Lavarenne (n.l above) ad loc.
11. For a more detailed discussion of Prudentius’ style and fourth century poetics, see Malamud (n.l above) chapter 2. See also Roberts, Michael J., The Jewelled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity (Ithaca, New York 1989)Google Scholar, a general study of late antique poetry which appeared after this article was completed.
12. See Roberto Palla’s discussion of the final prayer in Palla, R., Hamartigenia (Pisa 1981) 310–12Google Scholar. Paratore, Ettore comments on the controversy created by the odd last line of the poem in ‘Prudenzio fra antico e nuovo’, Passaggio dal mondo antico al medio evo da Teodosio a San Gregorio Magna (Rome 1980) 51–86Google Scholar, especially 63.
13. See Brown, Peter, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York 1988)Google Scholar, by far the best and most comprehensive treatment of this vast subject; his bibliography is essential. Other relevant and useful works are: Rousselle, Aline, Pomeia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity, tr. Pheasant, Felicia (Oxford 1988)Google Scholar; Veyne, Paul ‘La famille et l’amour sous le Haut-Empire remain’, Annates ESC 33 (1978) 35–63Google Scholar; Foucault, Michel, Histoire de la sexualité (Paris 1976)Google Scholar.
14. Sissa, Giulia, Le corps virginal (Paris 1987)Google Scholar.
15. Detienne, Marcel explores the myths centering around marriage in two of his books, The Gardens of Adonis: Spices in Greek Mythology, tr. Lloyd, Janet (Brighton 1977)Google Scholar and Dionysos Slain, tr. Muellner, Mireille and Muellner, Leonard (Baltimore 1979)Google Scholar.
16. Detienne, Dionysos Slain (n.15 above) 25f.
17. Rousselle (n.l3 above) 28.
18. Virginity was thought to cause medical problems in women — some doctors theorized that the uterus would not function properly if sexual intercourse did not begin soon after puberty (Soranus Gynaecology 1.31), and Galen (On the Affected Parts 6) believed that hysteria, by which he meant a potentially fatal disease of the womb, could be cured by sexual activity. See Rousselle (n.l3 above) 35 and 71 for discussion of these passages.
19. See Rousselle (n.13 above) 63f., 129f; Noonan, , Contraception. A History of its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (Cambridge, Mass. 1966)Google Scholar chapter 3; Jones, H., The Gnostic Religion (Boston 1958)Google Scholar.
20. Brown (n.l3 above) chapters 11 and 12; Chitty, Derwas, The Desert a City (Oxford 1966)Google Scholar; Rousseau, Philippe, Ascetics, Authority and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian (Oxford 1978)Google Scholar.
21. See Brown (n.l3 above) chapters 4 and 5 on Gnostics and Encratites, and Rousselle (n. 13 above) 132, who cites Cyprian (Letters, 4), Athanasius (De fuga sua, 29 in PG 25 col.677b) and John Chrysostom (Les cohabitations suspectes, 9).
22. See Brown, Peter, ‘Sexuality and Society in the Fifth Century A.D.: Augustine and Julian of Eclanum’, Scritti in onore di Arnaldo Momigliano, ed. Gabba, E. (Como 1983)Google Scholar.
23. Acts of Paul and Thecla, New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 2, ed. Hennecke, E. and Schneemelcher, W. (Philadelphia 1965)Google Scholar. Cf. Brown (n.13 above) 154–59.
24. See Kelly, J.N.D., Jerome. His Life, Writings, and Controversies (London 1975) 107–13Google Scholar, for a description of the controversy which resulted in Jerome’s departure from Rome, and Brown (n.13 above) 376–79, for a consideration of Jerome’s motives and the effect of his actions.
25. Brown’s translation; see his discussion of Ambrose’s views on virginity in general and the perpetual virginity of Mary in particular (n.l3 above, 341–65).
26. See Brown (n.l3 above) 363 for references.
27. See Hopkins, Keith, ‘The Age of Roman Girls at Marriage’, Population Studies 18 (1965) 309–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and D. Shaw, Brent, ‘The Age of Roman Girls at Marriage: Some Reconsiderations’, JRS 77 (1987) 30–46Google Scholar.
28. Perist. 3.35 and Aen. 1.1; Perist. 3.36 and Aen. 1.646 and 3.341; Perist. 3.47 and Aen. 6.642; Perist. 3.66 and Aen. 5.670; Perist. 3.71 and Aen. 11.259; Perist. 3.72 and Aen. 5.672 and 7.452. See Palmer (n.l above) 154–79 for a discussion of Eulalia’s similarity to Turnus, Nisus and Euryalus, and Ascanius, and for more Vergilian reminiscences.
29. duBois, Page, Sowing the Body: Psychoanalysis and Ancient Presentations of Women (Chicago and London 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar 165f.
30. Cassian, the martyred hero of Peristephanon 9, meets a fate very much like Eulalia’s: he is a schoolteacher whose students stab him to death with their pens.
31. duBois (n.29 above) 150.
32. The bloody fountain also suggests Horace’s problematic fons Bandusiae, whose crystal waters Horace imagines turning red with the blood of the kid he intends to sacrifice (Carm. 3.13).
33. Lavarenne(n.l above) 195.
34. Zeitlin, Froma, ‘Cultic Models of the Female: Rites of Dionysos and Demeter’, Arethusa 15 (1982) 140–55Google Scholar, at 146.
35. Methodius Symp. pref. 8; the symbolism of the agnus castus is further discussed in the tenth conversation (Symp. 265).
36. Detienne, Marcel and Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society, tr. Lloyd, Janet (Brighton 1978)Google Scholar 84f.
