PRUDENTIUS, pro-den'shi-iis (AURELIUS CLEMENS PRunkivrius) (348-405?). The greatest poet of the early Latin Church and one of the leading literary figures of the fourth century. He was born in Spain (probably in Saragossa). lie received a liberal education, was admitted to the bar. practiced as a pleader, discharged the func tions of a Roman magistrate, and received ap pointment to a high position at Court. His early life was gay and dissipated. but after his con version he devoted himself to the service of the Church. He lived in an age of great Christian lead ers, among them Ambrose, Jerome.and Augustine, and from Ambrose he derived his impulse toward poetic composition. Among his poems the Cattle merinon, or 'Daily Round,' includes twelve hymns, of considerable length, designed for devotional use. The Psychomachia, or 'Soul's Conflict,' pictures the battle which virtue and vice wage over the soul of a Christian. This is the earliest type of pure religious allegory in the Western Church, and may almost he said to mark an epoch in literary history. In the Peri Stcphanon, or 'The
Crowns,' we have a collection of fourteen hymns in praise of martyrs and martyrdom. about half of them dealing with Spanish subjects. The two books Against Symmachus carry on the battle, already begun by Ambrose, against the proposed restoration of the altar of Victory to the senate house. Two of Prndentins's poems are distinctly theological, the Ilamartifpnia, on the origin of evil, and the Apotheosis, a defense of the doctrine of Christ's divinity. In both these works the in fluence of TertuMan is unmistakable. Consult: Glover, Life and Letters in the Fourth Century (Cambridge, 1901 ) ; Ebert. Gesehichte der Lit teratur des Mittetatters (2d ed., Leipzig, 1889) ; Boissier. La fin (141 paganisme (3d ed., Paris, 1898) ; Thaekeray, Translations from Pruden tins (London, 1890).