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Introduction
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INTRODUCTION DHIS IS THE SECOND of the two volumes into which the present translation of the poems of Prudentius has been divided, as was indicated in the Introduction to Volume 1. The previous volume, Volume 43 of this Series, contained the two books of hymns: the Liber Cathemerinon, 'Book of Hymns for Every Day,' and the Liber Peristephanon, 'Book of the Martyrs' Crowns.' These lyric poems are written in a variety of Latin classical meters. The present volume contains the didactic and apologetic works of Prudentius, the Apotheosis, Hamartigenia, Psychomachia , and Contra Symmachum, all long poems written in dactylic hexameters and preceded by lyrical prefaces; the Tituli historiarum or Dittochaeon consisting of forty-nine hexameter quatrains; and the Epilogue. In the Apotheosis, a poem of 1084 hexameters, Prudentius refutes the early heretics of the Church who denied the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity and. the divinity of Christ. The Hamartigenia, or 'Origin of Sin,' is a refutation of the heretic Marcion who taught that there were two Gods, one the author of evil and the other the author of good. The Psychomachia is a long allegorical epic, in which Virtues and Vices contend for mastery in the human soul. In the first book of the Contra Symmachum, Prudentius attacks the pagan gods of Rome; in the second, he refutes the arguments of Symmachus for the restoration of the statue of Victory in the Senate House and the recognition of the pagan religion. The first twenty-four quatrains of the Tituli historiarium or Dittochaeon, 'Scenes from Sacred History or Twofold Nourishment,' deal with episodes from the Old Testament, and the remaining twentyfive are descriptive of scenes from the New Testament. Comix x AURELIUS PRUDENTIUS CLEMENS mentators are of the opinion that these quatrains were intended to serve as inscriptions for pictures or mosaics in a church. The Epilogue, in which the poet humbly offers his works to God, concludes this second volume. The long apologetic poems in this volume have been translated into blank verse, the best English medium for rendering the Latin dactylic hexameter. As in the translation of the hymns of the first volume, the lyrical prefaces have been rendered in the English accentual equivalents of the various classical meters. The text used is that of Bergman, Volume 61, of the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. ...