ABSTRACT
Scholars have long recognized Prudentius’ indebtedness to Virgil’s Aeneid in his allegorical poem of the ‘Soul-Battle’ between Virtues and Vices (Psychomachia). This chapter explores Virgilian allusion in the central duel (number four of seven) between Mens Humilis and Superbia. Scholars have noticed a range of Virgilian intertexts in the scene, but none has explored (or assumed) a deeper significance beyond suggesting a sort of cacophony of superficial referents. This study offers both a lexical examination of Virgilian allusions in the scene and also a more macroscopic consideration of the ways in which Prudentius’ engagement with Virgil’s scenes and themes fit into the larger scope of Prudentius’ poem. In particular, the duel presents a Christian reframing of climactic pagan ‘foundational’ moments in Virgil’s epic (the slaying of Priam and the Iliou Persis; the killing of Turnus at the poem’s close), both of which anticipate and necessitate Rome’s eventual rise. But by reworking and reformulating Rome’s pagan mytho-history – especially through evocations of city and temple imagery – Prudentius manages to ‘overwrite’ the non-Christian elements of Rome’s legendary past by demanding that paganism’s grip on Roman history, identity, and futurity is not unimpeachable or un-severable. The scene is central to Prudentius’ larger interests in the Christianization of the Roman state and its socio-historical identity.
