ABSTRACT
Modern readers of Prudentius (348-~410) face several challenges. Little is known about Prudentius biographically1 and, given his importance both as a late Classical poet and as an early medieval allegorist, one might expect more scholarly resources than are available on his poetry or his intellectual context. Part of the problem is that Prudentius falls into the cracks between modern disciplines: he is too late (and, according to Macklin Smith, too Christian) for most classicists, and too early (and perhaps too Roman) for most medievalists. By writing early Christian theology into allegory in the form of Virgilian epic poetry, Prudentius also places heavy demands on modern readers. Recent scholarship focuses on his literary sources (e.g., Hanna, Lana, Malamud, Rivero García, Witke, and Cunningham) or considers him as a literary precursor to other allegorists (e.g., Van Dyke, Lewis, Machosky). Given the powerful cosmological vision that the Psychomachia projects, it is unfortunate that more scholarship is not available that explores connections between philosophical trends, especially trends in cosmology, ethics, and epistemology, in late antiquity and Prudentius’ poetry.2
