Wiener Studien 137/2024, pp. 157-185, 2024/07/11
Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie, Patristik und lateinische Tradition
In his poem Peristephanon 4, Christian poet Prudentius praises a multitude of martyrs who will support the Spanish city of Caesaraugusta in the context of the Last Judgment. While it has long been recognized that the text shares some similarities with Horace’s Ode 1,2, which celebrates Octavian as a divine saviour, this paper provides the first systematic analysis and inter-pretation of the connections between the two texts. It demonstrates that Horace’s ode not only selectively serves as an intertext, but that Prudentius repeatedly and systematically recurs to this reference text, integrating numerous lexical echoes, as well as conceptual (often contrasting) references. The martyr hymn, also composed in Sapphic stanzas, surpasses the Horatian poem in many aspects and rewrites or falsifies Horace’s theological and soteriological conception in a Christian reinterpretation.
