Prudence et les Martyrs

Using various meters, Prudentius versifies the passion of martyrs and revisits tragedy, the carmina triumphalia or the catalogues of heroes. The Romanus (Peristephanon 10) is a unique and paradoxical example of a Christian Latin "tragedy", and an occasion for an anti-pagan satire with a famous description of the taurobolium. A detailed commentary of this poem, of five Hymns and of an epigram is accompanied by an exam of the relations between the Peristephanon and Prudentius' other poems. This Christian poet, a literate layman and a retired magistrate, illustrates in the works studied here and in an original group of seven Passions (established as such and commented in vol. 46 of the collection Paradosis) the developments in the cult of the martyrs around 400 AD.