Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/297

Tx] EARLY LATIN CHRISTIAN POETRY 279 tas, Sobrietas, Jejunia, and Pudor, conquer the arch enemy Superbia. After this, Sobrietas overcomes Luxuria, among whose followers is Fugitivus Amor ; and Operatio (charity) overthrows Avaritia. Concordia is now treacherously wounded by Discordia, surnamed Haeresis, whereupon Fides transfixes the latter. The victory won, Fides urges that a temple be built to Christ, in describing which the poet follows the twenty- first chapter of Revelation. In form and structure Prudentius' Psychomachia seems to have been original ; it was the first Western example of a purely allegorical poem.^ The universal allegorizing spirit of the poet's time, and of the Chris- tian centuries before him, led to it, and the continuing allegorizing spirit of the Middle Ages created many poems which drew substance or suggestion from it. Prudentius may have drawn his personifications of the virtues from the works of the Fathers, especially Tertullian. The taste for allegory had also entered later pagan Latin literature. Terror and Fear in Apuleius are the servants of Minerva, and the story of 1 The partly allegorical poem De Phoenice, attributed to Lactan- tius, is earlier than the Psychomachia. Cf. Ebert, Oes., I, 97-101. The PbcEnix, so important a symbol of immortality and resurrection in Christian art, illustrates the passing of an idea from paganism to Christianity. It is referred to in Ovid, Metam., XV, 402, and Martial, Epig., V, 7. The transition to Christian use appears in the poem De Phoenice, which is not distinctly Christian and retains thn pagan tradition. Tertullian and Commodian refer to the Phcenlx. There is an Anglo-Saxon poem founded on that of Lactantiofl; see Ebert, (7e«., Ill, 73-75. The legend of the Phooniz is told in the Roman de la Rose, 16,011 et seq. On the symbolism of the Phoenix in Christian art, see Evans, Animal SymboUsm in Ecclesiastical Architecture, p. 68, etc.; 128, etc.