"Prudentius Psychomachia 317"

Author(s): Kirk Summers

Source: Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 66, No. 4 (2012), pp. 426-429
Published by: Brill
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41722505
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Christianae
BRILL Vigiliae Christianae 66 (2012) 426-429 brill.nl/vc

"Prudentius Psychomachia 317"

Kirk Summers
ksummers@ML.AS. UA.EDU
University of Alabama
Box 870246
Tuscaloosa , AL 35487

Abstract
The Latin text at Prudentius, Psychomachia 31 7 presents some syntactical difficulties,
mostly stemming from the unexpected word quia. The manuscripts and glossa vetus
offer little help on the matter. Gilbert Wakefield offered a convincing solution to the
problem in a note that was buried in an edition of Lucretius that he edited in 1797.
No subsequent editor of Prudentius has noticed his emendation, which should be
revived and included in future editions.

Keywords
Prudentius, Psychomachia, Wakefield

Gilbert Wakefield, while discussing the possible nuances of marees at

Lucretius DRN 3.9691 (3.956 in some texts) and thus remembering mar-
cida at Prudentius Psych. 316, offers, as an aside, a useful emendation for
line 317 that has regrettably never found its way into modern editions. In
the passage in question, Prudentius describes how Luxuria (Indulgence),
roused from her debauchery by the approach of Sobriety in the early morn-
ing, stumbles out the door to challenge the army of virtues. The text that
describes the moment that the drunken Indulgence becomes galvanized

0 Gilbert Wakefield, T. Lucretii Cari De rerum natura libros sex, ad exemplarium mss.fidem
recensitosy longe emendatiores reddidit , commentariis perpetuis illustravit, indicibus instruxit; et
cum animadversionibus Ricardi Bentleii non ante vulgaris, vol. 2 (London, 1797) 159.
I am indebted to Prof. Christian Gnilka for his efforts in distinguishing between the notes
of Wakefield and Bentley and correcting my initial attribution to Bentley. Prof. Gnilka was
able to corroborate his conclusion by reference to a complete list of Bentley s notes on Lucre-
tius that Wakefield collected in vol. IV, pp. 407-68 of the 1813 Glasgow edition.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/157007212X635830

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 "Prudentius Psychomachia 317 " 427

for action has an obvious enough sense to it but presents a syntactical

problem at the same time. M.P. Cunningham, the editor of the CCSL
edition,2 records the standard reading of the manuscripts:

at tunc peruigilem ructabat marcida cenamy

sub lucem quia forte iacens ad fercula raucos 317
audierat lituos, . . .

Regardless of whether we should take sub lucem as a hyperbaton that goes

properly within the quia clause, or understand it with the clause before it,
the quia itself in line 317 does not flow from the sense of the previous line.
In his apparatus, Cunningham notes that the S manuscript (from the
monastery library at Saint Gall) reads the nonsensical que , but that an
unknown corrector, possibly the scribe himself, has written quia in the
margin. All the manuscripts, therefore, in one way or the other retain the
problematic word.3
The glossa vetus as reported both by the PL 4 and O'Sullivan5 feels com-
pelled to explain the logic of the lines: "Ac tuncy luxuria, auditis tubisy ad
bellum currit? Still some ambiguity remains. If the ablative absolute in the
gloss carries a causal sense to it ("because she had heard the raucous
horns. . ."), then quia could be retained and a colon placed after cenam in
316, as the PL handles it.6 But that punctuation introduces a new problem,
because now the remaining lines of the sentence fail to follow through
with the causal idea:

. . . atque inde tepentia linquens

pocula lapsanti per vina et balsama gressu 319
ebria calcatis ad bellum floribus ibat.

2) Prudentius' Psychomachia appears in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina CXXVI (Turn-

hout 1966), edited by M.P. Cunningham. Both Maurice Laverenne, Prudence Psychomachie:
Texte, traduction , commentaire avec une introduction historique (Paris, 1933) 158 and I.
Bergman, Aurelii Clementis Prudentii Psychomachia (Upsala, 1897) 33, record the same text
(his text is also used in the CSEL, vol. 61 [Vienna, 1926] with no changes).
3) Neither Bergman nor Lavarenne report any variants for quia nor do they refer to it in
their commentary.
4) Patrologia Latina , vol. 60, col. 46. This is a reissue of the edition of F. Averalo originally
published at Rome in 1788.
5) Sinéad O'Sullivan, Early Medieval Glosses on Prudentius ' Psychomachia: The Weitz Tradi-
tion (Leiden, 2004) 234.
6) So also A. Dressel, Aurelii Prudentii Clementis Quae Extant Carmina (Leipzig, 1860) 186.

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428 K Summers / Vigiliae Christianae 66 (2012) 426-429

Thomson, in the LCL edition of Prudentius,7 while leaving the trouble-

some text as received, translates it with commendable dexterity:

Even then she was languidly belch-

ing after a night-long feast; for as it chanced day
was coming in and she was still reclining by the
table when she heard the hoarse trumpets, and she
left the lukewarm cups, her foot slipping as she
stepped through pools of Avine and perfumes, and
trampling on the flowers, and was making her
drunken way to the war.8

One must note, however, that Thomson does not translate, "Because she
had heard . . but introduces the temporal "when" in the mix. It is obvious
that the atque of 318 hardly continues the thought introduced by the
causal quia in the previous line. Given that, we must imagine that the glos-
sator intended for the ablative absolute to carry a temporal force: "Then
Indulgence, when she had heard the horns, was going to war."
It is that disruption of the syntactical and logical flow caused by the quia
that Gilbert Wakefield wants to correct as he delineates two possible inter-
pretations of marees in the aforementioned passage of Lucretius. For the
second (and, for him, less preferred) option he refers to Arnobius Adv. nat.
2.30, where that author writes, "Ne delieiis mareeat, et corrumpatur molti-
tudine vitiorum ." The phrase delieiis mareeat in particular seems to have
reminded Wakefield of our Prudentius passage, and so he adds: "Hinc
interea lieeat emendare versus ornatissimos Prudentii de Luxuria, psychom.
316." He then cites the entire sentence from At tunc down to that, with a
comma after cena (he has cœna ), but emends the quia of line 317 to quã:
" Sub lucemt quã forte, jacens ad fercula, raucos. . ." He explains: "Qua scilicet ,
ubi: editi y quia. Has autem voculas in scriptis saepe permutari, multis exemplis
Drakenborchius praestantissimus docuit , ad Liv. xl.29.8 et redeas ad ver. 491."
If Wakefield s emendation is correct, then the passage fits together more
coherently as follows:

7) H. J. Thomson, Prudentius , vol. 1 (Harvard, 1949) 300-01.

K) Lavarenne translates, "En ce moment, ses hoquets et sa fatigue trahissaient le long festin
de sa nuit; car au point du jour, comme elle se trouvait couchée devant une table bien ser-
vie, elle avait entendu les trompettes rauques; alors, abandonnant les coupes tièdes, d'un
pas qui trébuchait dans le vin et les parfums, foulant aux pieds les fleurs, ivre, elle partait en
guerre."

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 "Prudentius Psychomachia 317 " 429

Even then exhausted Indulgence was belching up her night-long dinner, where,
by chance, still lying at her plates at the approach of dawn, she heard the raucous
horns, and leaving there her lukewarm cups, she went slipping on spilt wine and
balsam to war, crushing flowers under her feet.

And so, with the simple change of quia to quã , a vexed text is made more
comprehensible. I submit, therefore, that the latter is the correct reading
and should be incorporated into future editions.

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