Prudentius, [2592] a man well versed in secular literature, composed a Trocheum [2593] of selected persons from the whole Old and New Testament. He wrote a commentary also, after the fashion of the Greeks, On the six days of creation from creation of the world until the creation of the first man and his fall. He wrote also short books which are entitled in the Greek, Apotheosis, Psychomachia and Hamartigenia, that is On divinity, On spiritual conflict, On the origin of sin. He wrote also In praise of martyrs, an invitation to martyrdom in one book citing several as examples and another of Hymns, but specially directed Against Symmachus [2594] who defended idolatry, from which we learn that Palatinus was a soldier.

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Footnotes:

[2592] Born at Saragossa 348, was at Rome in 405, died in Spain 408?

[2593] Trocheum. There is much controversy over the word, some maintaining that it should be Dittochaeon= "the double food or double testament" (Lock in Smith and Wace) or Diptychon. It is a description of a series of pictures from the Bible. The mss. read Trocheum a.e.; Troceum T 25; Trocetum 30; Trocleum A; Tropeum 31. A recent monograph on the subject has not yet come to hand.

[2594] Symmachus. Two works are here confused, the work against Symmachus, and the Cathemerinon hymns, in the preface to which the quotation occurs.