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FEMALE PAIN IN PRUDENTIUS’ PERISTEPHANON
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2021
Abstract
Within Prudentius’ Peristephanon there are three main episodes which focus upon the torture and/or death of women: the torture and death of Eulalia in Perist. 3, that of Encratis in Perist. 4 and the death of Agnes in Perist. 14. This article compares the variety and types of pain that these women are depicted as undergoing during their martyrdoms, analysing the extent to which gender and sexuality play a role in their responses to pain or to the threat of it. The article first examines the martyrdoms of Agnes and Eulalia and uses these as a basis for analysing the torture of Encratis who is depicted as suffering the most pain and who, even more than the other two, is represented as a liminal figure, not only in terms of gender but also in terms of her status as a living being. A comparison and contrast between Prudentius’ representation of Encratis and his depiction of Loth's wife in his Hamartigenia will give further insight into the significance of Encratis’ suffering and the way in which the slow and painful decay of her flesh links her with the city she protects. It will be shown how the vulnerability of these martyrs’ female flesh and the threatened or actualized violation of their virginal bodies are rendered at once shocking and their source of triumph over traumatic pain.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association
Footnotes
I wish to express my gratitude to the anonymous referees for their helpful comments on this article and to thank Professor Bruce Gibson at CQ for assistance with its final stages.
References
1 For Eulalia and Encratis, Prudentius provides the first written evidence: Palmer, A.-M., Prudentius on the Martyrs (Oxford, 1989), 239–42Google Scholar. There are a few sources for Agnes that pre-date Prudentius’ poem on her: a ten-line hexameter inscription by Damasus (Trout 37 = PLL 13), some allusions in Ambrose's De uirginibus, which is thought to have been based on three sermons composed in honour of the saint, and an incidental reference in his De officiis ministrorum 1.41.203. There is also a hymn in honour of Agnes attributed to Ambrose but of doubtful authenticity. See further Trout, D., Damasus of Rome: The Epigraphic Poetry: Introduction, Texts, Translations and Commentary (Oxford, 2015), 150–2Google Scholar, Palmer (this note), 250–1, J.H.D. Scourfield, ‘Violence and the Christian heroine: two narratives of desire’, in M.R. Gale and J.H.D. Scourfield (edd.), Texts and Violence in the Roman World (Cambridge, 2018), 309–37, at 327 and H. Jones, ‘Agnes and Constantia: domesticity and cult patronage in the Passion of Agnes’, in K. Cooper and J. Hillner (edd.), Religion, Dynasty, and Patronage in Early Christian Rome (Cambridge and New York, 2007), 115–39, at 123.
2 For both Eulalia and Agnes, adherence to virginity is the reason they are martyred. Prudentius does not state why Encratis was tortured, but he does refer to her as uiolenta uirgo (111) when he introduces her in Perist. 4.
3 On the evolution and growing importance of virginity from the third to the fourth centuries, see Malamud, M., ‘Making a virtue of perversity: the poetry of Prudentius’, Ramus 19 (1989), 64–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 70, Burrus, V., ‘Word and flesh: the bodies and sexuality of ascetic women in Christian antiquity’, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 10 (1994), 27–51Google Scholar, at 44–5 and Cameron, Averil, ‘Virginity as a metaphor: women and the rhetoric of early Christianity’, in Cameron, Averil (ed.), History as Text: The Writing of Ancient History (London 1989), 181–205Google Scholar, at 190.
4 Riposati, B., ‘La struttura degli inni alle tre vergini martiri del Peristephanon di Prudenzio’, in Cantalamessa, R. and Pizzolato, L.F. (edd.), Paradoxos politeia: studi patristici in onore di Giuseppe Lazzati (Milan, 1979), 25–41Google Scholar analyses the structural and narrative similarities between Prudentius’ accounts of these virgin martyrs. While he identifies many similarities between them, he acknowledges that the martyrdom of Encratis is the least similar to the other two (at 25) and that, even with Eulalia and Agnes, the manner of their deaths is quite different (at 30). The poems are also in quite different metres: Perist. 3 is in dactylic trimeter hypercatalectic, Perist. 4 in Sapphics, and Perist. 14 in Alcaic hendecasyllables.
5 Chew, C., ‘The representation of violence in the Greek novels and martyr accounts’, in Panayotakis, S., Zimmerman, M. and Keulen, W. (edd.), The Ancient Novel and Beyond (Leiden and Boston, 2003), 129–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 132.
6 There have been various studies on the representation of pain in ancient literature, e.g. Budelmann, F., ‘The reception of Sophocles’ representation of physical pain’, AJPh 128 (2007), 443–67Google Scholar and D. King, Experiencing Pain in Imperial Greek Culture (Oxford, 2018), on the representation of pain in medical and literary texts such as Lucian and Aristides. There have also been studies of pain in relation to Christianity and martyrdom: S. Elm, ‘Roman pain and the rise of Christianity’, in S. Elm and S.N. Willich (edd.), Quo Vadis Medical Healing: Past Concepts and New Approaches (New York, 2009), 41–53, J. Perkins, The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation in the Early Christian Era (London and New York, 1995), but neither of these works mentions Prudentius. And while there are an increasing number of works devoted to Prudentius’ Peristephanon—e.g. Palmer (n. 1), M. Roberts, Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs: The Liber Peristephanon of Prudentius (Ann Arbor, 1993), C. O'Hogan, Prudentius and the Landscapes of Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2016)—these do not give focussed attention to the role of pain and suffering in Prudentius’ martyr narratives. Indeed, L.S. Cobb, Divine Deliverance: Pain and Painlessness in Early Christian Martyr Texts (Oakland, 2017) argues that pain is not a significant element in early Christian martyr narratives, including Prudentius’; her argument receives more attention below.
7 L. Grig, Making Martyrs in Late Antiquity (London, 2004), 80; Jones (n. 1), 121.
8 See further Petruccione, J., ‘The portrait of St. Eulalia of Mérida in Prudentius’ Peristephanon 3’, AB 108 (1990), 81–104Google Scholar, at 84–5, Palmer (n. 1), 240, Malamud (n. 3), 70 and V. Burrus, ‘Reading Agnes: the rhetoric of gender in Ambrose and Prudentius’, JECS 3 (1995), 25–46, at 33.
9 Although we know that Prudentius released his poems in a collected edition in some form in a.d. 405, there is no certainty either about the order in which he composed his poems or about the order in which he arranged individual poems in the Peristephanon (the modern numeration was established in Sichard's 1527 edition); on this, see Palmer (n. 1), 87–8, O'Hogan (n. 6), 14. There is thus no reason to examine the female martyrs in the order in which they appear in the Peristephanon (Eulalia, Encratis, Agnes); a more productive approach is to analyse the two female martyrs who are most similar (Agnes and Eulalia) and then contrast them with the martyr who is the most unusual (Encratis).
10 Of the six poems which have extensive scenes of torture (Perist. 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10), in three the martyrs react to pain in a positive manner, even making jokes (2.406–9, 3.142, 5.125), and in three the martyrs externalize the pain to their bodies, denying that it penetrates their souls (3.91–5, 5.153–60, 10.518–20). Cobb (n. 6), who argues that pain is not a ‘locus of meaning’ in early Christian martyr narratives, briefly acknowledges the pain of Encratis, but dismisses it as not ‘central to the meaning of martyrdom’ (117); in the course of this paper I shall demonstrate that this claim is not correct.
11 A confessor was deemed to be someone who had confessed Christ publicly during a time of persecution and kept fast to their faith despite being subjected to hardship (e.g. torture, imprisonment), while a martyr was someone who underwent death for their faith. There was, however, some slippage between these terms in Late Antiquity; see Grig (n. 7), 105–6.
12 See Palmer (n. 1), 155–7 and P.-Y. Fux, Les sept passions de Prudence (Peristephanon 2.5.9.11–14) (Fribourg, 2003), 468 on the militant figure of the virgin martyr.
13 All quotations from Prudentius are taken from M.P. Cunningham, Aurelii Prudentii Clementis Carmina (Turnhout, 1966). The quotations from pagan Latin texts are from OCT editions and the quotations from the Passio Perpetuae are from The Latin Library at http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/perp.html.
14 Grig (n. 7), 84 states that Agnes was ‘consistently acclaimed dually: as both a virgin and a martyr’, whose double virtue ‘made Agnes especially effective as an intercessor, that is, especially effective in obtaining a supplicant's demands before God’. Prudentius seems particularly keen to stress Agnes’ virginity, even more than Eulalia's and Encratis’. In line 8 he employs the rare and archaic term uirginal (Fux [n. 12], ad loc.), emphasizing the term with the adjective intactum which is separated from the noun and placed at the beginning of the line.
15 M. Malamud, A Poetics of Transformation: Prudentius and Classical Mythology (Ithaca and London, 1989), 151, Fux (n. 12), ad loc.
16 Cf. Perist. 10.518–19, where Romanus tells the torturer: fac ut resecto debilis carnis situ | dolore ab omni mens supersit libera.
17 This is best illustrated by Ausonius’ Cento nuptialis, where the act of defloration is assimilated to being killed by a spear (117–21). Cf. also Claud. Nupt. Hon. et Mar. 4.5–15, 4.25–9, August. De civ. D. 6.9. G. Clark, ‘Bodies and blood: late antique debate on martyrdom, virginity and resurrection’, in D. Montserrat (ed.), Changing Bodies, Changing Meanings: Studies on the Human Body in Antiquity (London and New York, 1998), 99–115, at 107 observes that ‘Christians inherited a discourse of sexuality as invasive and violent. Intercourse, especially first intercourse, was thought to make a woman's blood flow.’ In Perist. 14 Prudentius’ use of the term uim in line 78 may also suggest rape but, in conjunction with Agnes identifying herself as a bride of Christ in the following line (nupta Christo, 79), more likely evokes the notion that marriage involved violence. That this perception of Roman marriage persisted into Late Antiquity is attested by Macrobius who observes that the virgin on her wedding seemed to experience a form of uis (nuptiae, in quibus uis fieri uirgini uidetur, Sat. 1.15.21). On this, see also S. Undheim, Borderline Virginities, Sacred and Secular Virgins in Late Antiquity (Oxford and New York, 2018), 54.
18 Catull. 61.56–9: tu fero iuueni in manus | floridam ipse puellulam | dedis a gremio suae | matris; cf. also Catull. 62.21–4. See further V. Panoussi, Brides, Mourners, Bacchae: Women's Rituals in Roman Literature (Baltimore, 2019), 23–8, on the sexual violence inherent in these wedding hymns of Catullus; Panoussi suggests that such allusions contain echoes of the raptio practised in early Roman marriage ceremonies (the pretence of snatching a bride from her mother's arms), a rite that was linked to the legendary rape of the Sabine women (19).
19 Malamud (n. 15), 169–70, Grig (n. 7), 83, Burrus (n. 8), 36, Clark (n. 17), 104. On the eroticization of virgins and ascetic women in the writings of the Church Fathers, see E. Castelli, ‘Virginity and its meaning for women's sexuality in early Christianity’, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 2 (1986), 61–88, at 71–2.
20 For precedents for this sort of imagery in pagan literature, see Livy's account of the deaths of Lucretia (1.58–9) and Verginia (3.48), and Joplin, P.K., ‘Ritual work on human flesh: Livy's Lucretia and the rape of the body politic’, Helios 17 (1990), 51–70Google Scholar, at 67: ‘In both the Lucretia and Verginia narratives, the pierced, lifeless corpse of a female is paraded through the streets, her “wound” openly exposed. The “stab to the heart,” the showable wound, serves as a double for the vagina, the natural opening that must be covered.’
21 Scourfield (n. 1), 333.
22 The Passio Perpetuae states that, after being tossed by a wild heifer, Perpetua was ‘rather mindful of her chastity than of her pain’ (pudoris potius memor quam doloris, 20.4).
23 Passio Perpetuae 21.9.
24 Virgil describes Dido's wound gurgling in her chest (Aen. 4.689), her struggle to raise herself (4.690), her groan at the light of heaven (4.692), and her ‘long pain and difficult departure’ (longum … dolorem | difficilisque obitus, 4.693–4). The death of Camilla is represented as less painful, but Virgil still describes how the spear drinks her maiden's blood (11.804), how she tries in vain to extract it from the deep wound (11.816–17), and Camilla herself refers to her wound as ‘bitter’ (uolnus acerbum, 11.823).
25 Cf. Aen. 4.705 of Dido: dilapsus calor atque in uentos uita recessit. Many scholars argue that, in having Agnes beheaded rather than stabbed through the chest, Prudentius denies her a masculine death and puts her back in her place as a female; see Burrus (n. 8), 41, Malamud (n. 15), 17, Grig (n. 7), 83. But it could also be claimed that in his poem Prudentius reverses, or at least throws into doubt, the usual gender expectations about these deaths. According to N. Loraux (transl. A. Forster), Tragic Ways of Killing a Woman (Cambridge, MA and London, 1987), 56–60, being stabbed in the chest is usually a death for male heroes but Agnes’ speech has explicitly feminized it with her comparison to defloration in marriage; moreover, her swift beheading means that her body is not violated as Eulalia's and Encratis’ are when their chests are exposed by the claw.
26 Vincent at Perist. 5.163–4 expresses similar sentiments.
27 J.N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (London, 1982), 151. But cf. C. Symm. 1.78: gremium penetrare puellae.
28 See Burrus (n. 3), 40, who cites Ambrose, Virg. 1.45.
29 It is not easy to determine the meaning of this term for—as P.-Y. Fux, Prudence et les martyrs: hymnes et tragédie (Peristephanon 1. 3–4. 6–8. 10): commentaire (Fribourg, 2013), ad loc. observes—the adjective is rarely applied to people's bodies, but at Ter. Eun. 316 it is employed of girls who are so slender that they have lost their feminine characteristics; cf. also Auson. Ep. 14.46. See also J. Clarke, ‘Bridal songs: Catullan epithalamia and Prudentius Peristephanon 3’, Antichthon 40 (2006), 89–103, at 98: ‘An unusual word, appearing only here in Prudentius, it [iuncea] is used of Eulalia's chest with the metaphorical meaning “slender” but literally means “made from rushes” (OLD s.v. def. 1). As the executioners cut into her chest, iuncea in combination with dilacerant calls to mind the cutting or tearing of a plant.’
30 ‘[T]he vociferous young saint is becoming not simply a text, but a text that reads and interprets itself, thus neatly eliminating the problems of difference and interpretation’: Malamud (n. 3), 78. Thus the fact that Eulalia is her own narrator/reader removes any ambiguity in the message that her body/text is transmitting. On Eulalia's body as text, see also J. Ross, ‘Dynamic writing and martyrs’ bodies in Prudentius’ Peristephanon’, JECS 3 (1995), 325–55, at 343–4.
31 OLD s.v. 2b; TLL 10.2.2710.66–2711.11. See also J. André, Étude sur les termes de couleur dans la langue latine (Paris, 1949), 97.
32 A. Blaise and H. Chirat, Dictionnaire latin-français des auteurs chrétiens. Revu spécialement pour le vocabulaire théologique (Strasbourg, 1954), s.v.; TLL 10.2.2711.11–18.
33 OLD s.v. 3; TLL 10.2.2701.8–65, 10.2.2703.56–2704.26 and André (n. 31), 91. Prudentius himself uses purpura to denote cloth at Perist. 10.512.
34 John 19:2 and 19:5. Cf. Romanus at Perist. 10.909–10, whose purple blood bathes him like a garment: cruenti pectoris spectat decus | fruiturque et ostro uestis ut iam regiae.
35 On Eulalia and her torture as imitatio Christi, see I. Fielding, ‘The virgin martyr and the uerbum dei in Prudentius Peristephanon 3’, C&M 64 (2013), 269–85, at 277–8.
36 A. Rousselle (transl. F. Pheasant), Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity (Oxford, 1988), 33: ‘The anatomical errors made by the Roman doctors, which were contested by Soranus of Ephesus, himself from the Greek world, could only be the result of girls being deflowered before puberty, as he repeatedly pointed out to these physicians. These Roman doctors imagined that the vagina was completely sealed internally and that this, plus the hymen, made the first act of intercourse very painful. According to this theory the man had the privilege of opening up the passage for the menses.’
37 Cobb, in contrast, argues that it is not clear that Eulalia's body experiences pain when she is being tortured and that, in any case, the experience of the body, which is different from that of the spirit, is ‘cast as insignificant’: Cobb (n. 6), 68. But this does not take into account the way in which Eulalia's torture is associated with the painful and bloody act of defloration; Eulalia's body undergoes pain, as virgins did on their wedding nights. And even if Eulalia declares that her body is fragile and easy to destroy, this does not imply that the experience of her body is ‘insignificant’. As Clark (n. 17), 106 observes, ‘The martyr may be shown declaring that what is done to his or her body does not affect the soul, but the suffering of the body is of central importance.’ See also Scourfield (n. 1), 318 on this contradiction.
38 Malamud (n. 3), 78, Petruccione (n. 8), 99.
39 Cf. Aen. 12.35–6, Hor. Carm. 3.13.6–8, Ov. Met. 4.51–2, 6.527–30. On these last two, see also C.C. Rhorer, ‘Red and white in Ovid's Metamorphoses: the mulberry tree in the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe’, Ramus 9 (1980), 79–88, at 82–4.
40 Malamud (n. 3), 78.
41 R. Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice (Farnham and Burlington, 2009), 72–3.
42 J. Elsner, ‘Introduction: the genres of ekphrasis’, Ramus 31 (2002), 1–18, at 2.
43 Ross (n. 30), 343–4.
44 For the application of paint to marble statues as an ‘integral part of the finishing process’ and for the representation of blood on a statue, see M. Bradley, ‘The importance of colour on ancient marble sculpture’, Art History 32 (2009), 427–57, at 438 and 441 respectively. The metaphorical transformation of Eulalia into a statue would provide an ironic twist, as earlier in the poem Eulalia has castigated the pagans for worshipping stone statues (69, 82) and, in her ultimate act of defiance, scatters the pagan images (128–9). But, while Prudentius condemns pagan works of art such as statues (C. Symm. 1.433–1), he also acknowledges their beauty (C. Symm. 1.501–5), sharing the views of other Christian writers, such as Augustine and Paulinus of Nola, that art can serve a useful purpose for the Church provided that a written inscription removes any possibility of an ambiguous interpretation; see further O'Hogan (n. 6), 135–53.
45 Roberts (n. 6), 28 observes: ‘The poem is unusual as the only one in the collection that owes its structure to the enumerative principles of epideictic rather than to the temporal and spatial criteria of narration and description’; he labels it a laus urbis, while Fux (n. 29), 108 states that the poem is ‘à la manière des catalogues épiques’, and observes that its narrative elements are incidental and fragmentary (at 111).
46 TLL 10.1.2506.5–28; cf. Perist. 6.94, Apoth. 85.
47 The adjective amarus can also be used of soil that is salty or bitter; cf. Verg. G. 2.238, Plin. HN 17.33. In the Peristephanon the term sulcus is quite commonly employed of a martyr's wounds (cf. 5.338, 9.77, 10.448, 10.550, 10.1127) and often this word suggests the fertility which ploughing engenders; see Ross (n. 30), 349. But Encratis’ ‘bitter furrows’ are, by implication, unfertile.
48 For taeter used of the stench of corpses, cf. Caes. BCiv. 3.49.2, Lucr. 2.415.
49 In this way, Encratis’ story leads naturally on from Vincent's, whose victories in Perist. 4 Prudentius equates with victories in the wrestling ground (101–4).
50 For the Roman belief that uirtus was ‘fundamentally a man's rather than a woman's quality’ and that women who perform acts of uirtus ‘act like men’, see C.A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality (Oxford and New York, 20102), 145–6. While Prudentius employs uirtus in general of martyrs in the Peristephanon (1.49, 1.106, 13.39) and applies the term also to specific male martyrs (the soldiers Emeterius and Chelidonius at 1.33, Vincent at 5.426 and 5.572), this is the only time he employs it of a female martyr; he does not use it of Eulalia or Agnes. The use of this term to introduce Encratis in Perist. 4 also links her more closely with Vincent, whose uirtutes Prudentius has alluded to eight lines earlier at 102.
51 See above on the instability of Agnes’ gendered sexuality and the contrast between Eulalia's fierce spirit and girlish body. See also D. Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, 1999), 75 on the ambiguous construction of the sexuality of female martyrs in texts of the fourth century.
52 According to Chew (n. 5), 136–9, scenes of torture both of female martyrs and of heroines of Greek novels often involve the mutilation or excision of a breast. This is usually associated with an assault on their chastity, as with the story of the martyrdom of Agatha who is first made to reside with a procuress and then has her breast twisted off (at 136). Such metaphorical sexual violence enacted upon women of good reputation has a shock value that contributes to the drama of these texts (at 137–8).
53 For the association between the plucking of flowers and the shedding of blood, cf. Ov. Met. 9.342–5.
54 inuidus quamuis obitum supremum | persecutoris gladius negarit, 133–4.
55 Prudentius uses uenenum and its cognates both for serpents as the symbol of the Devil (e.g. Perist. 14.112–15) and for those who are in league with the Devil, such as persecutors (Perist. 5.191–2); as Fux (n. 29), ad loc. observes, ‘uenenatos suggère une intervention diabolique’.
56 For medulla used to denote the innermost part of the body (OLD s.v. 2; TLL 8.600.21), cf. Perist. 1.108, 13.14. The term is frequently employed in descriptions of the effects of poisoning or putrefaction of a body; see TLL 8.600.355–44.
57 Roberts (n. 6), 57.
58 In this respect, Prudentius’ choice of the verb tenuat here might be deliberate, for it can be used to refer to the drawing out of wool in spinning (OLD s.v. 1b), for instance at Manilius 4.131, Stat. Achil. 1.581; for the term applied metaphorically to the ‘spinning’ of song, see Prop. 3.1.5. For the deeply rooted association between wool-working and female storytelling in Graeco-Roman society, see J. Heath, ‘Women's work: female transmission of mythical narrative’, TAPhA (2011), 69–104, at 72–7. Heath comments that ‘the most poignant association between spinning and a narrative—the “span” of a human life—is to be found in the Fates’ (72). In the Graeco-Roman mindset there is thus a nexus between wool-spinning, the human lifespan and the events that constitute the person's life; cf. Catull. 64.338–71. The span of Encratis’ life will be cut short by the unravelling of her body, but the story that she narrates of her body's sufferings will endure because she has managed to ‘spin out’ a tale that will be passed on (line 117).
59 Roberts (n. 6), 57.
60 narraui et illud nobile ac memorabile | certamen, una matre quod septem editi | gessere pueri, sed tamen factis uiri, 751–3. Ballengee, J.R., The Wound and the Witness: The Rhetoric of Torture (Albany, 2009), 118Google Scholar notes that this mother's tale has structural and thematic echoes of Prudentius’ own narrative songs.
61 Fux (n. 29), ad loc.
62 Dykes, A., Reading Sin in the World: The Hamartigenia of Prudentius and the Vocation of the Responsible Reader (Cambridge, 2011), 92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63 … quantumque armenta saporum | attenuant saxum tantum lambentibus umor | sufficit …, 751–3. Although lingere was more commonly used to describe the use of the tongue to stimulate the sexual organs, lambere could also be employed in this sense (cf. Juv. 1.2.49–50, Mart. 2.61.2, 3.81.1–2) and seems to have been favoured by Ausonius in his epigrams to denote fellatio or cunnilingus: 78.1, 82.2, 83.1, 86.1; note especially 87.8, which plays upon the Greek character lambda and the obscene sense of lambere.
64 Philo states that Loth's wife looked back because she loved Sodom, thus reverting to the nature that had been overthrown by God (Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis, 3.213), while Jerome (Ep. 22.2) cites her story as a warning against sexual promiscuity. Ambrose in his De uirginibus presents a comparatively more positive version of her, implying that, although she herself was chaste, she chose to look back at what was unchaste (2.29); J.B. Snyder, ‘Looking back at Lot's wife: a reception-critical character study’ (Diss., Emory University, 2016), 210 argues that her choice ‘is tantamount to identifying with the crimes of the Sodomites’. In the Hamartigenia the association of Loth's wife with original sin and loss of chastity is strengthened, because—according to Malamud, M., ‘Writing original sin’, JECS 10 (2002), 329–60Google Scholar, at 354—she is ‘adduced in the text in the first place in order to stand as a figure for Eve’.
65 For the association of cultus with a proclivity to take lovers, see Prop. 1.2.1–6, 1.2.19–26 and the discussion by L.C. Curran, ‘“Nature to advantage dressed”: Propertius 1.2’, Ramus 4 (1975), 1–16, at 13. While elaborate hairstyles or the use of cosmetics were not merely restricted to courtesans, such practices were often portrayed in Graeco-Roman literature as markers of unchastity or moral corruption; see further M. Wyke, ‘Woman in the mirror: the rhetoric of adornment in the Roman world’, in L.J. Archer, S. Fischler and M. Wyke (edd.), Women in Ancient Societies (London, 1994), 134–51, at 135–7. This notion continued into Christian texts: cf. Ambrose, Virg. 1.28–9. In the Hamartigenia—as M. Malamud, The Origin of Sin (Ithaca and London, 2011), 152 observes—Loth's wife has many similarities with the ‘made up woman’ whom Prudentius castigated earlier at lines 258–78, a woman whose carefully cultivated external appearance conceals a ‘tide of sin’ within.
66 Burrus (n. 3), 36.
67 The portrayal of the pillar of salt as living also occurs in other texts: cf. Ps.-Cyprian, De Sodoma, where the pillar even menstruates (123–6); see further Snyder (n. 64), 216–18.
68 Malamud (n. 64), 356.
69 On the soteriological significance of the martyrs of Caesaraugusta, see Petruccione, J., ‘The martyr death as sacrifice: Prudentius, Peristephanon 4.9–72’, VChr 49 (1995), 245–57Google Scholar, especially 252.
70 Commentators disagree about which part of the body iecur denotes here; Petruccione, J., ‘The persecutor's envy and the rise of the martyr cult: Peristephanon Hymns 1 and 4’, VChr 45 (1991), 327–46Google Scholar, at 338 argues that it is a piece of liver, while Fux (n. 29), ad loc. states that the term is used metonymically for the breast. Prudentius’ allusion at line 123 to the severing of Eulalia's breast by the claw would tend to support Fux's interpretation.
71 Cf. Petruccione (n. 70), 340.