Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/289

 a] EARLY LATIN CHRISTIAN POETRY 271 tion of names, places, and incidents. At last a poet makes a poem from the matter. Prudentius' imagi- native poetry fashions and universalizes events ; what- ever is unsuited to the type of man or occurrence is changed, and the narrative gains typical significance. For example. Hymn V tells the martyrdom of St. Vincent of Saragossa. The praetor, in order to persuade Vincent to abjure his faith, addresses him in words which give the poet's idea of what a Roman officer under such cir- cumstances would say to a martyr. All halting details are omitted and the matter is universalized. Vin- cent's answering theological defiance is treated in the same way; it is given just as — to the poet's imaginar tion — it must have been uttered. The poet may also sum up much fact and feeling in a line : spes ceHat et crudelitas. This was true, and, like the whole poem, conforms to the artistic verity of the Christian imagi- nation fashioning its heroic past. In the prison cell the martyr knows that Christ and his angels are with him ; and they cheer him ; which is true also, univer- sally and necessarily, like the rest of the poem. The tortures are told in full. The poem, in fine, is a typical picture of a martyrdom.^ The easy swing, the popular, spirited, and dramatic character of such a poem suggests the ballad form ; and indeed the hymn to Vincent, like that to St. Laurence, is a precursor of the ballad, the spirited, popular narrative poem, which tells an occurrence with vivid detail, but not with the breadth and copiousness and dignity which make an epic. The ballad metre Agnes, is another beautiful example of poetical recasting of legend.
 * The last (XIV) hymn of the Perigtephanon, in honor of St.