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 It is the halo of glory surrounding these martyrs or confessors that especially strikes the historian. We see in these popular poems what a profound, what a lasting impression the sufferings of the martyrs had made on the peoples of the Roman Empire. The saint-sufferers, men or women, became soon an object of something more than reverence.

The heroic personages of Prudentius belong to no one land, to no solitary nationality. Nowhere was the truth of the well-known saying that "the blood of the martyr was the seed of the Church" more conspicuously exemplified than in the songs of Prudentius. It has been remarked with great force and truth that in the burning lilts of this great Spanish poet of the later years of the fourth century, we must perforce recognize something more than the inspiration of a solitary individual. We seem to hear in his impassioned words the echoes of the voice of the people.