I
1 Of this poem lines 1-8, 81-84, 97-100, were included in the Roman
Breviary as a hymn to be sung at Lauds, on Tuesday.
2 The allusions to the cock in this and the following poem (ii. 37-55)
were doubtless inspired by the lines of Ambrose in his morning hymn
beginning _Aeterne rerum conditor_. Cf. ll. 5-8 and 16-24:
_"praeco diei iam sonat
noctis profundae pervigil,
nocturna lux viantibus
a nocte noctem segregans._
* * * * *
_surgamus ergo strenue:
gallus iacentes excitat,
et somnolentos increpat:
gallus negantes arguit._
_gallo canente spes redit,
aegris salus refunditur,
mucro latronis conditur,
lapsis fides revertitur."_
_Translation._
"Dawn's herald now begins to cry,
Lone watcher of the nightly sky:
Light of the dark to pilgrims dear,
Speeding successive midnights drear.
* * * * *
Brisk from our couch let us arise!
Hark to the cock's arousing cries!
He chides the sluggard's slumbrous ease,
And shames his unconvincing pleas.
At cock-crow Hope revives again,
Health banishes the stress of pain,
Sheathed is the nightly robber's sword,
And Faith to fallen hearts restored."
See also Ambrose, _Hexaem._, v. 24, for an eloquent passage in
the same strain. The cock was the familiar Christian symbol of early
rising or vigilance, and numerous representations of it are found in
the Catacombs. Cf. the painting from the Catacomb of St. Priscilla
reproduced in Bottari's folio of 1754, where the Good Shepherd is
depicted as feeding the lambs, with a crowing cock on His right and
left hand. It is also a symbol of the Resurrection, our Lord being
supposed to have risen from the grave at the early cockcrowing: see
l. 65 _et seq._ In l. 16 the first bird-notes are interpreted
by the poet as a summons to the general judgment. Cf. Mark xiii. 35:
"Ye know not when the lord of the house cometh, whether at even, or
at midnight, or _at cockcrowing_, or in the morning." This
passage serves as a kind of text for Prudentius' first two hymns,
and perhaps explains why he has one for cockcrowing and another for
morning.
26 A common idea in all literatures. Cf. Virg., _Aen._, vi. 278
(taken from Homer), _tum consanguineus Leti Sopor_, and Tennyson's
"Sleep, Death's twin-brother" (_In Memoriam_, 68).
44 Cf. Augustine, _Serm._ 103: "These evil spirits seek to seduce
the soul: but when the sun has arisen, they take to flight."
59 The denial of Peter forms a subject of Christian casuistry in
patristic literature, and this passage recalls the famous classical
parallel in Euripides (_Hipp._ 612), "the tongue hath sworn: yet
unsworn is the heart." Cf. Augustine, _cont. mendacium_: "In that
denial he held fast the truth in his heart, while with his lips he
uttered falsehood." For a striking representation of Peter and the
cock, on a sarcophagus discovered in the Catacombs and now deposited
in the Vatican library, see Maitland's _Church in the Catacombs_,
p. 347. The closing words of the passage in Ambrose's _Hexaemeron_,
already referred to under l. 2, may here be quoted: "As the cock
peals forth his notes, the robber leaves his plots: Lucifer himself
awakes and lights up the sky: the distressful sailor lays aside his
gloom, and all the storms and tempests that have risen in fury under
the winds of the evening begin to die down: the soul of the saint
leaps to prayer and renews the study of the written word: and
finally, the very Rock of the Church is cleansed of the stain he had
contracted by his denials before the cock crew."
81 ff. The best commentary on these words is to be found in the
following passage from the second epistle of Basil to Gregory
Nazianzen: "What can be more blessed than to imitate on earth the
angelic host by giving oneself at the peep of dawn to prayer and by
turning at sunrise to work with hymns and songs: yea, all the day
through to make prayer the accompaniment of our toils and to season
them with praise as with salt? For the solace of hymns changes the
soul's sadness into mirth."