Prudentius

Aurelius Prudentius Clemens was born in 348 in the north of Spain, probably at Saragossa. After holding public offices he withdrew from secular life and devoted himself to Christian verse; he died about 413. In the Preface to his poems, here given in Pope's English, he looks back over a life of fifty-seven years and offers his verse to God as the fruit of his old age.

The Cathemerinon, 'Hymns for the Christian's Day', is a cycle of twelve hymns for the hours of the day and the feasts of the Christian year, from cock-crow to the Epiphany. It is given here in R. Martin Pope's Temple Classics translation of 1905, with its Preface and Epilogue. One of John Brownlie's 1896 versions of a breviary hymn drawn from his verse is added.