Prudentius, Liber Peristephanon

prunas maniplis confovere stuppeis '

to warm the coals with handfuls of tow

et semen ignis inter undas quaerere.

and to seek the seed of fire amid the waters.

quod cum tumenti nuntiatum iudici,

When this was reported to the judge, swelling with rage,

commovit 1 iram fellis inplacabilis:

it stirred the anger of his implacable gall:

‘quousque tandem summus hic nobis magus

'How long, pray, will this supreme magician

inludet,’ inquit, ‘Thessalorum carmine

make sport of us,' he said, 'with a Thessalian charm,

poenam peritus vertere in ludibrium?

skilled at turning punishment into a joke?

fortasse cervix, si secandam iussero

Perhaps his neck, if I order it, to be severed,

flecti sub ensem, non patebit vulneri:

to bend beneath the sword, will not lie open to the wound;

quo mage cruda hominum praecordia perpolita nossent

so that the raw hearts of men, once refined, might come to know

sive timoris opus seu mystica vel profunda Christi.

either the work of fear or the mystic and deep things of Christ.

unus erat iuvenum doctissimus artibus sinistris,

There was one among the young men most learned in sinister arts,

fraude pudicitiam perfringere, nil sacrum putare,

in breaking down chastity by fraud, in holding nothing sacred,

saepe etiam magicum cantamen inire per sepulcra,

often, too, in working a magic incantation among the tombs,

quo geniale tori ius solveret aestuante nupta,

by which he might undo the lawful bond of the marriage-bed, the bride inflamed with passion.

luxuriae rabiem tantae cohibet repente Christus,

The madness of such great lust Christ suddenly restrains;

discutit et tenebras de pectore, pellit et furorem,

he shakes the darkness from his breast and drives out the frenzy,

inplet amore sui, dat credere, dat pudere facti,

fills him with love of himself, grants him to believe, grants him to be ashamed of what he had done,

iamque figura alia est quam quae fuit oris et nitoris:

and now the look of his face and his elegance is other than it was: