Our acquaintance with the personal history of Prudentius, whom Bentley has designated as "the Horace and Virgil of the Christians," is derived exclusively from a short autobiography in verse, written when the poet was fifty-seven years old, and serving as an introduction to his works, of which it contains a catalogue. From this we gather that he was born during the reign of Constantius II. and Constans, in the consulship of Philippus and Salia, A. D. 348; that after acquiring, when a boy, the rudiments of liberal education, he fiequented, as a youth, the schools of the rhetoricians, indulging freely in dissipated pleasures ; that having attained to manhood, he practised as a forensic pleader; that he subsequently discharged the duties of a civil and criminal judge in two important cities; that he received front the emperor (Theodosius, probably, or Honorius), a high military appointment at court, which placed him in a station next to that of the prince, and that as he advanced in years, he became deeply sensible of the emptiness of worldly honour, and earnest in his devotion to the exercises of religion. Of his career after A. D. 405, or of the epoch of his death, we know nothing, for the praises of Stilicho, who suffered the penalty of his treason in 413, indicate that the piece in which they appear (C. Symm. ii.) must have been published before that date, but can lead to no inference with regard to the decease of the author.
The above notices are expressed with so much brevity, and in terms so indefinite, that a wide field has been thrown open to critics for the exercise of ingenious learning in expanding and interpreting them. Every thing, however, beyond what we have stated, rests upon conjecture. We may, indeed, safely conclude that Prudentius was a Spaniard (see especially Peristeph. 6.146); but the assertions with regard to the place of his birth, rest upon no sure foundation; for although he speaks of the inhabitants of Saragossa (Peristeph. 4.1. comp. 97.) as "noster populus," he uses elsewhere the self-same phrase with regard to Rome (C. Symm. 1.192, comp. 36), and applies the same epithet to Calahorra (Peristeph. 1.116, 4.31), and to Tarragona (Peristeph. 6.143). In like manner the attempts to ascertain the towns in which he discharged his judicial functions, and to determine the nature of the dignity to which he was eventually elevated, have proved entirely abortive. With regard to the latter, Gennadius concludes that he was what was called a Palatinus miles, i. e. an officer of the household (Cod. Theod. 6. tit. 37), and certainly it is highly improbable that he ever was employed in active service; others imagine that he was consul, or praefect of the city -- or of the praetorium-- or that he was raised to the rank of patrician -- opinions unsupported by even plausible arguments, and therefore not worth confuting.
[W.R]