Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, a Latin poet, born in Spain in A. D. 348, died early in the 5th century. He was a lawyer, became a civil and criminal judge, and was appointed to a high military station at court. In his later years he devoted himself to religious exercises and study. His extant poems are: Proefatio, giving a catalogue of his works up to his 57th year, with a brief autobiography; Cathemeri-non Liber, 12 sacred hymns, some of which have been inserted in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic church; Apotheosis, maintaining the divinity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity; Hamartigenia, on the origin of sin, directed against the Marcionites; Psychoma-chia, representing the struggle between virtue and vice in the soul, and the triumph of the former; Contra Symmachum Liber I., an account of the conversion of Rome, with an exposure of the folly of the ancient religion; Contra Symmachum Liber II., a refutation of the argument of Symmachus in his petition to the emperor Valentinian; Peri Stephanon Liber, 14 poems in honor of martyred saints; Diptychon or Dittochoeon, 48 poems in heroic hexameters, 24 describing events and characters in the Old Testament, and 24 in the New, about the authenticity of which there has been much controversy; and the Epilogus. The earliest dated edition of his works is that of Deventer (1472); the best is that of Faustus Arevalus (2 vols. 4to, Rome, 1788-'9). His works are also published in vols. lix. and lx. of Migne's Patrologie latine. - See Bayle, Ca-themerinon, traduit et annoté, avec une étude sur Prudence (8vo, Paris, 1860).