amiliar 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 bes