Silvia Arrigoni: The “secondary biblical paraphrase” in Prudentius’ praefatio to the first book of the Contra Symmachum.

The works of Prudentius, one of the most important and influent Christian poet of Late Antiquity during the reign of the Theodosian family, are often indebted to the Bible, as the Apotheosis is a poem on the Trinity of God and the Hamartigenia concerns the “Origin of sin”, and there are several references to biblical episodes, especially in the praefationes to Hamartigenia, Psychomachia and the two books of the Contra Symmachum. In 1985, professor Michael Roberts called secondary biblical paraphrases “those contained in largely non-biblical works” (p. 104), but did not consider Prudentius’ praefationes in his comprehensive study.This paper will analyse in detail the preface to the first book of the Contra Symmachum, in which Saint Paul and his comrades make a shipwreck on Malta and a viper bites the apostle’s hand (Act. 27, 14-28, 6), comparing it with the biblical sources, that is the text of the so-called Vetus Latina presumably read by Prudentius and his contemporaries and trying to investigate in which way the poet rewrites the Bible. The text will also be compared with exegetical works on the Bible, such as those of Ambrose of Milan, who had a deep influence on the Spanish poet, and other texts dealing with the same passage of the Bible.