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 best commentary on these words is to be found in the
     following passage from the second epistle of Basil to Gregory
     Nazianzen:  “What can be more blessed than to imitate on earth the
     angelic host by giving oneself at the peep of dawn to prayer and by
     turning at sunrise to work with hymns and songs:  yea, all the day
     through to make prayer the accompaniment of our toils and to season
     them with praise as with salt?  For the solace of hymns changes the
     soul’s sadness into mirth.”

II

1 This poem furnishes two hymns to the Roman Breviary, one to be sung
     on Wednesday at Lauds, and consisting of ll. 1-8, 48-53 (omitting l.
     50), 57, 59, 60, 67 (tu vera lux caelestium) and 68:  the other
     for Thursday at Lauds, consisting of ll. 25 (lux ecce surgit
     aurea), 93-108.

17 Cf.  Ambrose, ii. 8, de Cain et Abel:  “The thief shuns the day
     as the witness of his crime:  the adulterer is abashed by the dawn
     as the accomplice of his adultery.”