own purpose and transfigured with new
     meaning a familiar figure.  The gradual transition from paganism
     to Christianity is curiously illustrated by the fact that in several
     of the Catacomb bas-reliefs and paintings the Good Shepherd holds in
     His outstretched hand a Pan’s pipe.  See Maitland’s Church in the
     Catacombs, p. 315, for a woodcut of the Good Shepherd with a lamb
     over His shoulders, two sheep at His feet, a palm tree (or poplar)
     on either side, and a Pan’s pipe in His right hand; and also the
     frontispiece for a reproduction from the Cemetery of St. Peter and
     St. Marcellinus.

IX

1 This hymn, which first introduced into sacred song the trochaic
     metre familiar in Greek Tragedy and the Latin adaptations of it,
     supplies the Moz.  Brev. with some stanzas for use during Holy Week. 
     The lines selected are 22-24, 1-21.

11 The use of the symbol O, (pronounced here as a single
     syllable), appears to indicate that the names Omega and Omikron
     came into use at a later date than Prudentius’ time.  In Rev. i. 8,
     the best MSS. read ego eimi to alpha kai to o.

33 The words vulnerum piamina are generally supposed to refer to
     the “gifts which Moses commanded” to be offered by those healed of
     leprosy (Lev. xiv. 2).  If so, Prudentius’ language may imply that
     the cure was not actually complete until the offering of these gifts,
     and is at variance with St. Matthew, viii. 43, “and forthwith his
     leprosy was cleansed.”  Probably, however, his idea is rather that
     the gifts to the priest formally marked the leper as a clean man.

71 Cf. note on iii. 199.

X

1 Parts of this hymn are used in the Moz.  Brev. in the Office of the
     Dead, being ll. 1-16, 45-48, 57-68, 157-168.

The burial rites of the primitive Church were simple, and marked by an absence of the ostentatious expression of grief which the pagan peoples displayed.  The general practice of cremation was rejected, partly owing to the new belief in the resurrection of the body, and partly from a desire to imitate the burial of the Lord.  At Rome, during the first three centuries, the dead were laid in the Catacombs, in which Prudentius took conspicuous interest (see Translator’s Note), but after 338 A.D. this practice became less frequent, and was completely abandoned after 410 A.D.  Elsewhere, from the earliest times, the Christians purchased special enclosures (areae), which were often attacked and rifled by angry mobs in the days of persecution.  The body was frequently embalmed (cf. ll. 51, 52), swathed in white linen (l. 49), and placed in a coffin; vigils and hymns continued for three or four days, but hired mourners were forbidden (l. 113), and instead of the dirges