Giuseppe Morelli

SUMMARY: Prudentius ({ ca. 410) mentions the Saturnini, a group of martyrs at Saragozza in the early 4th century, stating that the ancients (prisca vetustas) gave them this epithet (Peristephanon, 4, 161-64). How a poet, writing around A.D. 400 could speak about prisca vetustas for martyrs, who died less than a hundred years before, is explained by this paper. Prudentius’ lines are an erudite allusion, reminiscent of the metrists and grammarians Terentianus Maurus and Aphtonius, who refer prisca and vetustas not to the martyrs Saturnini, but to the old Latin verse saturnius.