To this custom Prudentius refers in his hymn for Hippolytus day.
Prudentius, for instance, is called as an historical witness, yet convicted of fable in much of what he says.
It is scarcely known, says Prudentius, how full Rome is of buried saints—how richly her soil abounds in holy sepulchres.
Prudentius was a layman, a native of Saragossa, and it was in the Spanish ritual that his hymns were most largely used.
Prudentius spins out the story into two hundred and fifteen lines, with endless rhetorical and poetical amplification.
