The English Moral Plays 329 
permit the contention to go on. Pride, the mother of vices, reminds 
the hearers that they are superior to most men in knowledge and 
position, and urges them to show a proper disdain for the lowly. 
But Humility at once interposes her warning. “Remember,” she 
admonishes, “that you are dust and ashes, a worm. Are you 
stronger than the first angel? ... If he for his pride fell from his seat 
of eminence, how can you, if proud, hope to rise thither from 
a lower level?”! In this debate, however, there is a dramatic 
movement that recalls us from the purely static exposition of Isidore 
and the sculptors to the action of the Psychomachia, and reminds 
the reader that in all these many versions of the one theme the 
influence of that poem is directly traceable. 
There was, though, a second method of presenting allegorically 
man’s inward struggle. Instead of risking their safety in the open 
field, the virtues, entrenched in their stronghold, the soul, resist the 
assault of the vices. This variation was especially popular with 
theologians in whom the moral inclination dominated the literary. 
To be sure, between the battle and the siege there is no essential 
distinction. The opening lines of the Psychomachia allude to such 
a siege, and Rutebeuf gave as much attention to one as to the 
other. But, since the fall of Jerusalem was commonly interpreted 
as an allegory of the downfall of the human soul before temptation, 
theologians were likely to select the siege as the fittest symbol of 
the nature of temptation.’ 
References more or less plain to the siege that the virtues are 
forced to undergo can be found in Cyprian and The Pastor of 
Hermas. But for a suggestion of action such as can make alle- 
gory of lifelike interest, one must turn again to Prudentius, who, 
even before writing the Psychomachia, had given in the Hamartigenia 
a dramatic sketch of the assault upon the soul. In that poem 
Prudentius traces the origin of evil, not to a god as did Marcion, 
but to a Satanic power whom he brands “the slave of hell.” It is 
he who with enticements to evil leads the assault upon the soul, 
like a powerful robber besetting the troubled minds of men. Ire, 
Superstition, Grief, Discord, and kindred vices lead his cohorts, 
while other forms, misshapen and terrifying, press to their aid. 
“Relying on such strength, the destroyer subdues the minds of men 
and beguiles them to bend their necks to the yoke.”* These 

1 See Patr. Lat., 83. 1131—44. 
2 Hugo de S. Victor, De Civitate Sancta Jerusalem, Patr. Lat., 177%. 
999-1003. 3 389—449. 
