Mergis

I wanted to add a little bit more after my goofy little post earlier as I was reminded of something that I had previously made note of when reading today's lines.  In line 90, the poem states "staining our bodies, you plunge our souls into Tartarus."  I like the use of the verb mergo, mergere here which as we know means "to plunge or to dive."  Having just given a presentation in Dr Ault's Greek Urbanism class on Paestum, I was hit by a comparison to the infamous Tomb of the Diver.  What is interesting here is that the interpretation of the the scene on the top of the tomb is up for debate.  One interpretation is that the diving individual represents the athletic pursuits of the deceased from his lifetime.  A different interpretation however, is that the deceased is diving, taking the plunge so to speak, from the world of the living into the world of the dead, Tartarus.  This is what struck me as interesting about this specific verb being used here.  The Tomb of the Diver dates from the 5th century BC, so perhaps we are encountering here a long running theme.  I feel as though Prudentius could have easily used iacere or the like has he has done in many of the preceding lines of the poem, but he specifically chose mergere, creating a very specific image in the mind of the reader.