Gaius Marius Victorinus

Background

Victorinus was African by birth. He left Africa for Rome (hence some modern scholars have dubbed him Afer).

Career

He lived during the reign of Constantius II. He taught rhetoric at Rome (one of his pupils being Jerome), and in his old age became a convert to Christianity. His conversion is said to have greatly influenced that of Augustine. When Julian published an edict forbidding Christians to lecture on polite literature, Victorinus closed his school. A statue was erected in his honour as a teacher in the Forum Trajanum. His translations of platonic writers are lost, but the treatise De Definitionibus is probably by him and not by Boetius, to whom it was formerly attributed. His manual of prosody, in four books, taken almost literally from the work of Aphthonius, is extant (H. Keil, Grammatici Latini, vi. ) . It is doubtful whether he is the author of certain other extant treatises attributed to him on metrical arid grammatical subjects, which will be found in Keil. His commentary on Cicero's De Inveniione (in Halm's Rhetores Latini Minores, 1863) is very diffuse, and is itself in need of commentary. His extant theological writings, which will be found in J. P. Migne, Cursus Patrologiae Latinae, viii. , include commentaries on Galatians, Ephesians and Philippians; De Trinitate contra Arium; Ad Justinum Manichaeum de Vera Came Chrisli] and a little tract on " The Evening and the Morning were one day " (the genuineness of the last two is doubtful). Some Christian poems under the name of Victorinus are probably not his.

Achievements

• He experienced the height of his career during the reign of Constantius II. He is also known for translating two of Aristotle's books from ancient Greek into Latin: the Categories and On Interpretation (De Interpretatione).

Works

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  • Christlicher Platonismus: Die theologischen Schriften des Marius Victorinus

Views

Quotations: "Since God is the cause of being, it can be said in a certain sense, that God truly is (vere ων), but this expression merely means that being is in God as an effect is in an eminent cause, which contains it though being superior to it. "