Last updated 10th July 2024: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2011
Marius Victorinus, fourth-century Rome's most distinguished professor of rhetoric, appears immediately as a definite personality to one who looks into his biography. So vividly has Augustine, in the eighth book of the Confessions, told the story of the old rhetor's conversion that he seems real flesh and blood. Yet a feeling of uneasiness soon takes possession of the investigator. The limits of Victorinus's life have not been established even in terms of broad approximation; and it is perhaps of some importance for understanding the character of the man and the times of which he is so pertinent a representative to know, for example, whether his youth and early manhood were passed in the atmosphere of Diocletian's persecutions or of Constantine's tolerant reign. I have tried, therefore, in this study to discover the means of determining at least approximately the date of his birth and of his death.
1 E.g., Bardenhewer, O., Gesch. d. altkirchl. Lit. III, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1912, pp. 460Google Scholar f.; Schanz-Hosius VIII2, iv, 1, 1914, pp. 149 f.; P. Wessner in P-W XIV, 1930, pp. 1840 f.; Benz, E., Marius Victorinus, Stuttgart, 1932, p. 6Google Scholar.
2 Monceaux, P., Hist. litt. de l'Afrique chrétienne III, Paris, 1905, p. 374Google Scholar; de Labriolle, P., Hist, de la litt. lat. chrétienne, Paris, 1924, p. 346Google Scholar.
3 The evidence for this date is analyzed and presented in full by Monceaux, op. cit. (see note 2), pp. 400 ff. It has been completely reexamined by Benz, op. cit. (see note 1), p. 7 (cf. pp. 31 ff.). The chief points are these. A certain terminus ante quern for Victorinus's conversion is provided by his Christian work Adversus Arium libri IV which, by internal evidence, can be placed in 359. The conversion took place somewhat before this date, however, since the Adversus Arium was preceded by at least four Christian works, namely, the extant De Generatione Divini Verbi (very shortly before the Adversus Arium), and the lost treatises on the Trinity, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. Therefore, even though Victorinus was a voluminous writer, two or three years at the least may be allowed for the production of these treatises. There are grounds for not placing the conversion earlier than reasonable allowance for the writing of these works would indicate, for both Jerome (De Viris Ill., 101; quoted in text, p. 83) and Augustine (Conf. 8, 2, 3; quoted in part in text, pp. 84–85) make Victorinus a very old man at the time of his conversion, and we know that he was still alive in 362 (Aug., Conf. 8, 5, 10; cf. text, p. 87). The soundness of this latter point is confirmed by the terminus post quem provided by Jerome, Chronicon, ad ann. 353 A.D.: Victorinus rhetor et Donatus grammaticus praeceptor meus Romae insignes habentur, e quibus Victorinus etiam statuam in Foro Traiani meruit. This marks a moment when Victorinus was at the height of his favor with Roman high (i.e. pagan) society, just as he is pictured by Augustine immediately before his conversion (Conf. 8, 2, 3; quoted in part in text, pp. 84–85). Fear of losing the favor of his friends in high place made him hesitate some little time before professing Christianity openly (Aug., Conf. 8, 2, 4 … amicos enim suos reverebatur offendere, superbos daemonicolas, quorum ex culmine Babylonicae dignitatis … graviter ruituras in se inimicitias arbitrabatur); that the outcome was as Victorinus foresaw is clear, even when allowances have been made for Augustine's enthusiasm (Conf. 8, 2, 4) superbi videbani et irascebantur, dentibus suis stridebant et tabescebant. Thus his conversion took place in the middle 350's; and Monceaux's 355 (which has the blessing of Benz) is, for an approximate date, very close indeed.
4 8, 2, 8–5; cf. 8, 5, 10.
5 Conf. 8, 2, 3.
6 In collecting the instances presented in this paragraph, I have not attempted to go beyond passages indicated in the various lexica and the indices verborum of prose writers. Yet the yield is surprisingly small, even though I have admitted similar terms as well as extrema senectus itself and have allowed the preposition ad as well as in whenever it seemed not to render the expression useless for the present purpose. Cicero regularly has senectus in expressions of this kind, but his characteristic adjective is summa, which in such cases is essentially synonymous with extrema; this usage is noted by Nonius (401): SVMMVM extremum … M. Tullius in Ortenrio: vixit ad summam senectutem optima valetudine. Other writers regularly use extrema. In Tacitus, senecta is more common than senectus. Aetas, though common in all writers I have noted, presents special difficulties. In (ad) extrema aetate often means “at (until) the end of one's life” without reference to the person's age (cf. Nepos, Cato 2, 4: circiter annos octoginta, usque ad extremam aetatem ab adulescentia, rei publicae causa suscipere inimicitias non destitit); hence only when extrema aetas obviously means “extreme (old) age” have I felt free to introduce it. Finally a considerable number of passages which were verbally suitable were necessarily discarded because the age of the person involved could not be closely enough determined.
7 Cf. Th. Mommsen, Röm. Staatsrecht I3, 1887, p. 574.
8 See text, p. 83; cf. note 2.
9 See text, following paragraph.
10 Op. cit. (see note 1), p. 7.
11 So those mentioned in notes 1 and 2.
12 Conf. 8, 5, 10.
13 Conf. 8, 2, 3; cf. text, pp. 84–85.
14 By 360 the converted Victorinus had produced at least five treatises (one of them in four books) on Christian subjects (cf. note 3). The De Homousio Recipiendo and the three hymns on the Trinity were written in 360 or very close to that date. It is not beside the point to note that the only other Christian works of which we have definite knowledge are the Commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul. Extant are those on Philippians, Galatians and Ephesians; references indicate that there were some others. Although these (at least the extant ones) were written after the Adversus Arium (359), they need not represent the labor of years when the man in question is so voluminous a writer and in no way militate against placing the date of his death not long after 362.
