Search Results - Arnobius, 255-327

Arnobius

Arnobius (died c. 330) was an early Christian apologist of Berber origin during the reign of Diocletian (284–305).

According to Jerome's ''Chronicle,'' Arnobius, before his conversion, was a distinguished Numidian rhetorician at Sicca Veneria (El Kef, Tunisia), a major Christian center in Proconsular Africa, and owed his conversion to a premonitory dream. However, Arnobius writes dismissively of dreams in his surviving book.

According to Jerome, to overcome the doubts of the local bishop as to the earnestness of his Christian belief he wrote (c. 303, from evidence in IV:36) an apologetic work in seven books, which St. Jerome calls but which is entitled in the only (9th-century) manuscript that has survived. Jerome's reference, his remark that Lactantius was a pupil of Arnobius and the surviving treatise are the only known facts about Arnobius that have been transmitted. Provided by Wikipedia