Arnobius

Writer, Deceased Person

– 0330

60

Who was Arnobius?

Arnobius of Sicca was an Early Christian apologist, during the reign of Diocletian. According to Jerome's Chronicle, Arnobius, before his conversion, was a distinguished Numidian rhetorician at Sicca Veneria, a major Christian center in Proconsular Africa, and owed his conversion to a premonitory dream. Arnobius writes dismissively of dreams in his surviving book, so perhaps Jerome was projecting his own respect for the content of dreams. According to Jerome, to overcome the doubts of the local bishop as to the earnestness of his Christian belief he wrote an apologetic work in seven books that St. Jerome calls Adversus Gentes but which is entitled Adversus Nationes in the only manuscript that has survived. Jerome's reference, his remark that Lactantius was a pupil of Arnobius and the surviving treatise are all that we know about Arnobius.

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Also known as
  • Arnobius the Elder
Profession
Died
0330

Submitted
on July 23, 2013

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