Gaius Marius Victorinus

'Gaius Marius Victorinus (4th century AD), Roman grammarian, rhetorician and neo-Platonic philosopher, an African by birth (whence his surname Afer), 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 of Hippo. When the emperor 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 Aelius Aphthonius, is extant. It is doubtful whether he is the author of certain other extant treatises attributed to him on metrical and grammatical subjects. His commentary on Cicero's De Inventione is very diffuse, and is itself in need of commentary. His extant theological writings include commentaries on Galatians, Ephesians and Philippians; De Trinitate contra Arium; Ad Justinum Manichaeum de Vera Came Christi; 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.

References

• This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.
• G. Geiger, C. Marius Victorinus Afer, ein neuplatonischer Philosoph, Metten, 1888.
• Halm, Rhetores Latini Minores, 1863.
• H. Keil, Grammatici Latini, vi.
• G. Koffmann, De Mario Victorino philosopho Christiano, Breslau, 1880.
• J. P. Migne, Cursus Patrologiae Latinae, viii.
• M. Schanz, Geschichte der romischen Litteratur, iv. I, 1904.
• R. Schmid, Marius Victorinus Rhetor and seine Beziehungen zu Augustin, Kiel, 1895.
• Gore, Dictionary of Christian Biography, iv.
• Teuffel, History of Roman Literature, 1900, 408.