Arnobe, Contre les Paiens

About this book

"Arnobius is a man of one book. A little known author, he was a rhetor and a teacher at Sicca Veneria, a town named after Venus - it is a predestined confluence of rhetoric and religion! - in the 3rd century AD, and his book, Against the Heathen, has never been the subject of a thoroughgoing study in French. Having converted to Christianity at the end of his life, this African rhetor proves to be, not only a brilliant and spirited writer, but also a man of culture, at home in Greek literature and in Latin. Remaining intellectually very close to the pagan ideas of his contemporaries, he adopts, in the seven books of an apology that he left unfinished at his death, a vehement and insidious tone of controversy - verging upon dishonesty - in order to turn ancestral Roman religion and Greek mythology from their purpose, with the sole aim of magnifying the glory of the Christian God"--