Arnobius the Elder

A teacher of rhetoric in Sicca, Numidia (Africa). He became a Christian c.300, and wrote a vigorous defence of Christianity (Adversus nationes).

Arnobius (called Afer, and sometimes "the Elder"), early Christian writer, was a teacher of rhetoric at Sicca Venerea in proconsular Africa during the reign of Diocletian.

His conversion to Christianity is said by Jerome to have been occasioned by a dream; and the same writer adds that the bishop to whom Arnobius applied distrusted his professions, and asked some proof of them, and that the treatise Adversus Genies was composed for this purpose. for Arnobius speaks contemptuously of dreams, and besides, his work bears no traces of having been written in a short time, or of having been revised by a Christian bishop.

Nothing further is known of the life of Arnobius. His great treatise, in seven books, Adversus Genies (or Nations), on account of which he takes rank as a Christian apologist, appears to have been occasioned by a desire to answer the complaint then brought against the Christians, that the prevalent calamities and disasters were due to their impiety and had come upon men since the establishment of their religion.

In the first book Arnobius carefully discusses this complaint; He skilfully contends that Christians who worship the self-existent God cannot justly be called less religious than those who worship subordinate deities, and concludes by vindicating the Godhead of Christ.

In the second book Arnobius digresses into a long discussion on the soul, which he does not think is of divine origin, and which he scarcely believes to be immortal.

Books iii., iv.

Books vi. The work of Arnobius appears to have been written when he was a recent convert, for he does not possess a very extensive knowledge of Scripture.

He was much influenced by Lucretius and had read Plato. There are some pleasing passages in Arnobius, but on the whole he is a tumid and a tedious author.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.