Roman Virtue in the Early Christian Thought of Lactantius

Abstract Known since the Renaissance as the “Christian Cicero,” Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius (d. 324 a.d.) was a professor of Latin rhetoric, Christian apologist, and theologian at Constantine’s court. Writing in response to Diocletian’s persecution, he attempted a complete synthesis of third-century Latin Christian thinking about theology, ethics, and political order. This work explores the character and quality of that synthesis in his major work, The Divine Institutes of the Christian Religion by focusing on the core notion of virtus. The early chapters explore the socio-political (Chapter 1) and philosophical traditions that informed arguments about virtus in classical Roman (Chapter 2) and early Latin Christian writers—especially Tertullian, Minucius Felix, and Cyprian (Chapter 3). Their apologetic and doctrinal works provide essential context for tracing the fundamental meaning of virtus (Chapter 4) in the Divine Institutes and for exploring Lactantius’s use of the term in Christology (Chapter 5) and ethics (Chapter 6). A final chapter explores practical moral arguments about wealth, sexuality, and warfare that Lactantius developed as an expression of true virtus. In this, his major work appears as the first attempt at a complete synthesis of traditional Christian thinking about the implications of God’s revelation in Christ for classical Roman thinking about the divine and moral order. This work explores the character, sources, and logic of Lactantius’s influential work.