The Date of the Adversus Nationes

Beginning with Conrad Orelli's Arnobii afri disputationum adversus gentes libri vii in 1816 and continuing to the present, modern scholars have not reached a consensus concerning the date in which Arnobius of Sicca Veneria wrote his Adversus nations in seven books. The suggested dates of the work have ranged from ad 295 to 320. Most historians and classicists who have studied the work in any detail are usually content with the general chronological designation of either before, during, or after the Diocletianic Persecution. Jerome's Chronicon is the earliest of the five writings in which Arnobius is named. This chapter shows that Arnobius began to write the Adversus nations no earlier than the last quarter of ad 302, and finished book 7 before the persecution had ended, and thus sacrifice was a contemporary issue, probably sometime during the first half of 305.

Ancient history · Archaeology · Persecution · Political science · Quarter (Canadian coin) · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Law · Philosophy

• Numa and Jupiter

  Open Access•Lindsay G Driediger-Murphy•The Classical Quarterly•2021

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