Claudius Marius Victorius (or Victorinus or Victor) was a ''

rhetor Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate partic ...

'' (i.e. a teacher and poet) of the fifth century CE from

Marseille Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Franc ...

. He is known for a Latin poem on

Genesis Genesis may refer to: Bible * Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind * Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book of ...

hexameter Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It w ...

s and a letter to the abbot Salomon against the moral degradation of his age.

Biography

Evidence for Claudius's life comes from

Gennadius of Massilia Gennadius of Massilia (died c. 496), also known as Gennadius Scholasticus or Gennadius Massiliensis, was a 5th-century Christian priest and historian. His best-known work is ''De Viris Illustribus'' ("Of Famous Men"), a biography of over 90 conte ...

. He was born in the second half of the fourth century and died during the reign of

Theodosius the Younger Theodosius II ( grc-gre, Θεοδόσιος, Theodosios; 10 April 401 – 28 July 450) was Roman emperor for most of his life, proclaimed ''augustus'' as an infant in 402 and ruling as the eastern Empire's sole emperor after the death of his ...

and

Valentinian III Valentinian III ( la, Placidus Valentinianus; 2 July 41916 March 455) was Roman emperor in the West from 425 to 455. Made emperor in childhood, his reign over the Roman Empire was one of the longest, but was dominated by powerful generals vying ...

, around 446.

Works

Gennadius of Massilia assigns a poem on Genesis, the ''Aletheia'' (i.e. Ancient Greek

ἀλήθεια ''Aletheia'' or Alethia (; grc, ἀλήθεια) is truth or disclosure in philosophy. Originating in Ancient Greek philosophy, the term was later used in the works of 20th-century philosopher Martin Heidegger. Although often translated as " ...

, 'truth'), to Claudius Marius Victor, ''orator Massiliensis'' ('an orator from Marseille'). This 1020-line hexametrical poem, intended for the instruction of the young, survives in one ninth-century manuscript and dates from the first or second quarter of the fifth century CE. It contains a prayer and three books which retell Genesis, from the creation of the world to the ruin of Sodom. The author was inspired by

Lucretius Titus Lucretius Carus ( , ; – ) was a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the philosophical poem ''De rerum natura'', a didactic work about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which usually is translated into E ...

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...

and

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...

and transposes Christian content into a Classical literary form, the epic. Victorius's other known work is a letter to the abbot Salomon. Here he argues that if the Sarmatians, from Central Asia, have devastated the country, if the Vandals, a Germanic people, have burned it, and if the Alans, who were Sarmatian, have completed that destructions, it is because men have committed errors, and it is sexuality which he blames.

Significance

Gennadius's view of Victorius was not flattering:

Victorinus, a rhetorician of Marseilles, wrote to his son Etherius, a commentary ''On Genesis'', commenting, that is, from the beginning of the book to the death of the patriarch Abraham, and published four books in verse, words which have a savour of piety indeed, but, in that he was a man busied with secular literature and quite untrained in the Divine Scriptures, they are of slight weight, so far as ideas are concerned.

However, Victorius's work fits into the tradition of Christian writers of the first centuries CE, such as

Juvencus Gaius Vettius Aquilinus Juvencus (fl. c. 330) was a Roman Christian poet from Hispania who wrote in Latin. Life Of his life we know only what St. Jerome tells us. De viris, chapter 84; Chron., ad an. 2345; Epist. lxx, 5; In Matt., I, ii, 11. He w ...

, Sedulius,

Arator Arator was a sixth-century Christian poet from Liguria in northwestern Italy. His best known work, ''De Actibus Apostolorum'', is a verse history of the Apostles. Biography Arator was probably of Ligurian origin. An orphan, he studied at Milan ...

Cyprianus Gallus Cyprianus Gallus (fl. c. 397–430) was a fifth-century poet who wrote a Late Latin epic versification of the historical books of the ''Vetus Latina'', though only the Heptateuch (''Heptateuchos'') has survived to the present day. He, along wi ...

, and

Avit Avit (russian: Ави́т) is a Russian male first name.Superanskaya, p. 33 It was included into various, often handwritten, church calendars throughout the 17th–19th centuries, but was omitted from the official Synodal Menologium at the en ...

. Indeed, the transposition of the divine word and/or the celebration of the deeds of saints thrives in the Classical epic form.Marta Cuenca-Godbert, 'L’épique re-cyclé', ''Acta Fabula'', 8.2 (March–April 2007), http://www.fabula.org/revue/document2767.php. His letter has historical interest, particularly for alluding once or twice to the tribes of Gaul and the barbarians. It also mentions the Alans (III, V 192) and Leuques (III, V. 207–209).

Editions and translations

* ''Commodiani 'Carmina''', ed. by Joseph Martin, and ''Claudii Marii Victorii 'Alethia, ed. by P. F. Hovingh, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, 128 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1960), pp. 115–93 (''Alethia''), and 269–297. * O. J. Kuhnmuench, ''Early Christian Latin Poets'' (Chicago, 1929), pp. 333–46 https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001058147 (excerpts from the ''Alethia'' in Latin and English translation. * Daniel H. Abosso,
A Translation and Commentary on Claudius Marius Victor's ''Alethia'', 3.1-326
(unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2015).

Biography

Works

Significance

Editions and translations

References

Further reading