ARNOBIUS, called Afer, and sometimes the Elder, was a native of Sicca Venerea in Numidia. The date of his birth is uncertain, but it must have been during the latter part of the 3d century of our era. He was a teacher of rhetoric, and at first an opponent of Christianity. His conversion 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 Gentes was composed for this purpose. But this story seems rather improbable; 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. From internal evidence the time of composition may be fixed at about 303 a.d. Nothing further is known of the life of Arnobius. He is said to have been the author of a work on rhetoric, which, however, has not come down to us. His great treatise, in seven books, AtZvem<* Gentes (or Nationes), 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 tho first book Arnobius carefully discusses this complaint; he shows that the allegation of greater calamities having come upon men since the Christian era is false; and that, even if it were true, it could by no means be attributed to the Christians. 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 divinity of ...