Other Western Writerswriter
Who he was
- He was a Christian Latin poet and rhetorician.
- A teacher of rhetoric at Marseilles.
- Victorius died during the reign of Theodosius II and Valentinian III.
- He was a contemporary of Prudentius.
- Victorius imitates and draws abundantly from pagan sources such as Ovid, Vergil, and especially Lucretius, as well as from Christian models such as Lactantius, Prudentius, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine and the Carmen de Providential divina.
What he wrote
- Victorius composed (between ca. 420 and 440) the Alethia(αλήθεια).
- The poem as it now exists consists of some 2,000 hexameter verses in an opening prayer and three books; a fourth book may have been lost.
- The work is a paraphrase of material from Genesis, from creation through the destruction of Sodom (Gen 1-19), and was intended for the instruction of youth.
- It shows a wide knowledge of authors, both classical and Christian, but its role in subsequent literary history has been slight.