Victorinus, Marius, c. 285–c.

365 CE

Oxford Classical Dictionary

Victorinus, Marius, c. 285–c. 365 CE  
Stephen A. Cooper
Subject: Christianity Online Publication Date: Mar 2016
DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.6801

Text and bibliography updated to reflect current scholarship. Keywords and Summary
added.

Updated on 25 February 2019. The previous version of this content can be found here.

Summary and Keywords

Marius Victorinus is one of the few direct links between the Platonist schools of late
antiquity and Latin theology. A professor of rhetoric in mid-4th century Rome, Victorinus
is perhaps the only Latin author whose writings, composed before and after his
conversion to Christianity, survive. His school works of grammar and rhetoric were used
for over a millennium, and he anticipated Boethius in integrating logic and dialectic into
the rhetorical curriculum. He also translated the Neoplatonic works that deeply impacted
Augustine. After conversion, Victorinus composed theological works of various genres:
treatises and hymns in defense of the Nicene Creed and commentaries on the Pauline
epistles, the first in Latin. The treatises reveal his chief contribution to the history of
Christian thought: a philosophical interpretation of the trinity that drew deeply on late
antique Platonist language and conceptuality to formulate a pro-Nicene theology. His
commentaries on Paul employ the grammarian’s literal treatment of the text to identify
the situational context of the epistles and the apostle’s rhetorical strategy. Victorinus was
a pioneer of the synthesis of Christianity and Platonism in the Latin church, which
reached its heights in late antiquity with Augustine and Boethius and flowered variously
in the medieval Latin church.

Keywords: neoplatonism, rhetoric, Christianity, Trinity, Saint Paul, Latin Biblical commentary

Life
Born in Roman Africa, Marius Victorinus won local fame as a professor of rhetoric in
Rome during the reign of Constantius II (337–361). In 354 CE, he received honors and a
statue in the forum Traiani (Jer., Chron. 2370 and was perhaps then awarded the status of

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Victorinus, Marius, c. 285–c. 365 CE

vir clarissimus, the title given him in the best manuscript witnesses of his later works).1
Fluent in Greek, Victorinus was “virtually the most learned orator of his time,” according
to Boethius (In Porphyry comm. pr. 1.1).2 Rhetor is the title given Victorinus in his
granddaughter’s epitaph (C.I.L. 6, 31.934) and is also the term with which Jerome
describes him in his Chronicon.3 Not long after being honored for his teaching, Victorinus
converted to Christianity (c. 355–357) in a sudden manner that surprised Augustine’s
informant Simplician, who had long sought through amiable conversions to move
Victorinus off the fence and into the church whose doctrines he claimed to have long
accepted (August. Conf. 8.2.3). The neophyte soon turned his pen to defend the
homoousion clause of the Nicene Creed, continuing to teach rhetoric until the emperor
Julian’s school law of June 17, 362 (Cod. Theod. 13.3.5) required him to resign his post
(August. Conf. 8.5.10).4 Completing the series of trinitarian treatises underway, he began
composing commentaries on the Pauline epistles, the first in Latin. His date of death is
uncertain, but it, like his birth date, can be approximated from Jerome’s claim (Vir. ill.
101)) that Victorinus was in extrema senectute at his conversion, hence in his seventies in
356, according to the usage of the Latin phrase.5

Victorinus’s religious proclivities before baptism are unclear.6 Augustine presents him as
having been a defender of the old gods and a vocal opponent of Christianity. Even after
claiming he was already Christian, Victorinus had little interest in its cult and repeatedly
defended to Simplician his recalcitrance to enter the church with the quip, “So the walls
make Christians?” (August., Conf. 8.2.3–5; 8.4.9). This recourse, to a notion of true piety
as purely inward, suggests a Victorinus detached from the cultic aspects of religion,
perhaps possessed of New Academic skepticism.7 Such a reconstruction has been urged
in light of a passage in his commentary on Cicero (In Cic. Rhet. 1.29) and from the caveat
that Augustine’s depiction of the hostile situation between pagans and Christians during
the time of Victorinus’s baptism may be an anachronistic retrojection of the conditions of
Augustine’s own time.8

School Works
Three of Victorinus’s works on grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic survive.9 Of his Ars
grammatica, only his introduction and four chapters remain (De voce, De litteris, De
orthographia, and De syllabis), following which the rest of his work was replaced early in
the manuscript tradition by the De metricis of Aelius Festus Aphthonius (see ASMONIUS).
Intact, fortunately, is Victorinus’s lengthiest extant production: a commentary on Cicero’s
De inventione, where he treats the entire text, though without quoting it fully, in two
books. The work became a standard of the Middle Ages because of the importance of
Cicero’s De inventione, which it accompanies in some manuscripts.10 The commentary is
probably the latest of his professional writing, as it refers to his Ars grammatica and
likely his brief treatise De definitionibus.11 This latter work, transmitted among Boethius’
logical corpora and restored to Victorinus in 1877, is an expansion of Cicero’s discussion
of definitions in Topica, ch. 5 (§26–28) and reflects Victorinus’s efforts to incorporate
Aristotelian logic and dialectic into the rhetorical curriculum.12 Likewise lost were a
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Victorinus, Marius, c. 285–c. 365 CE

number of works: a translation of Porphyry’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Categories used

by Boethius in his first commentary on the work (Cassiod., Instit. 2, 18); a commentary in
four books on Cicero’s Topics; and a treatise On Hypothetical Syllogisms (Cassiod., Instit.
2, 13).13 Jerome’s statement that as a student he read a commentary by Victorinus “on
Cicero’s dialogues” (Jer. Apol. adv. Ruf. 1.16) probably refers to his work on Victorinus’s
Topics, which in ancient discourse was associated with Cicero’s philosophical dialogues.14
Cassiodorus also attributes to Victorinus translations of Aristotle’s Categories and On
Interpretation, also a commentary on the Categories in eight books (Cassiod., Instit.
2.3.18).15 His translation of the libri Platonicorum, to which Augustine alone witnesses
(Conf. 7.9.13; 8.2.3), reveals another side of Victorinus’s intellectual profile. These books
were writings of Plotinus and Porphyry, plausibly including the Enneads and Porphyry’s
De regressu animae, from which Augustine quotes in book ten of City of God.16

Victorinus’s commentary on De inventione is the earliest surviving one and displays his
attempt to enrich his rhetorical instruction with a broader framework of understanding,
as when he introduces Aristotle’s ten categories because Cicero used the word genus (In
Cic rhet. 1.9). Other elements of philosophy are woven into the exposition to provide a
basic understanding of time, nature, and the syllogism.17 In the preface to the first book,
Victorinus develops Cicero’s attempt to forge a positive relation between wisdom and
eloquence through reflection on the proper role of rhetoric in society.18 He sketches a
basic Platonist anthropology to explain the difficulties of attaining wisdom and virtue
while the soul “is entangled and mired in a kind of thick coat of the body.”19 The habitus
of the soul must be reconstructed through disciplina, but there are also epistemological
consequences of embodiment. Cicero’s discussion of the distinction between probable
and necessary arguments (Cic. Inv. rhet. 1.29) elicits remarks from Victorinus about the
virgin birth and the resurrection that caused controversy in the 11th century.20
“Necessary” arguments such as Cicero’s examples—“if he was born, he will die; if she
gave birth, she slept with a man”—do not appear necessary to all people, as “the opinion
of Christians” shows. A necessary argument, he concludes, is one that aligns with
preconceived opinion (iam opinione persuasum). Thus “among human beings the truth
lies hidden” (In Cic. rhet., 1.29). This last conception, likely Porphyrian—based on a
parallel in Macrobius, In Somn. 1.3.18—does not entail a complete skepticism about the
existence of intelligible realities but only about their hiddenness in the mundane realm of
opinion.21

Theological Works
Victorinus became a Christian with the explicit purpose of defending the homoousion
formula of the Nicene Creed against its various detractors (see ARIANISM). The
immediate context of Victorinus’s apologetic works—nine treatises and three hymns—is
the sequence of events in which the Roman church had resisted the demands of
Constantius to abandon the cause of Athanasius and the controverted homoousion,
resulting in the arrest and exile of Liberius in 355 (Ammian., 15.7.9–10) and his eventual
capitulation to Constantius some two years later.22 The theological treatises refer to
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Victorinus, Marius, c. 285–c. 365 CE

historical and doctrinal developments that indicate a date of composition between 357
and 363.23 The hymns, which accompany the treatises in the manuscript tradition, consist
of non-metrical accentuated strophes and feature the theology of the treatises with
autobiographical expressions of piety in Pauline and Johannine language. They were likely
written in close connection with the treatises, as with their prayerful form Victorinus
envisions a readership receiving the homoousion as exposited in his theology.24 His
commentaries on Galatians, Ephesians, and Philippians were composed after the
treatises, as his commentary on Ephesians refers frequently to previous and fuller
treatments of key theological points, matters too complex for a “simple exposition of the
words” (In Eph. 1.11) or a “simple commentary” (In Eph. II, praef.). The commentaries
also contain references to his treatments of Romans and the Corinthian correspondence
(remarks on Gal. 4.7; 5.6–8, 14; 6.14; on Eph. 4.10–12); whether he progressed beyond
Philippians is unknown. His treatments of the epistles are continuous commentaries that
maintain a largely literal exposition of text through the applications of the tools of the
grammarian.25 He occasionally consults the Greek and offers a better translation than the
Vetus Latina version he used. The epistolary texts are quoted fully in lemmata, generally
briefer than the standard verses; the exposition is mostly a paraphrase reconstructing the
apostle’s situation, his response, and his teaching, which Victorinus subdivides into
doctrinal and ethical elements.26 Frequently, he adopts Paul’s first-person narrative to
provide lively exhortation. At times, Victorinus digresses from the exegesis to interpret
Paul’s utterances in terms of his pro-Nicene trinitarian theology or to provide
Neoplatonist metaphysics of the soul apropos of Eph. 1.4.27

Jerome, the only ancient witness who mentions Victorinus’s biblical commentaries and
theological treatises, refers to the latter as “very obscure books he wrote against Arius
that are understood only by the learned” (Vir. ill. 101). This description seems to have led
the first modern editor of his works, Johannes Sichardus (1528), to entitle five of the nine
treatises “Against Arius,” a nomenclature retained in the critical editions. The first four
have a formal unity as an epistolary dialogue between Victorinus and a probably fictive
Arian correspondent named Candidus.28 The opening first letter of Candidus (Cand. I)
objects to the formulation of Christ as homoousios with the Father and sketches an
“Arian” theology sensitive to philosophical concerns for divine immutability. The second
treatise (Ad Cand.) opens with an epistolary greeting and answers Candidus’s objections
with the same philosophical language. A brief second missive from Candidus follows
(Cand. II), consisting almost entirely of early Arian documents in Latin (Arius’s letter to
Eusebius of Nicomedia and Eusebius’s missive to Paulinus). The finale of the epistolary
exchange is Victorinus’s longest treatise, conventionally titled Against Arius IA. After its
epistolary opening, the treatise surveys scriptures relevant to the question of the divine
begetting (Adv. Ar. 1A, 2–27). A terminus post quem of 358 is furnished by the polemics
against Basil of Ancyra’s doctrine of Christ as homoiousion—“of similar substance”—that
erupt mid-way through the work (Adv. Ar. 1A, 23 and 28–29). The fifth treatise is mistitled
Against Arius 1B, as if a continuation of Victorinus’s second response to Candidus. This
entirely separate work contains the most spectacular philosophical material, where
parallels to a commentary on Plato’s Parmenides and the Nag Hammadi treatise

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Victorinus, Marius, c. 285–c. 365 CE

Zostrianus have been detected (SEE “THEOLOGY: SOURCES AND THOUGHT”).The sixth
treatise, entitled On Homoousios in Greek and Latin Against the Heretics, refers to the
language of the conciliar decisions at Rimini in 359 and to Constantius as regnant, hence
was composed before November 361, when he died (Adv. Ar. II 9.1 and 9.50). The seventh
and eighth treatises (Adv. Ar. III and IV in the critical editions) both bear the titles On
Homoousios and argue for the appropriateness of the Nicene definition based on
scripture and a wide range of philosophical arguments. The final treatise is a very brief
work entitled Homoousios Is to Be Accepted (De hom. rec.). Three additional theological
works found in the manuscript tradition of his opera are also ascribed to Victorinus, an
ascription rejected by modern scholarship.29

Theology: Sources and Thought

Victorinus’s theological works do not reveal definite points of contact with previous
Christian authors.30 Rather, the sources of Victorinus’s trinitarian thought are his
Platonist readings, which enabled him to develop “the first metaphysical theory of a self-
reflexive Absolute in the context of Latin theology.”31 Nonetheless, his trinitarian treatises
name no philosophical author besides Plato (Adv. Ar. IV 5.31) and contain only one
(slightly altered) verbatim quotation of philosophical material (the opening sentence of
Plotinus’s Enn. V 2 in Adv. Ar. IV 22).32 Pierre Hadot’s breakthrough came from noticing
the resemblance of the philosophical language and conceptuality of the treatises to that
of the fragments of the anonymous commentary on Plato’s Parmenides found in a Turin
palimpsest.33 Not all scholars have followed Hadot’s identification of the unknown author
as Porphyry and, accordingly, Victorinus’s chief philosophical influence.34 Some have
supposed a post-Porphyrian Platonist or even a middle-Platonist author; there is also a
claim that Victorinus’s trinitarian theology is less directly related to the metaphysical
schema of the fragments In Parmenidem than supposed.35 Further complicating the
Quellenforschung is the discovery of parallels between Adv. Ar. IB (chaps. 49–50) and
passages of negative and positive theology in the Nag Hammadi tractate Zostrianus (NHC
VIII 1.64–68), a work read and critiqued in Plotinus’ school (Porph. Vita Plot. 16).36 These
parallels may indicate that Victorinus and Zostrianus drew on a common, possibly middle-
Platonist, source; but as this putative source used pneuma to characterize the highest
divinity, it may have undergone a Christian redaction before Victorinus utilized it.37 A
simpler explanation holds that Victorinus himself read Zostrianus and other Platonizing
gnostic treatises.38

Victorinus clearly aimed to employ Platonist teaching on first principles to explain how
the persons of the trinity could be consubstantial and yet one ousia or substantia. His
main schema to differentiate the persons of the trinity involved an adaptation of Platonist
exegesis of the triad of Being, Life, and Knowledge from Plato’s Sophist (248e). He allows
Candidus, as a spokesman of would-be orthodox Christian Platonist thinkers, to propose
this terminology: “God is pure To Be [esse solum], and in fact this very To Be is itself both
To Live [vivere] and To Think [intellegere]” (Cand. I, 3.15–17).39 While Platonists
understood this triad to be the articulation of being on the level of the second hypostasis,
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Victorinus, Marius, c. 285–c. 365 CE

Victorinus takes it to express the consubstantial members of the Trinitarian God, with
each containing the others but having one in predominance (Adv. Ar. IB 63.11–16).40 This
innovation involved adapting Porphyry’s move of maintaining the transcendence of the
One and regarding it also as the Father of the noetic triad.41 As Paul Henry noted,
“Victorinus has taken great liberties with the Neoplatonic Weltanschauung.”42 He did
this, evidently, because he thought the church’s authoritative doctrine and sacraments
were the way to the salvation of the soul.43

Primary Texts
Marius Victorinus. Marii Victorini Ars grammatica: Introduzione, testo critico e
commento. Edited by Italo Mariotti. Florence: Le Monnier, 1967.

Marius Victorinus. Marii Victorini Explanationes in Ciceronis rhetoricam. Edited by

Antonella Ippolito. CCSL 132. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2006.

Marius Victorinus. C. Marius Victorinus, Commenta in Ciceronis Rhetorica. Edited by

Thomas Riesenweber. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013.

Marius Victorinus. C. Marius Victorinus, Liber de definitionibus: eine spatantike Theorie

der Definition und des Definierens: mit Einleitung, Übersetzung und kommentar.
Translated by Andreas Pronay. Studien zur klassischen Philologie 0103. Frankfurt: Peter
Lang, 1997.

Marius Victorinus. Traités théologiques sur la Trinité. Edited and translated by Paul
Henry and Pierre Hadot. Sources Chrétiennes 68. Paris: Cerf, 1960.

Marius Victorinus. Marii Victorini opera pars I: opera theologica. Edited by Paul Henry
and Pierre Hadot. CSEL 83/1. Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1971.

Marius Victorinus. Theological Treatises on the Trinity. Translated by Mary T. Clark and
the Fathers of the Church. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1981.

Marius Victorinus. Opere teologiche di Mario Vittorino. Edited and translated by Claudio
Moreschini and Chiara O. Tommasi. Turin, Italy: Unione Tipografica-Editrice Torinese,
2007.

Marius Victorinus. Marii Victorini Afri commentarii in epistulas Pauli ad Galatas, ad

Philippenses, ad Ephesios. Edited by Albrecht Locher. Leipzig: Teubner, 1972.

Marius Victorinus. Commentari alle Epistole di Paolo agli Efesini, ai Galati, ai Filippesi.
Edited and translated by Franco Gori. Corona Patrum. Turin: Società Editrice
Internazionale, 1981.

Marius Victorinus. Marii Victorini opera pars II: opera exegetica. Edited by Franco Gori.
CSEL 83/2. Vienna: Hoelder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1986.

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Victorinus, Marius, c. 285–c. 365 CE

Bibliography
Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, s.v. “Victorinus, Marius.”

Baltes, Matthias. Marius Victorinus: zur Philosophie in seinen theologischen Schriften.

Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 174. Munich: Saur, 2002.

Bouton-Toubloulic, Anne-Isabelle, “Deux interprétations du scepticisme: Marius

Victorinus et Augustin.” Les Études philosophiques 101 (2012): 217–232.

Cipriani, Nello. “Agostine lettore dei Commentari paolini di Mario Vitttorino.”

Augustinianum 38 (1998): 413–428.

Cipriani, Nello. “La presenza di Mario Vittorino nella riflessione trinitaria di S. Agostino.”
Augustinianum 42 (2002): 261–313.

Cooper, Stephen A. “The Platonist Christianity Of Marius Victorinus.” Religions 7

(2016): 122.

Erdt, Werner. Marius Victorinus Afer, der erste lateinische Pauluskommentator. Studien
zu seinen Pauluskommentaren im Zusammenhang der Wiederentdeckung des Paulus in
der abendländischen Theologie des 4. Jhs. Europäische Hochschulschriften 23/135.
Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1980.

Hadot, Pierre. “L’image de la Trinité dans l’âme chez Victorinus et chez saint Augustin.”
Studia Patristica 6 (1962): 409–442.

Hadot, Pierre. Porphyre et Victorinus, 2 vols. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1968.

Hadot, Pierre. Marius Victorinus, recherches sur sa vie et ses ses œuvres. Paris: Études
Augustiniennes, 1971.

Henry, Paul. “The Adversus Arium of Marius Victorinus, the first systematic exposition of
the doctrine of the Trinity.” Journal of Theological Studies 1, no. 1 (1950): 42–55.

de Leusse, Hubert. “Le Problème de la préexistence des âmes chez Marius Victorinus.”
Recherches de Science Religieuse 29 (1939): 197–239.

Locher, Albrecht. “Formen der Textbehandlung im Kommentar des Marius Victorinus zum
Galaterbrief.” In Silvae: Festschrift für E. Zinn, edited by Michael von Albrecht and
Eberhard Heck, 137–143. Tübingen, Germany: Niemayer 1970.

Lohse, Bernhard. “Beobachtungen zum Paulus-Kommentar des Marius Victorinus und zur
Wiederentdeckung des Paulus in der lateinischen Theologie des vierten Jahrhunderts.” In
Kerygma und Logos: Festschrift für C. Andresen, edited by Adolf Martin Ritter, 351–366.
Göttingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979.

Němec, Václav. “Zum Problem der Gattung des Seienden bei Marius Victorinus und im
antiken Neuplatonismus.” Rh. Mus. 160 (2017): 161–193.
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Victorinus, Marius, c. 285–c. 365 CE

Plumer, Eric. “The Influence of Marius Victorinus on Augustine’s Commentary on

Galatians.” Studia Patristica 33 (1997): 221–228.

Raspanti, Giacomo, Mario Vittorino esegeta di S. Paolo. Bibliotheca philologica, Saggi 1.

Palermo, Italy: Epos, 1996.

Simonetti, M., “Nota sull’ariano Candido,” Orpheus 10 (1969): 151–157.

Souter, Alexander. The Earliest Latin Commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1927.

Stefani, Massimo. “Sull’antropologia di Mario Vittorino (La ‘discesa’ vivificante dell’

anima in prospettiva cosmologica).” Scripta Theologica 19 (1987): 63–111.

Steinmann, Werner. Die Seelenmetaphysik des Marius Victorinus. Hamburger

Theologische Studien 2. Hamburg, Germany: Steinmann & Steinmann, 1990.

Tardieu, M., “Recherches sur la formation de l’Apocalypse de Zostrien et les sources de

Marius Victorinus.” Res Orientales 10 (1996): 9–117.

Tommasi, Chiara O. “Silenzio, voce, annunzio: la trinità secondo Mario Vittorino.” In

Silenzio e parola, 39th Meeting of Scholars of Christian Antiquity, Institutum Patristicum
Augustinianum, Rome, 2012, 521–536.

Voelker, John. “An Anomalous Trinitarian Formula in Marius Victorinus’ Against Arius.”
Studia Patristica 43 (2006): 517–522.

Notes:

(1.) All the ancient testimonia are gathered and discussed in the still authoritative
monograph of Pierre Hadot, Marius Victorinus, recherches sur sa vie et ses ses œuvres
(Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1971), 13–34, as well as in the introduction to Italo
Mariotti, Marii Victorini Ars Grammatica: Introduzione, testo critico e commento
(Florence: Le Monnier, 1967) and in Hadot, Marius Victorinus, 31–33.

(2.) For Boethius’s criticism of Victorinus, see Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The
Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1981), 115–118, 134–135.

(3.) For translation and discussion of this inscription, see Hadot, Marius Victorinus, 16–
17; photographs of the gravestone. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. On the meaning of
orator and rhetor as “professor of rhetoric,” see Mariotti, Marii Victorini Ars Grammatica,
12–14.

(4.) Whether the law compelled Victorinus to resign or whether local Christian pressure
compelled him to do so are possibilities raised by Neil McLynn, “Julian and the Christian
Professors,” in Carol Harrison, Carolyn Humfress, and Isabella Sandwell, eds., Being

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Victorinus, Marius, c. 285–c. 365 CE

Christian in Late Antiquity. A Festschrift for Gillian Clark (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 120–138.

(5.) Albert H. Travis, “Marius Victorinus: A Biographical Note,” Harvard Theological

Review 36 (1943): 83–90.

(6.) See Paul Monceaux, Histoire littéraire de l’Afrique chrétienne, vol. 3: Le ive siècle,
d’Arnobe à Victorin (Paris: Leroux, 1905), 373–381; and Pierre Courcelle, “‘Du nouveau
sur la vie et les oeuvres de Marius Victorinus,” Revue des Études Anciennes 64 (1962),
127–135.

(7.) For the Stoic origin of the sentiment underlying Victorinus’s riposte, see Pierre
Courcelle, “Parietes faciunt christianos?” in Mélanges d’archéologie, d’épigraphie et
d’histoire offerts à Jérôme Carcopino (Paris: Hachette, 1966), 241–248.

(8.) Hadot, Marius Victorinus, 52–58, 235–252; discussion of problems in Stephen A.

Cooper, Marius Victorinus on Galatians, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005), 20–26.

(9.) The fullest general treatment of Victorinus’s pre-Christian works in English is

Michael von Albrecht, A History of Roman Literature from Livius Andronicus to Boethius,
rev. ed. trans. Frances and Kevin Newman (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 1616–1627. On
Victorinus’s Latinity, see F. F. Bruce, “Marius Victorinus and His Works: In Memory of
Alexander Souter (1872–1948),” Evangelical Quarterly 18 (1946), 132–153.

(10.) John O. Ward, “From Antiquity to the Renaissance: Glosses and Commentaries on
Cicero’s Rhetorica,” in Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of
Medieval Rhetoric, ed. James J. Murphy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978),
25–67.

(11.) Thus Monceaux, Histoire littéraire de l’Afrique chrétienne, 382.

(12.) Heinrich Usener, “Eine unechte Schrift de Boethius,” in Anecdoton Holderi: Ein
Beitrag zur Geschichte Roms in ostgotischer Zeit, ed. Heinrich Usener (Bonn: Carl
Georgi, 1877), 59–66. And see Andreas Pronay, Marius Victorinus: Liber de definitionibus:
eine spatantike Theorie der Definition und des Definierens: mit Einleitung, Übersetzung
und kommentar (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1997). The critical edition of the treatise by
Thomas Stangl (Tulliana et Mario-Victoriana [Munich, 1888]) is reprinted in Hadot,
Marius Victorinus, 331–362.

(13.) Hadot, Marius Victorinus, 313–327, has assembled the traces of these latter two
works from Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Martianus Capella.

(14.) Thus Hadot, Marius Victorinus, 211–214.

(15.) Because of the several recensions of book II of Cassiodorus’s Institutiones, ed. R. A.

B. Mynors, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), the attribution of these three works
to Victorinus is dubious. See Hadot, Marius Victorinus, 108–113.
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(16.) Pierre Courcelle, Late Latin Writers and their Greek Sources, translated by H. E.
Wedeck, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 7; and pace Pier Franco Beatrice,
“Quosdam Platonicorum Libros,” Vigiliae Christianae 43 (1989): 248–281. The recent
attempt to assign to Victorinus an anonymous compilation by Françoise Hudry, Marius
Victorinus, Le livre des vingt-quatre philosophes: résurgence d'un texte du IVe siècle
(Paris: Vrin, 2009) has been rejected on stylistic grounds by Thomas Riesenweber, C.
Marius Victorinus, “Commenta in Ciceronis Rhetorica,” vol. 1, Untersuchungen zur
antiken Literatur und Geschichte 120 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), 10.

(17.) Amedeo Alessandro Raschieri, “Qualche osservazione sugli antichi commenti al De

inventione di Cicerone,” Sileno 41 (2105): 343–361; and Guadalupe Lopetegui
Semperena, “El comentario de Mario Victorino al De inventione de Cicerón,” Logo:
Revista de Retórica y Teoría de la Comunicación 3 (2004): 43–62.

(18.) Full treatment in Karlhermann Bergner, Der Sapientia-Begriff im Kommentar des

Marius Victorinus zu Ciceros Jugendwerk De inventione, Studien zur klassischen
Philologie 87 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1994).

(19.) For translation and discussion of the philosophical aspects of this work, see Stephen
Gersh, Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism: The Latin Tradition, vol. 2 (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), 719–927.

(20.) Joseph de Ghellinck, Le mouvement théologique du XIIe siècle, 2nd ed. (Bruges: De
Tempel, 1948), 289–293.

(21.) Anne-Isabelle Bouton-Toubloulic, “Deux interprétations du scepticisme: Marius

Victorinus et Augustin,” Les Études philosophiques 101 (2012): 217–232.

(22.) Timothy Barnes, “The Capitulation of Liberius and Hilary of Poitiers,” Phoenix 46
(1992): 256–265.

(23.) Hadot, Marius Victorinus, 253–283; see also Claudio Moreschini and Chiara
Ombretta Tommasi, eds. and trans., Opere teologiche di Mario Vittorino (Turin, Italy:
Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 2007), 77–96.

(24.) Kurt Smolak, “O beata trinitas: Überlegungen zu den trinitarischen Hymnen des
Marius Victorinus,” vol. 33, (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 2009): 75–94.

(25.) Fullest discussion of his expository techniques in Giacomo Raspanti, Mario Vittorino
esegeta di S. Paolo, Bibliotheca philologica 1 (Palermo: Epos, 1996). See also Cooper,
Marius Victorinus on Galatians, chap. 4, as well as Stephen A. Cooper, “Narratio and
Exhortatio in Galatians According to Marius Victorinus Rhetor,” Zeitschrift für die
neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 91 (2000): 107–135.

(26.) See Victorinus’s preface on Ephesians (CSEL 83/2, 1). English translation and
commentary in Stephen A. Cooper, Metaphysics and Morals in Marius Victorinus’

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Victorinus, Marius, c. 285–c. 365 CE

Commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians: A Contribution to the History of

Neoplatonism and Christianity, American University Studies 5/155 (New York/Frankfurt:
Peter Lang, 1995), 43, 115.

(27.) Stephen A. Cooper, “Philosophical Exegesis in Marius Victorinus’ Commentaries on

Paul,” in Interpreting the Bible and Aristotle in Late Antiquity, ed. Josef Lössl and John
Watt (United Kingdom: Ashgate, 2011), 67–89.

(28.) See Pierre Nautin, “Candidus l’Arien,” in L’homme devant dieu. Mélanges offerts au
père Henri de Lubac. Exégèse et Patristique (Paris: Aubier, 1963), 309–320; Manlio
Simonetti, “Nota sull’Ariano Candido,” Orpheus 10 (1963): 151–157. Smolak, “O beata
trinitas,” 77, notes how Victorinus’ choice of the name “Candidus” creates an echo of the
hope for the candidus lector of Ovid (Tr. 1.11.35; 4.10.132) and Martial (Ep. 7.99.5).

(29.) They are printed in Migne, PL 8, 999–1024, 1295–1310.

(30.) Jean Daniélou argues for Victorinus’s contact with Origen’s commentary on John in
his review of Henry and Hadot’s SC edition (Recherches de science religieuse, 41 [1964],
127–128).

(31.) Werner Beierwaltes, Platonismus in Christentum, Philosophisches Abhandlungen 73

(Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1998), 28.

(32.) Paul Henry, Plotin et l’Occident: Firmicus Maternus, Marius Victorinus, Saint
Augustin et Macrobe (Louvain, Belgium: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense Bureaux, 1934),
49.

(33.) Alessandro Linguiti, “Commentarium in Platonis Parmenidem,” in Corpus dei papiri

filosofici greci e latini, Parte III: Commentari, ed. Francesco Adorno (Florence: Olschki,
1995), 63–200.

(34.) Pierre Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus, 2 vols. (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1968).

(35.) Matthias Baltes, Marius Victorinus: zur Philosophie in seinen theologischen

Schriften (Munich: Saur, 2002); on Middle Platonist author, see Gerard Bechtle, The
Anonymous Commentary on Plato’s “Parmenides” (Bern: Haupt, 1999). On Victorinus’s
trinitarian theology, see Volker Drecoll, “Is Porphyry the Source used by Marius
Victorinus?” in Plato’s Parmenides and its Heritage, vol. 2, ed. John Turner and Kevin
Corrigan (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010), 65–80; also, for the difference
between Victorinus’s theology and that of the fragments In Parmenidem, see Václav
Němec, “Die Theorie des göttlichen Selbstbewusstseins im Anonymen
Parmenides-Kommentar,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 154 (2011): 185–205, here
204.

(36.) On the discovery, see Michel Tardieu, “Recherches sur la formation de l’Apocalypse
de Zostrien et les sources de Marius Victorinus,” Res Orientales 10 (1996): 1–114. Full
discussion with synoptic table of the parallels, see John Turner, “The Platonizing Sethian

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Victorinus, Marius, c. 285–c. 365 CE

Treatises, Marius Victorinus’s Philosophical Sources, and Pre-Plotinian Parmenides

Commentaries,” in Plato’s Parmenides and its Heritage, vol. 1, ed. John Turner and Kevin
Corrigan, 131–172.

(37.) Pierre Hadot, “‘Porphyre et Victorinus’: Questions et hypothèses,” Res Orientales 10

(1996): 117–57, here, 124–125.

(38.) Thus: Antonio Orbe, Hacia la primera teología de la procesión del Verbo. Estudios
Valentinianos I/1 (Rome: Universitas Gregoriana 1958), 490–503; Chiara O. Tommasi,
“Silenzio, voce, annunzio: la trinità secondo Mario Vittorino,” in Silenzio e parola, Studia
ephemeridis Augustinianum 127 (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2012),
521–553; and Drecoll, “Is Porphyry the Source?”

(39.) On his use of the Latin infinitive in translating Greek, see Michael Metzger, “Marius
Victorinus and the substantive infinitive,” Eranos 72 (1974): 65–77.

(40.) Alexey R. Fokin, “The Doctrine of the ‘Intelligible Triad’ in Neoplatonism and
Patristics,” Studia Patristica 58 (2013): 45–72.

(41.) John Dillon, “Porphyry’s Doctrine of the One,” in Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, Goulven
Madec, and Denis O’Brien, ΣΟΦΙΗΣ ΜΑΙΗΤΟΡΕΣ, ‘Chercheurs de sagesse’: Hommage à
Jean Pepin, ed. Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, Goulven Madec, and Denis O’Brien (Paris:
Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1992), 356–366.

(42.) Paul Henry, “The ‘Adversus Arium’ of Marius Victorinus, the First Systematic
Exposition of the Doctrine of the Trinity,” Journal of Theological Studies1, no. 1 (1950):
42–55.

(43.) Victorinus’s Hymn II is his most revealing expression of this longing; see Stephen A.
Cooper, “The Platonist Christianity Of Marius Victorinus,” Religions 7 (2016): 122.

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