ARNOBIUS (called AFER, and sometimes THE ELDER), early Christian writer, was a teacher of rhetoric at Sicca Venerea in proconsular Africa during the reign of Diocletian. His great treatise, in seven books, Adversus Gentes (or Nationes), on ac count 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.
The work of Arnobius appears to have been written when he was a recent convert, for he does not possess a very extensive knowledge of the Scriptures. He knows nothing of the Old Testament, and only the life of Christ in the New, while he does not quote directly from the Gospels.