FULGENTIUS, FABIUS DLANCIADES, Latin gram marian, a native of Africa, flourished in the first half of the 6th (or the last part of the 5th) century A.D. He is to be distinguished from Fulgentius, bishop of Ruspe , to whom he was probably related, and also from the bishop's pupil and biographer, Fulgentius Ferrandus. Four extant works are attributed to him. (I) Mythologiarucn libri dedicated to a certain Catus, a presbyter of Carthage, containing 75 myths explained in the mys tical and allegorical manner of the Stoics and Neoplatonists. As a Christian, Fulgentius sometimes quotes the Bible by the side of the philosophers, (2) Expositio Vergilianae continentiae (conti nentia = contents), a sort of appendix to (I) , explains the twelve books of the Aeneid as a picture of human life. The three words arma (= virtus), vir (= sapientia), Primus (= princeps) in the first line represent respectively substantia corporalis, censualis, ornans. Book i. symbolizes the birth and early childhood of man (the shipwreck of Aeneas denotes the peril of birth), book vi. the plunge into the depths of wisdom. (3) Expositio sermonum antiquorum, explanations of 63 rare and obsolete words, supported by quotations (sometimes from authors and works that never existed). It is much inferior to the similar work of Nonius. (4) Liber absque litteris de aetatibus mundi et horcinis. The ms. heading of this work gives the author's name as Fabius Claudius Gordianus Fulgentius (Claudius is the name of the father, and Gordianus that of the grandfather of the bishop, to whom some attribute the work). The title Absque litteris indi cates that one letter of the alphabet is omitted in each book (A in bk. i., B in bk. ii.). Only 14 books are preserved. The matter is chiefly taken from sacred history. In addition to these, Ful gentius speaks of early poems in imitation of Anacreon, and of a medical work (Physiologus). Fulgentius is a representative of the so-called late African style, taking for his models Apuleius, Tertullian and Martianus Capella.
See the edition of the four works by R. Helm (1898, Teubner series) ; also M. Zink, Der Mytholog Fulgentius (1867) ; E. Jungmann, "De Fulgentii aetate et scriptis," in Acta Societatis Philologae Lip siensis, i. (1871) ; A. Ebert, Allgemeine Geschichte der Litt. des Mittel alters, i. ; article "Fulgentius" by C. F. Bohr in Ersch and Gruber's Allgemeine Encyklopadie; Teuffel-Schwabe, History of Roman Litera ture (Eng. trans.) ; H. Liebeschiitz, Fulgentius Metaforalis (1926) on his influence on mediaeval mythology ; 0. Fniebel, Fulgentius, der Mythograph and Bischof (Paderborn, 191I), attempts to identify the two on stylistic grounds.