LA CRUZ, RAMON DE: see CRUZ, RAMON DE LA. LACTANTIUS FIRMIANUS (c. 260–c. 340), also called Lucius Caelius (or Caecilius) Lactantius Firmianus, Christian writer, called the "Christian Cicero." His history is very ob scure. He was born of heathen parents in Africa, and became a pupil of Arnobius, whom he far excelled in style though his knowledge of the Scriptures was equally slight. About 290 he went to Nicomedia in Bithynia to teach rhetoric. In middle age he became a convert to Christianity, and about 3o6 he went to Gaul (Treves) on the invitation of Constantine the Great, and became tutor to his eldest son, Crispus. He probably died about 340.
Lactantius' chief work, Divinarum Institutionum Libri Septem, seems to have been begun in Nicomedia about 304 and finished in Gaul before 311. Jerome states that Lactantius wrote an epitome of these Institutions, and such a work, which may well be authentic, was discovered in ms. in the royal library at Turin in 1711 by C. M. Pfaff. Besides the Institutions Lactantius wrote several treatises: (I) De Ira Dei, addressed to one Donatus and directed against the Epicurean philosophy. (2) De Opificio Dei
sive de Formatione Hominis, his earliest work, and one which reveals very little Christian influence. (3) A celebrated treatise, De Mortibus Persecutorunt, which describes God's judgments on the persecutors of his church from Nero to Diocletian, has served as a model for numberless writings. De Mort. Persecut. is not in the earlier editions of Lactantius; it was discovered and printed by Baluze in 1679, and its authorship is doubtful. The poems sometimes attributed to Lactantius are probably from other hands.
Editions: 0. F. Fritzsche in E. G. Gersdorf's Bibl. patr. eccl. x., xi. (Leipzig, 5842-44) ; Migne, Patr. Lat. vi., vii.; S. Brandt and G. Laub mann in the Vienna Corpus Script. Eccles. Lat. xix., xxvii. 1 and 2 (189o-93-97). Translation: W. Fletcher in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vii. Literature: the German histories of early Christian literature, by A. Harnack, 0. Bardenhewer, A. Ebert, A. Ehrhard, G. Kruger's Early Chr. Lit. p. 307 and Hauck-Herzog's Realencyk. vol. xi., give guides to the copious literature on the subject.