LACTANTIUS, lilk-thiesh1-iis. in several 3ISS. designated Lucius C.ELII'S, or C.ECILIUS FIRMIANUS LACTANTICS, an eminent Christian author, who flourished in the third and fourth centuries. lie •IIS perhaps of Italian descent, but studied at Sicca, in Africa, under the rhetorician Arnobius, and in A.D. 301 settled as a teacher of rhetoric in Nicoinedia. lie was invited to Haul by Constantine the Great (a.n. 312-18), to act as tutor to his son Crisp's, and is supposed to have died at Treves about 325 or 330. Lae tantins's principal work is his Dirinarum Insti tutionum Libri VII., a produetion of both a po hinikal and an apologetic (diameter. He was an ardent Christian, and a hitter opponent of the paganism in which he had been brought up; but his tendencies were toward llanicheism and cer tain views held as unorthodox by the Church. Among his other writings are treatises, De Ira !lei and De Nortibus P•rsecutorum. Some ele
gies have also been ascribed to him, but er roneously. His style is remarkable, and has deservedly earned for him the title of the Chris tian Cicero. He was, besides, a man of very considerable learning, but as he appears not to have become a Christian till he was advanced in years, his religious opinions are often very crude and singular. tact:Intim was a great favorite during the Middle Ages. The editio prinecps of this writer is one of the oldest extant speci mens of typography (Subiaeo, 1465). llis works are published in Migne, Patrologia Latina, vols, vi. and vii. (Paris, 1844), and Laulunann and Brandt, Corpus Scripforum Ecelesiastirorum Lutinoruni (Vienna. 1890). There is an English translation by Fletcher in the series of the Ante Nicene Fathers (1896), vol. vii.