Victorinus (6), called Caius Marius (Hieron. Comm. on Gal. Proleg.) and also Marius Fabius (see Suringar, Hist. Scholiast. Lat. p. 153, note); known also as Afer, from the country of his birth. He is to be distinguished from two Christian writers called Victorinus mentioned by Gennadius (de Scriptor. Eccl. cc. 60 and 88), and from Victorinus of Pettau, the commentator on the Apocalypse. He was a celebrated man of letters and rhetorician in Rome in the middle of 4th cent.
His conversion is the subject of the well-known
narrative in St. Augustine's Confessions
(bk. viii. cc. 2–5). In extreme old age
zealous study of Scripture and Christian
literature convinced him of the truth of
Christianity. He told Simplician, afterwards
bp. of Milan, that he was a Christian, and when
Simplician refused to regard him as such till
he saw him "in the church," asked him in
banter "whether walls, then, make Christians?"—a
characteristic question from one
disposed to regard Christianity rather as
another school of philosophy than as a social
organization. The fear of his friends, however, which kept him from making profession of his faith, was removed by further meditation, and after being enrolled as a catechumen for a short time, he was baptized, and by his own deliberate choice made his preliminary profession of faith with the utmost publicity. St. Augustine gives us a vivid account of the excitement and joy his conversion caused in Christian circles at Rome. This was at least before the end of the reign of Constantius, 361; but he continued to teach rhetoric in Rome till 362, when Julian's edict forbad Christians to be public teachers (Aug. Conf. l.c.). Then, "choosing rather to give over the wordy school than God's Word," he withdrew, and as St. Jerome emphasizes his great age before conversion, it is not surprising that we hear no more of him. He lived, however, long enough to write a number of Christian treatises and commentaries, and it is possible that Jerome alludes to him as alive on the outbreak of the disputes connected with the name of Jovinian in 382. (See Proleg. to Victorinus in Migne's Patr. Lat. vol. viii. p. 994 for question of reading.)
The following is a list of his Christian
writings: (1) The anti-Arian treatise, de
Generatione Verbi Divini, in reply to the de
Generatione Divina by Candidus the Arian. (2) The long work adversus Arium, elicited by Candidus's brief rejoinder to the former treatise. Bk. ii. must have been written not later than 361 (see c. 9), bk. i. c. 365 (see c. 28). (3) The de ὁμοουσίῳ Recipiendo, a summary of (2). (4) Three Hymns, mainly consisting of formulas and prayers intended to elucidate the relations of the Trinity. (5) Commentaries on Gal., Phil., and Eph. Though lacking continuous merit (see Lightfoot, Gal. p. 227), these are probably the first Latin commentaries on St. Paul's Epistles (see Hieron. Comm. in Gal. Proleg.). (6) An anti-Manichean treatise, with reasonable certainty ascribed to him (Migne, Proleg. § 3), ad Justinum Manichaeum, is the earliest extant treatise against the Manicheans, and insists with considerable insight on the inconsistencies of their dualism. (7) A very strange little treatise, de Verbis Scripturae "Factum est vespere et mane dies unus." For an Eng. trans. of the fragments see Ante-Nicene Lib.
Besides these we may notice the de Physicis, ascribed to him by Cardinal Mai (see his remarks in Migne prefixed to the treatise, p. 1295). It is an ably written treatise on the Creation, Fall, and Recovery of Man. But the style does not suggest the authorship of Victorinus, and the character of the quotations from N.T. seems to argue a different author.
We have some allusions in his extant works
to others which have perished, e.g. on Eph. iv. 10 (lib. ii. init.) there is an allusion to a commentary on Cor. Cardinal Mai refers to a commentary on Leviticus by Victorinus extant in the Vatican (see Ceillier, Auteurs sacrés, vol. iv. p. 328, note 2).