Our authors make no secret of their original profession; Lactantius even boasts of it, as something that is bound to enhance the merits of his work:
My exercise in imaginary cases has, however, done much to increase the abundance and facility with which I am now to plead the cause of truth; granted that this may be defended, as it has been by many, without eloquence, still it should be illumined and in a manner sent abroad, by clarity and brilliance of speech, so that it may flow into souls more powerfully, being both instinct with a vigour of its own and adorned by the radiance of oratory. (Divine Institutes, Proem, 10)
Oratory in the ancient world was of three kinds: the forensic, used by lawyers; the deliberative or symbouleutic, practised in political assemblies; and the epideictic proper to the literary show-piece, which, because it puts the best of an author’s talents on display, is much the commonest in Second Sophistic literature. The three are not exclusive, since orators of the first two kinds would not succeed before a learned audience unless they also cultivated the epideictic skills. Christians had reserved the name apologia for works in the forensic mode, while Theophilus’ To Autolycus could pose as a symbouleutic dissertation. Lacking any forensic or political occasion, the writings of Arnobius and Lactantius would appear to be epideictic; but to use this term need not imply that the authors are insincere, or that their arguments are unsound. It does, however, mean that they are aiming at a similar effect on every audience, without regard to context, place, or time, and it follows that they cannot bemuse their audience by trading on its temporary passions or the slowness of its wits. An apologist whose writing is abstracted from historical circumstances uses only the most durable and universal matter. Simmons rightly notes that Arnobius’ work lacks certain elements which would once have been demanded of an apologist, but fails to add that this is because he wrote for other times:
How can books 1—2 be called an apology when Arnobius betrays very little knowledge of that which modern historians impose upon him to defend? One hears nothing about the organization, liturgy, sacraments or polity of the North African Church. He is apparently ignorant of the Old Testament, and there are only two possible allusions to the New Testament . . . There is not a reference made to the Virgin Birth, the Holy Spirit, and only one Christian predecessor is named.
If we take ‘apology’ to mean only what it means in Greek—a forensic refutation of a charge defined by the prosecutor—criticism of this kind will be seen to be irrelevant. Arnobius has undertaken only to show that Christianity cannot be held responsible for every ill that mars the common universe of Christians and pagans; he is thus required to demonstrate that Christ was no impostor, and his case is greatly strengthened by reflection on the impotence of pagan gods and mysteries, but it hardly calls for a doctrine of the Trinity, which most of the early apologists, after all, did not possess or thought it proper to reserve. The virgin birth invited pagan slanders, and was not yet part of a credal declaration;25 and though, according to Simmons’s own chronology, Arnobius wrote at a time when copies of either Testament would be difficult to obtain, comparison with his predecessors would find him almost profligate in allusions to the human personality and earthly works of Christ.
It is true that Arnobius cannot vie with earlier Latin writers in that test of Christian orthodoxy, the handling of the Scriptures. But much the same could be said against Lactantius, for he too mentions little of the New Testament but the Gospels, and, while he takes perfunctory account of the Jewish prophecies, he displays a closer acquaintance with the Sibyl, whom he takes for a pagan seer. Yet of him at least we know that he intended his magnum opus to be the last and best in a series of apologies produced by Latin authors on behalf of Christianity. He informs us, in the passage already cited for the dating of Arnobius, that the failings of his eloquent compatriots have rendered his own labours necessary. Affording our only evidence for the date and occupation of Minucius Felix, he says that this accomplished lawyer would have been a redoubtable defender of Christianity, had he only studied the arguments more deeply. The virtues of the erudite Septimius Tertullianus, on the other hand, are fatally impaired by many passages that are frigid, hyperbolic, or obscure. Cyprian is incomparable for eloquence, but of no use to outsiders, since he wrote for those already steeped in the mysteries of the faith. He takes the opportunity to record an obscene lampoon on Cyprian’s name, and to reverse the pagan judgement that his task had been unequal to his powers:
The learned of this age who have happened to make the acquaintance of his writings are accustomed to deride him. I have heard a certain man, of great sophistication, calling him, with the change of a single letter, Coprianus, as one who had applied an elegant genius, worthy of greater things, to fables fit for old women. (Divine Institutes, 5. I)
A further animadversion on Tertullian, not wholly fair, contrasts his limited interests with the more ambitious project of Lactantius:
Although Tertullian has amply pleaded the same cause in that book which is called the Apology, it is one thing to respond to accusers, which consists solely in defence or refutation, and another to instruct (instituere), as I am doing, which entails setting out the substance of the whole doctrine. (Ibid. 5. 4)
If we allow Lactantius to be an apologist in the light of such remarks, it would be hard to deny this title to Arnobius. Each, like a practised orator, says only what is requisite to his case, which is that persecution of Christians is a mark of Rome’s decline and her enslavement to foreign vices. Both maintain that the Christian is the true compatriot of the virtuous Roman: Lactantius pleads from the writings of the great Italian poets and antiquarians, while Arnobius summons the conscience of his readers to decide between his rational theology and the superstitious folly of the Greeks.