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De mortibus persecutorum AI simulator
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De mortibus persecutorum
De mortibus persecutorum (On the Deaths of the Persecutors) is a hybrid historical and Christian apologetical work by the Roman philosopher Lactantius, written in Latin sometime after AD 316.
After the monumental Divine Institutes, the comparatively brief De mortibus persecutorum is probably the most important extant work of Lactantius, a convert to Christianity who served at the courts of both the pagan Diocletian and the Christian Constantine the Great. In this work, Lactantius describes in occasionally lurid detail the downfall and deaths of the most egregious persecutors of Christians. The first few chapters briefly cover the ends of the earliest Christian persecutors: Nero, Domitian, Decius, Valerian, and Aurelian. The bulk of the work, however, concerns the deeds and deaths of the Tetrarchy: Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, Constantius, Maximinus, Constantine and Maxentius. It is one of the most important extant primary sources for the Great Persecution of Christians which was initiated by Diocletian and Galerius in AD 303, containing information on individuals and events from that period that appear nowhere else.
As to his reason for writing, Lactantius says in Chapter 1:
Of the end of those men I have thought good to publish a narrative, that all who are afar off, and all who shall arise hereafter, may learn how the Almighty manifested his power and sovereign greatness in rooting out and utterly destroying the enemies of His name.
While this quote reveals the apologetic character of the work, Lactantius was also quite aware of the historical import, saying:
I relate all those things on the authority of well-informed persons, and I thought it proper to commit them to writing exactly as they happened, lest the memory of events so important should perish, and lest any future historian of the persecutors should corrupt the truth.
Several historical figures are known to us completely or primarily from Lactantius's account in De Mortibus Persecutorum, among them: Prisca, the wife of Diocletian; Galeria Valeria, the daughter of Diocletian and wife of Galerius; Candidianus, the son of Galerius; Severus, the short-lived Augustus of the West; and Flavius Severianus, the son of Severus.
One of the most important passages in De Mortibus Persecutorum occurs in Chapter XLIV wherein Lactantius describes the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and the theophany which Constantine experienced just prior to the battle. Differing from the account of Eusebius Pamphilus who specifically recounts a vision of a cross in the sky with the words, in hoc signo vinces, Lactantius describes a dream in which Constantine is instructed to paint the chi-rho on the shields of his soldiers.
De mortibus persecutorum
De mortibus persecutorum (On the Deaths of the Persecutors) is a hybrid historical and Christian apologetical work by the Roman philosopher Lactantius, written in Latin sometime after AD 316.
After the monumental Divine Institutes, the comparatively brief De mortibus persecutorum is probably the most important extant work of Lactantius, a convert to Christianity who served at the courts of both the pagan Diocletian and the Christian Constantine the Great. In this work, Lactantius describes in occasionally lurid detail the downfall and deaths of the most egregious persecutors of Christians. The first few chapters briefly cover the ends of the earliest Christian persecutors: Nero, Domitian, Decius, Valerian, and Aurelian. The bulk of the work, however, concerns the deeds and deaths of the Tetrarchy: Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, Constantius, Maximinus, Constantine and Maxentius. It is one of the most important extant primary sources for the Great Persecution of Christians which was initiated by Diocletian and Galerius in AD 303, containing information on individuals and events from that period that appear nowhere else.
As to his reason for writing, Lactantius says in Chapter 1:
Of the end of those men I have thought good to publish a narrative, that all who are afar off, and all who shall arise hereafter, may learn how the Almighty manifested his power and sovereign greatness in rooting out and utterly destroying the enemies of His name.
While this quote reveals the apologetic character of the work, Lactantius was also quite aware of the historical import, saying:
I relate all those things on the authority of well-informed persons, and I thought it proper to commit them to writing exactly as they happened, lest the memory of events so important should perish, and lest any future historian of the persecutors should corrupt the truth.
Several historical figures are known to us completely or primarily from Lactantius's account in De Mortibus Persecutorum, among them: Prisca, the wife of Diocletian; Galeria Valeria, the daughter of Diocletian and wife of Galerius; Candidianus, the son of Galerius; Severus, the short-lived Augustus of the West; and Flavius Severianus, the son of Severus.
One of the most important passages in De Mortibus Persecutorum occurs in Chapter XLIV wherein Lactantius describes the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and the theophany which Constantine experienced just prior to the battle. Differing from the account of Eusebius Pamphilus who specifically recounts a vision of a cross in the sky with the words, in hoc signo vinces, Lactantius describes a dream in which Constantine is instructed to paint the chi-rho on the shields of his soldiers.