090073 SE Lateinisches Seminar (2018S)

Julius Firmicus Maternus is the author of the last and longest astrological treatise from the ancient world, the Matheseos Libri VIII. He is also the author of a much shorter apologetic treatise called "De errore profanarum religionum" (45 pp in Ziegler's edition.) He was a younger contemporary of Constantine's, a member of "the final pagan generation," and lived in the first half of the 4th C. Firmicus is one of the rare figures in whose work one can study a pagan "before" and a Christian "after," for shortly after Constantine's death in 337 he converted. The De errore is an apology, but of a different kind from say Minucius Felix, or Tertullian's. It is closer to Arnobius' Ad nationes, more disgusted and angry and intolerant. Behind it lie many intriguing questions in source-criticism and in religious history. We will begin with biographical study of Firmicus and then move on to a close reading of the De Errore and to study of its intriguing (and difficult) content.