Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius

Lactantius was a North African professor of rhetoric — so elegant a Latin stylist that the Renaissance would call him “the Christian Cicero.” Summoned by the emperor Diocletian to teach in his eastern capital, he lost his post and his livelihood when the great persecution broke out and he would not renounce his newfound Christian faith. In want he wrote his masterwork, the Divine Institutes, the first attempt to set out the whole of Christian teaching in polished Latin for an educated pagan audience. Later, restored to favour, he was made tutor to the son of the emperor Constantine.