Lactantius Divine Institutes

The Divine Institutes of Lactantius was a vigorous riposte to pagan criticism and persecution of Christianity, which came to a head in the "Great" Persecution of Diocletian in the early fourth century AD. This edition has been prepared with students and scholars of intellectual history in mind, but it will also appeal to those concerned with ecclesiastical history and patristics, and to anyone interested in tracing the impact of classical philosophy and literature on an early Christian thinker.This book has its origins in some lectures that I gave soon after my arrival in Cambridge in 1974, within the course in the history of political thought from antiquity to the modern era. I was initially asked to deliver the lectures in Greek Classical and Hellenistic thought, which Moses Finley (but not his audiences) considered he had given long enough, in tandem with my former colleague Richard Tuck, who was responsible (inter alia) for the period from Cicero to Augustine. In due course I passed the Greeks on to more expert practitioners than myself and took over the Romans and early Christians. That slice of the course, as designed by Richard Tuck – to whom I here acknowledge a longstanding intellectual debt – included lectures on Lactantius Divine Institutes.