Commodianus

Commodian is a mystery. Placed by some in the early third century, and by others in the fifth, he has been located in such disparate places as North Africa, Gaza, Arles, Illyria, Gallia Narbonensis, and Rome. The current consensus favours a date in the mid-third century, and a North African provenance. His writings consist of a collection of eighty acrostic poems in two books entitled Instructiones, and a poem in hexameters entitled Carmen de Duobus Populis, or Carmen Apologeticum. As poetry, his work is undistinguished.

Ronald E. Heine, “The Beginnings of Latin Christian Literature,” in The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, ed. Frances Young, Lewis Ayres, and Andrew Louth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 132.