Lactantius

Born in Africa, a student of the rhetor Arnobius before teaching rhetorics himself, L. Caelius Firmianus Lactantius responded to a call of Emperor Diocletian between 290 and 300 C.E. to start a career as a professor of Latin at the court of Nicomedia. The young Constantine was probably one of his pupils. In February 303, he witnessed the outbreak of the persecution. Not yet a Christian himself, he took a leave from his teaching position with the purpose of writing in defense of the persecuted religion. His precarious status did not hinder him from publishing a first crypto-Christian essay, De opificio dei, On God’s Work of Creation, in 303/04, and a crypto-Christian poem De ave Phoenice, On the Bird Phoenix (303/04). A major apology, Divine Instructions, followed between 304 and 311.

Charles Kannengiesser, Handbook of Patristic Exegesis: The Bible in Ancient Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 993.