Introduction to This Volume
How this book is arranged
This is the sixteenth volume of a series that gathers the writings of the early Church in order of date, from the generation after the apostles down to the eighth century. This volume holds Arnobius and Eusebius against the Pagans, and Marcellus of Ancyra, from the period about AD 300 – 337.
Within each work the text is divided into chapters and numbered sections, so that any passage can be found again and cited. The small bold figures in the text are the section numbers.
The translations
The text is in English only. Wherever a modern English version has been prepared for SermonIndex it is used here; otherwise the book prints an older public-domain translation. In both cases the wording is the translator’s own: older translations have not been altered beyond dividing them into sections. The sources for every work are listed at the back of the book, together with the licence under which each text is released. The modern English version prepared for SermonIndex is used for Fragments (Marcellus of Ancyra), Against Marcellus (Eusebius of Caesarea) and On Ecclesiastical Theology (Eusebius of Caesarea); the other works are printed in older public-domain translations.
In this volume
Arnobius was a teacher of rhetoric at Sicca in North Africa who wrote his seven books Against the Heathen about AD 300, shortly after becoming a Christian.
Eusebius was bishop of Caesarea in Palestine from about AD 314 until his death about AD 339. He is called the father of church history, and he was a scholar, an apologist and a biographer of the emperor Constantine.
Marcellus was bishop of Ancyra in Galatia and a defender of the Nicene faith. His own writings survive only in the quotations of his opponents, above all Eusebius of Caesarea.
Marcellus’s own writings are lost, and the fragments printed here are those preserved in the quotations of Eusebius and of other writers. Some of the same passages therefore appear again in Eusebius’s Against Marcellus.
Dates and authorship
Dates are approximate and are debated by scholars. Each work begins with a short introduction that states what is known about its author and its date, and what is uncertain.