ABSTRACT
We possess various works by this mythologi~t,~ the best known of which is the Virgiliana Continentia, wherein the mystical sense attaching to the Bneid-taken as a figure representing human life-is elucidated by the methods of allegorical exegesis. The episodes related in the poem are represented as so many veiled lessons suitable to make people love virtue. As regards the Bishop, we know that he was born in 468 at Telepta, in Byzacene, of a Senatorial Carthage family, and that he died in 532. According to his Life, written by one of his pupils in 533-534,8 he knew Greek and also spoke it ( $ iv-v). He was exiled to Sardinia by king Thrasamund, together with more than sixty Bishops, and was recalled first in 515, and definitely in] 523. A faithful disciple of St Augustine, whose trend of thought he diligently assimilated, he combated Arianism and SemiPelagianism in a series of works of which the literary capacity is not always equal to the vigour of his religious views (Contra
SAINT CAESARIUS OF ARLES 497 Arianos ; De Trinitate ad Felicem Notarium ; De Veritate Praedestinationis et Gratiae Dei ad Joannem et Venerium, etc.). Bossuet calls him " the greatest theologian of his time," which does not mean that Fulgentius was an original thinker, but that he had formed a most lucid and sure conception of doctrine from Augustine's writings.
