ABSTRACT
When Minucius Felix wrote his dialogue Octavius in the first half of the third century AD – which culminates with one of the protagonists becoming eager to convert – he was describing a true victory of reason: Caecilius, who had lived for a long time in ‘pagan superstitions’ and ‘ignorance’,1 discovers Christianity and is eventually convinced by the superiority of this religion.2 Successful conversion in general is often portrayed in the vocabulary of triumph and juxtaposed with a time of ignorance and superstition before the adoption of the new faith. This paper aims to look at similar processes and topoi, though not in the imperial Rome of Minucius Felix, but at the edge of the late Roman world, in Syria, Palestine, and Arabia, and will focus on conversions of people
1 Superstitiosae vanitates and inscientia, Minucius Felix, Octavius 1.5 and 4.3; see Christoph Schäublin, ‘Konversionen in antiken Dialogen?’, in Christoph Schäublin (ed.), Catalepton: Festschrift für Bernhard Wyss zum 80. Geburtstag (Basel, 1985), 117-131, who compares the Christian monotheistic conversion with the classical turn to philosophy, e.g. in Cicero’s Hortensius. According to Schäublin’s analysis the novelty of a conversion dialogue such as Octavius is that – contrary to a classic Platonic dialogue – this disputation now has a definite goal and distinct result, namely the conversion of Caecilius.
