ABSTRACT
This appreciation of St Augustine in a letter to Quod~ vultdeus 1 should be borne in mind, but we cannot avoid still further accentuating our unfavourable opinion of Filaster from it.
We know very little of even the personality of Filaster. A sermon by Gaudentius, his successor, suggests the idea of a restless and travelled controversialist 3 who throughout the Roman world disputed with pagans, Jews, heretics (especially with Auxentius, the Arian Bishop of Milan), and entered into private and public oratorical contests, even in Rome itself. Whatever Marx, the last editor of the Liber de Haeresibus may say, Filaster was most likely of Latin origin; the characteristics of his language are in favour of this hypothesis.3
