A fourth-century Roman who wrote his way out of poverty in North Africa and into the imperial bureaucracy - his thumbnail history of the emperors caught the eye of Julian, who put up a statue in his honor.
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Writers born in the 320s 4
About this person
Born around 320 to a poor, uneducated family in North Africa, Aurelius Victor studied first at Carthage and then in Rome. Between 358 and 360 he composed a sweeping history of the emperors from Augustus to Constantius II, now lost except for the epitome he published in 361 under the title De Caesaribus. The work earned him a bronze statue in Naissus from the emperor Julian, who also named him governor of Pannonia Secunda that same year. He became consul in 369 and suffect consul sometime between 370 and 378. In 388 or 389, under the anti-pagan emperor Theodosius I, Victor was appointed urban prefect of Rome - a final ascent for a man who had begun with nothing.
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