Aurelius Victor (320–390)
Born 320 CE, died 390 CE.
Sextus Aurelius Victor (c. 320 – c. 390) was a historian and politician of the Roman Empire. Victor was the author of a now-lost monumental history of imperial Rome covering the period from Augustus to Constantius II. Under the emperor Julian (361-363), Victor served as governor of Pannonia Secunda in 361; in 389 he became praefectus urbi (urban prefect), senior imperial official in Rome. His surviving work, entitled De Caesaribus is a brief epitome of his history, and was originally titled in the two surviving manuscripts Aurelii Victoris Historiae Abbreviatae. The work was published in 361. Aurelius was born to a poor family in North Africa to an uneducated father. He was educated, first at Carthage and then at Rome. He apparently composed his history between 358 and 360. Following the publication, his reputation grew enough that Julian erected a bronze statue of him in Naissus. Aurelius survived the death of the pagan Julian into the reign of the fiercely anti-pagan Theodosius I (347–395). It appears he became consul in 369, and suffect consul between 370 and 378. In 388 or 389, Theodosius appointed Aurelius urban prefect.
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