In a veritable torrent of books and articles, he has expounded at length on the agenda, style and sources of this cranky patriarch's many letters. One of the main themes of Cain's intellectual oeuvre is Jerome's aspirational authority, that is, the ways in which he buttressed his sometimes-novel claims against the vociferous attacks of his many critics and rivals.
Andrew Cain is Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. A specialist in the Greek and Latin literature of Late Antiquity, he is the author of seven books (and co-editor of four multi-authored volumes) on a range of ancient authors and genres, from epistolography to monastic hagiography and the patristic biblical commentary. In addition to serving on numerous editorial boards, he is Editor of the Journal of Late Antiquity.