Iulius Africanus (3rd cent.) is a fascinating writer in a period of transition. Widely travelled, he belongs to the intellectual elite of the second sophistic. His two main works present a similar encyclopedic approach, but very different contents. He can be considered the "father of Christian chronography," since he authored the first Christian world chronicle (Chronographiae). However, he also wrote a comprehensive and multifaceted manual of many fields of knowledge, where the religious character is open to debate. The preserved fragments of the Cesti treat military,...