Known since the Renaissance as the 'Christian Cicero,' Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius was a professor of Latin rhetoric, Christian apologist, and theologian at the court of Emperor Constantine. Jason M. Gehrke provides an historical study of Lactantius' major work, The Divine Institutes of the Christian Religion, focusing on its core notion of virtus. Gehrke's volume uncovers the Roman political and philosophical traditions that informed arguments about virtus in early Latin Christian writers -- especially Tertullian, Minucius Felix, and Cyprian. Their works illuminate the fundamental...