thorough education which helped him master Latin and Greek to perfection, as well
as literary and philosophical tradition. He was well trained in law and rhetoric and
became a prominent lawyer, but he is not likely to have been a jurist. The details of
his life that we know from Jerome (De viris illustribus53) are mostly taken from
Tertullian’s own works and partly based on misunderstandings. Thus Tertullian’s own
written work constitutes the main source of knowledge of his life. He spent his life
in his native city of Carthage and may never have visited Rome (T. Barnes 1971:
243–5). Both his parents were pagan and we have no date for or details of his con-
version to Christianity, since he himself makes no reference to it, but it is generally
assumed to have been around 193. From then on, he put all his juridical, literary,
and philosophical culture to the service of his new-found religion. With a violent
temperament and burning energy, he nursed a fanatic passion for the truth: for
him the whole problem of Christianity and paganism was reduced to vera vel falsa
divinitas; his defense of Christianity and attack on paganism and heresy were the
motor of an intense literary work which combines juridical and apologetic discourse.
Thirty-one works remain, not all complete, which are classified according to their
content as apologetic works, doctrinal and polemic works, dedicated to combating
doctrinal errors, and moral and ascetic works on questions of church practice and
Christian life. De pallio, a short, original piece in which Tertullian defends the reasons
why he, as a Christian, has decided to continue wearing the typical philosopher’s
dress, cannot be comprised in any of these categories, but is generally assigned to
the apologetical writings (Price 1999: 107).
Tertullian wrote complicated Latin; his non-classical style has strongly personal con-
notations and, in turn, documents a specific lexicon, which constitutes the ground-
work of the construction of Christian terminology in Latin. Although he is always
mentioned as the first Latin writer and the founder of the Latin Christian lexicon,
it is necessary to bear in mind that he continued a Christian literary tradition that
had begun before him in the north of Africa with the first Latin translations of
the Bible and the martyr acts, among other texts (Daniélou 1970; Cancik 1975:
116 –19). Among Tertullian’s numerous works, we shall focus on Ad nationesand
Apologeticum. In both works Tertullian makes use of the world of representations
of the old culture and of religious criticism, turning the habitual arguments for the
defense of paganism into arguments against it. Both the content and the target audi-
ence of these two works are key to analyzing Tertullian’s vision of Roman religion,
the religion practiced by “the others,” those to whom the works are directed. How-
ever, with regard to the audience of Tertullian’s works, it is necessary to clarify that
among his apologetic works, those dedicated to non-Christian readers also include
Ad Scapulam, De testimonio animae, De pallio, and Adversus Iudaeos. Finally we will
analyze the critics of the Roman rituals in De spectaculis.
Ad nationes
Ad nationes, put together by Tertullian in 197, is the first Christian apology in
Latin to have reached us. It consists of two books and was perhaps intended to be an460 Cecilia Ames