Beyond the Rhetoric of the Octavius: Minucius Felix’s Exhortatio ad Christianitatem

Abstract

Abstract Studies of the sources and structure of the Octavius have for long concluded that there lays no authorial intention that is not merely rhetorical behind the “mosaistic” mode of composition of Minucius Felix’s apologetic dialogue, its borrowings from Cicero (especially his De natura deorum) being a mere tribute to the dialogic tradition and its bipartite framework mindlessly reproducing the rhetorical exercise of the controversia (thesis-antithesis). The present investigation aims to surpass this “reductionistic approach” by studying not only the structure of the dialogue but also the contents of its exordium (Chapters 2–4) and its epilogus (Chapters 39–40)—all of which betray Minucius Felix’s intentions to present his work as an exhortatio (ad Christianitatem) on the model of Cicero’s Hortensius. Moreover, we contend that by assuming for the Octavius the form of a protreptic discourse—with its essentially undogmatic character and curricular dependency upon further dogmatic instruction—, we might open up novel horizons from which making sense of two of the most ingrained interpretative problems hitherto emerged in Minucian studies: the Octavius’ dogmatic silence, and the apocryphal character of Minucius’ De fato.