Arator (fl. 544 CE) composed an impassioned and highly rhetorical hexameter epic on the Acts of the Apostles (Acts, Book of), known from the manuscripts as Historia Apostolica, which was recited in Rome, in the Church of Saint Peter ad Vincula, in the year 544 CE. Born into a noble family in the late 5th century CE, in Liguria, he received his early education in Milan. Some years later he moved to Ravenna, where he tells us that he read the “histories” of Julius Caesar (i.e. The Gallic War) as well as secular or non-Christian poems – works in which he recognized “sweet charm” but a…