ARATOR. - Christian poet born in Milan around the beginning of the 6th century. Having lost his father at a young age, he found an adoptive father in Lawrence, bishop of Milan, and a protector in Ennodius. After attending the school of the grammarian Eleutherius, he went to Ravenna to stay with Parthenius, Ennodius's nephew. He was appointed comes domesticorum and comes privatorum by Alaric. Abandoning his political career, he embraced the ecclesiastical one, and in Rome he was a subdeacon under Pope Vigilius, to whom he presented, on 6 April 554, a poem on the Acts of the Apostles, which was read by the author himself in the church of St. Peter in Chains in the presence of the Pope.
A.'s Latin is that of the schools of rhetoric, his prosody that of the best contemporary poets, his metrics reveal a refined technique. Destined to be read by learned persons who would appreciate the poetic and biblical reminiscences, the acute mystical interpretations and the metrical and rhythmic subtleties, placed at the service of the new faith, in honor of the apostles Peter and Paul, the poem is a literary and refined work, which was much praised by contemporaries and by medieval readers.
Three elegiac compositions in epistolary form also survive from A., addressed one to the abbot Florianus, another to Pope Vigilius and the third to his friend Parthenius, written on the occasion of the sending of a copy of the poem.
Bibliography
A good edition with commentary is that of Arntzen, reproduced in PL. 68, 58-252; new editions: G. L. Perugi, Venice 1909, and Rome 1911. Cf. C. L. Leimbach, Über den Dichter Arator, in Theol. Studien und Kritiken, 46 (1873), pp. 225-70; M. Manitius, Gesch. der lat. Liter. des Mittelalters, I, Munich 1911, p. 161; O. Ferrari, Le allegorie del poeta A., in Athenæum (studi per. di lett. e storia), 2 (1914), pp. 417-34; I. Schrödinger, Das Epos des Arator, Weiden 1915; A. Ansorge, De Aratore veterum poetorum Latinarum imitatore, Breslau 1915; A. Beltrami, Gli scritti latini della Liguria medioevole, Genoa 1923; M. Ingunes, Frammenti di A. in fogli di guardia Cassioci del sec. XI, in Archivum Latinitatis medii aevi, 4 (1928), pp. 153-55; A. P. Mc. Kivlay, Studies in Arator, in Harvard Studies in classical Philology, 41 (1932), pp. 123-66; U. Moricea, Storia della lett. latina crist., Turin 1932, pp. 198 and 209 ff.; E. Cuzzi, I tre codici ambrosani di A., Istituto lombardo di Scienze e Lettere 1936, pp. 241-47.