DE ALEATORIBUS. - In this homily, which forms part of the large body of works falsely attributed to s. Cipriano, a bishop, after a forceful opening on the responsibility of pastors of souls, vigorously condemns the game of dice as the source of countless evils, as an invention of the devil, declaring that one who is devoted to it does not deserve the name of Christian, and exhorting believers instead to entrust their money to Christ by giving it to the poor of the Church.
The pamphlet is of historical and especially linguistic interest, as one of the oldest documents of ancient Christian preaching and of Vulgar Latin. The silence of the earliest witnesses and the peculiarities of language and style make it impossible to attribute it to Cipriano; Harnack’s first thesis, which attributed it to s. Vittore papa, having fallen, it is now placed between 260 and 300.