Arator ( – after 544) was a sixth-century Christian poet from Liguria in northwestern Italy. His best known work, De Actibus Apostolorum, is a verse history of the Apostles.
Biography
Arator was probably of Ligurian origin. An orphan, he studied at Milan under the patronage of the Bishop Laurentius and of Magnus Felix Ennodius, then went to Ravenna by the advice of Parthenius, nephew of Ennodius. He took up the career of a lawyer.
Treated with distinction by Theodoric on account of his oration in behalf of the Dalmatians, and protected by Cassiodorus, he spent much of his career in Ravenna, doing the Gothic state some service with the fruits of a classical education second to none in what until recently had been the Western Roman Empire. It may have been the death of King Theoderic, and the destabilizing of the Gothic regime, that caused Arator to leave Ravenna (in this the career of Cassiodorus is parallel) and make for Rome. Pope Vigilius made him Subdeacon of the Roman Church. It was there that he wrote in hexameters two books De Actibus Apostolorum, about 544.