And from the familiar style in which this Father’s name is always introduced into the present discussion, no less than from the invariable practice of assigning to him the date “A.D. 401,” it might be supposed that “Victor of Antioch” is a well-known personage. Yet is there scarcely a Commentator of antiquity about whom less is certainly known. Clinton (who enumerates cccxxii “Ecclesiastical Authors” from A.D. 70 to A.D. 685(104)) does not even record his name. The recent “Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography” is just as silent concerning him. Cramer (his latest editor) calls his very existence in question; proposing to attribute his Commentary on S. Mark to Cyril of Alexandria.(105) Not to delay the reader needlessly,—Victor of Antioch is an interesting and unjustly neglected Father of the Church; whose date,—(inasmuch as he apparently quotes sometimes from Cyril of Alexandria who died A.D. 444, and yet seems to have written soon after the death of Chrysostom, which took place A.D. 407), may be assigned to the first half of the vth century,—suppose A.D. 425-450. And in citing him I shall always refer to the best (and most easily accessible) edition of his work,—that of Cramer (1840) in the first volume of his “Catenae.” But a far graver charge is behind. From the confident air in which Victor’s authority is appealed to by those who deem the last twelve verses of S. Mark’s Gospel spurious, it would of course be inferred that his evidence is hostile to the verses in question; whereas his evidence to their genuineness is the most emphatic and extraordinary on record. Dr. Tregelles asserts that “his _testimony_ to the absence of these twelve verses from some or many copies, stands in contrast to his own _opinion_ on the subject.” But Victor delivers _no_ “opinion:” and his “testimony” is the direct reverse of what Dr. Tregelles asserts it to be. This learned and respected critic has strangely misapprehended the evidence.(106) I must needs be brief in this place. I shall therefore confine myself to those facts concerning “Victor of Antioch,” or rather concerning his work, which are necessary for the purpose in hand.(107)