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This article is an introduction to one of the strangest literary productions of antiquity. Fulgentius's De aetatibus mundi et hominis ("On the Ages of the World and Man") presents an idiosyncratic world chronicle viewed through the lens of Augustinian theology and an Orosian conception of history, and partially structured by a supposed parallel between the history of the human race and the lifespan of the individual. It is also lipogrammatic: its fourteen surviving books each avoid the use of words containing the corresponding letter of the alphabet, from A to O. The author attempts to contextualize both the work's content and its form, arguing that the treatise is not a serious meditation on history, but belongs, like Fulgentius's other works, to the literary tradition known to the ancients as spoudaiogeloion. Its real concerns are literary and its real interest is in language. The article analyzes the work itself, and speculates on the circumstances of its production and the possible reasons for its incomplete state. It also examines the work's limited medieval reception and provides a fuller list of manuscripts than has hitherto been available. Finally, it makes several smaller contributions, demonstrating that Fulgentius borrowed from Jerome's Epistle 22 in several passages, and emending a problematic passage in Book L.
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