53.
Now finally Tertullian the presbyter is ranked first of the Latin writers after Victor [bishop of Rome] and Apollonius [the Apologist]. He was from the province of Africa, from the city of Carthage where his father was proconsular centurion [in the service of proconsule???].
A man of impetous temperament, he was in his prime in the reign of the emperor Severus and Antoninus Caracalla, and he wrote many works which I need not name since they are very widely known.
At Concordia, a town in Italy, I saw an old man named Paul, who said that, when he was still a very young man, he had seen in Rome a very old man who had been secretary of blessed Cyprian and had reported to him that Cyprian was accustomed never to pass a day without reading Tertullian and would frequently say to him, "Hand me the master," meaning, of course, Tertullian.
This one was a presbyter of the church until his middle years, but later, because of the envy and reproaches of the clerics of the Roman church, he had lapsed into Montanism, and he makes mention of the New Prophecy in many books.
In particular, he composed against the church the works
On Modesty;
On Persecution;
On Fasting;
On Monogamy;
six books On Ecstasy and a seventh [added] which he composed Against Apollonius.
He is said to have lived to a very old age and to have composed many works which are not extant.
(trans. Halton 1999: 74-75, slightly altered by J. Szafranowski)