DE CONSOLATIONE IN ADVERSIS is a treatise in Latin attributed to Basil of Caesarea, found among works of Augustine and Jerome in a ninth-century manuscript, which is the oldest witness I have used for this edition. It is the only work ascribed to Basil found among those pieces. It also appears in an early sixteenth-century codex as part of a collection of documents either by or addressed to Eucherius of Lyons which also contains writings by Jerome. De consolatione in adversis (hereafter Cons.) is one of three works in Migne's edition of Basil, which are transmitted in Latin with no known Greek original. It largely concerns offering comfort to victims of leprosy. Basil's authorship of Cons. began being challenged in the second half of the seventeenth century. Scholars, such as William Cave, Louis Ellies du Pin, Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont, and others attributed this work to Victor of Cartenna, an African bishop of the fifth century. The basic argument for this attribution was that a lost treatise by Victor of Cartenna addressed to "a certain Basil" was assigned to Basil of Caesarea on account of confusion. The name of the addressee in Victor's treatise would have become the name of the author, possibly due to ignorance.

In his edition of Basil in the first half of the eighteenth century, Julien Garnier intimates to his readers the conjecture of an unnamed source attributing Cons. to "a certain Gaul." In the nineteenth century, the question of authorship was reassessed. Franz Görres both challenged Basil's authorship of Cons. and rejected Cave, du Pin, and Tillemont's attribution of this piece to Victor of Cartenna. He referred to the indication in the title of Cons., viz., incerto sed antiquo interprete (by an uncertain yet ancient translator; unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own), in Garnier's edition of 1721–1730 as one of the reasons arguing against identifying Cons. with Victor's lost work. He also observed that there was no allusion to any Basil in Cons.