Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
arg| The fourth book of the Ecclesiastical History has these contents: 1. Who were the bishops of the Romans and of the Alexandrians during the reign of Trajan. 2. What the Jews suffered under him. 3. Those who made a defense of the faith under Hadrian. 4. The bishops of the Romans and of the Alexandrians under him. 5. The bishops of Jerusalem from the Savior's time down to those already mentioned. 6. The final siege of the Jews under Hadrian. 7. Who at that time became leaders of knowledge falsely so called. 8. Who were the church writers. 9. A letter of Hadrian, to the effect that we must not be persecuted without a trial. 10. Who became bishops of the Romans and the Alexandrians during Antoninus's reign. 11. Concerning the heresiarchs of their time. 12. On Justin's apology directed to Antoninus. 13. A letter from Antoninus to the provincial assembly of Asia concerning our teaching. 14. What is recorded about Polycarp, who had known the apostles. 15. How Polycarp, together with others, was martyred in the city of Smyrna under Verus. 16. How Justin the philosopher was martyred in the city of Rome while championing the word of Christ. 17. On the martyrs Justin mentions in his own writing. 18. Which of Justin's works have come down to us. 19. Who led the church of the Romans and that of the Alexandrians in the time of Verus. 20. Who presided over that of the Antiochenes. 21. On the church writers who shone in their time. 22. On Hegesippus and those he mentions. 23. Concerning Dionysius, bishop of the Corinthians, and the letters he wrote. 24. On Theophilus, bishop of the Antiochenes. 25. On Philip and Modestus. 26. On Melito and those he mentioned. 27. On Apolinarius. 28. On Musanus. 29. On Tatian's heresy. 30. On Bardesanes the Syrian and the works ascribed to him.
1.1| About the twelfth year of Trajan's reign, the bishop of the community in Alexandria, of whom we spoke a little earlier, departed this life, and Primus, fourth from the apostles, was allotted the ministry among the people there. At this time too, after Evarestus had fulfilled his eighth year, Alexander took up the episcopate at Rome, standing fifth in the succession reckoned from Peter and Paul.
2.1| While the teaching and the church of our Savior flourished day by day and advanced to ever greater progress, the misfortunes of the Jews came to a head in one calamity after another. Indeed, when the emperor was already passing into his eighteenth year, a fresh uprising of the Jews broke out and destroyed a very great multitude of them.
2.2| For in Alexandria, in the remainder of Egypt, and besides in Cyrene, as though fanned into flame by some terrible spirit of sedition, they rushed into strife against the Greeks who lived among them. They swelled the strife to great proportions, and in the following year they joined in no small war, at a time when Lupus was governor of all Egypt.
2.3| In the first encounter it happened that they got the better of the Greeks. The Greeks fled to Alexandria, where they captured and killed the Jews in the city. The Jews of Cyrene, deprived of help from them, went on plundering the land of Egypt and ravaging its districts under the leadership of Lukuas. Against these the emperor dispatched Marcius Turbo with an army of infantry and a fleet, and cavalry as well.
2.4| He carried on the war against them in many battles and over no short time, and he killed many tens of thousands of Jews, not only those from Cyrene but also those from Egypt who had joined forces with Lukuas, their king.
2.5| The emperor, suspecting that the Jews in Mesopotamia too would attack the people there, ordered Lusius Quietus to clear them out of the province. He drew up his forces and slaughtered a very great multitude of the Jews there, and for this achievement the emperor named him governor of Judea. These events were likewise told in these very words by those Greek writers who have handed down in writing the history of the same period.
3.1| After Trajan had held power for twenty full years less six months, Aelius Hadrian succeeded to the rule. To him Quadratus addressed and presented a discourse, having composed an apology on behalf of our religion, since certain wicked men were attempting to harass our people. The work is still in circulation among very many of the brethren, and we ourselves have it too. From it one can see clear proofs both of the man's understanding and, equally, of his apostolic orthodoxy.
3.2| The same man reveals his own early date through what he relates, in his own words: "The works of our Savior were always present, since they were genuine: those who were healed, and those who were raised from the dead. These were not merely seen being healed and raised, but were always present, and not only while the Savior was living among us; even after his departure they remained for a considerable time, so that some of them even survived into our own days."
3.3| Such was Quadratus. Aristides too, a faithful man who shared our devotion, left behind, like Quadratus, a defense of the faith addressed to Hadrian. His writing is preserved to this day by very many people.
4.1| In the same reign's third year, Alexander, bishop of the Romans, died after completing the tenth year of his ministry; Xystus was his successor. At about the same time, in the diocese of Alexandria, Primus died in the twelfth year of his leadership, and Justus succeeded him.
5.1| As for the bishops in Jerusalem, I have nowhere found their dates preserved in writing (for report holds that they were very short-lived),
5.2| but this much I have gathered from written sources: up to the siege of the Jews in Hadrian's time there were fifteen successions of bishops there. All of them, it is said, were Hebrews from the beginning, and received the knowledge of Christ genuinely, so that they were already judged worthy of the bishop's ministry by those able to decide such matters. For at that time their whole church consisted of faithful Hebrews, from the apostles down to the siege that then took place, in which the Jews, revolting once more from the Romans, were conquered after no small wars.
5.3| Since the bishops from among the circumcision ceased at that time, it is now necessary to list them starting from the first. James was therefore the first, the one called the Lord's brother; after him the second was Symeon; the third, Justus; Zacchaeus the fourth; Tobias the fifth; Benjamin the sixth; John the seventh; Matthias the eighth; Philip the ninth; Zenecas the tenth; Justus the eleventh; Levis the twelfth; Ephres the thirteenth; Joseph the fourteenth; and last of all, the fifteenth, Judas.
5.4| These were the bishops of the city of Jerusalem from the apostles up to the time mentioned, all of them from the circumcision.
5.5| In the twelfth year of the reign, when Xystus had completed ten years in the bishopric of the Romans, Telesphorus, seventh from the apostles, succeeded him. After an interval of a year and some months, Eumenes took over the leadership of the diocese of Alexandria as sixth in the line, the man before him having lasted eleven years.
6.1| Indeed, when the Jewish revolt had once more grown great and widespread, Rufus, governor of Judea, to whom military assistance had been sent by the emperor, attacked their frenzy without mercy, destroying tens of thousands of men, together with children and women, and, by the law of war, enslaving their lands.
6.2| At that time the Jews were led by a man named Bar Kokhba, which means "star": in other respects a murderous bandit of a man, but relying on his name, as if dealing with slaves, he boasted marvelously that he had come down to them from heaven as a luminary to shine upon them in their misery.
6.3| In the eighteenth year of the reign the war reached its height at Bethther, a small town, very strongly fortified, not far from Jerusalem. When the siege from outside had dragged on, and the rebels had been driven by hunger and thirst to the last extreme of destruction, and the one responsible for their frenzy had paid the penalty he deserved, from that time the whole nation has been barred, by decree of law and by the ordinances of Hadrian, from setting foot anywhere in the land around Jerusalem, since he commanded that they should not even look on their ancestral soil from a distance. So Ariston of Pella relates.
6.4| Thus the city was emptied of the Jewish nation, its former inhabitants utterly destroyed, and it was settled by people of foreign stock. The Roman city that was afterward established changed its name, and in honor of the ruling emperor, Aelius Hadrian, was called Aelia. And when the church there was gathered from the Gentiles, Mark was the first, after the bishops of the circumcision, to be entrusted with its ministry.
7.1| By now the churches throughout the world were shining like the brightest luminaries, and faith in our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ flourished throughout the whole human race. But the demon that hates the good, being the enemy of truth and ever the bitterest foe of human salvation, turned every device against the church. In earlier times he had armed himself against it with persecutions from outside,
7.2| Shut out from these, then, he used wicked men and sorcerers as though they were deadly instruments of souls and ministers of destruction, and he schemed by other methods, devising every means by which these sorcerers and deceivers, slipping in under the same name for our teaching, might on the one hand drag down into the abyss of destruction those of the faithful whom they caught, and on the other turn away from the road to the saving Word those who knew nothing of the faith, through the things these men themselves did in their attempts.
7.3| From Menander, then, whom we have already recorded as the successor of Simon, a kind of double-mouthed, snake-like power, as if two-headed, came forth and set up the founders of two different heresies, Saturninus, an Antiochene by birth, and Basilides of Alexandria. One of them established, in Syria, and the other, in Egypt, schools of heresies hateful to God.
7.4| Irenaeus makes clear that Saturninus mostly told the same falsehoods as Menander did, while Basilides, under a pretense of more secret teachings, stretched his inventions to infinity, fashioning for himself monstrous fables for an impious heresy.
7.5| Now at that time very many men of the church were contending on behalf of the truth and defending the apostolic and ecclesiastical doctrine with considerable skill in argument, and some were already providing, through their writings, safeguards for later generations against these very heresies just named.
7.6| Of these writings there has reached us a most capable refutation of Basilides by Agrippa Castor, the most renowned writer of those times,
7.7| who exposes the cleverness of the man's sorcery. In bringing his secrets to light, he says that Basilides composed twenty-four books on the gospel; that he named prophets for himself, Barcabbas and Barcoph, and others who did not exist, whom he had invented for himself; and that he gave them barbarian names to astonish those who are amazed by such things. He says too that Basilides taught that it makes no difference to eat food sacrificed to idols and to renounce the faith without care in times of persecution, and that, in the manner of Pythagoras, he commanded those who came to him to keep silence for five years.
7.8| Having listed other things much like these concerning Basilides, the writer I have mentioned, in no ignoble manner, exposed the error of the heresy in question for all to see.
7.9| Irenaeus also writes that Carpocrates lived at the same time as these, the father of another heresy, called that of the Gnostics. They saw fit to hand down the magical arts of Simon not secretly, as he did, but now openly, taking pride, almost, in the love charms, dream-sending spells, attendant spirits and other similar practices that they performed out of idle curiosity, as though these were great achievements. Consistently with this, they taught that those who were to arrive at the perfection of their initiation, or rather their defilement, must do all the most shameful things, since otherwise, as they would put it, they could not escape the rulers of the world, unless they had paid every debt to them by unspeakable deeds.
7.10| By using these men as servants, the demon who rejoices in evil brought it about that those deceived by them were pitifully enslaved to destruction, while to the unbelieving nations he gave abundant opportunity for slandering the divine Word, as the rumor arising from these men poured out into slander against the whole race of Christians.
7.11| In this way it happened that, to a very great extent, an impious and most absurd suspicion about us spread among the unbelievers of that time, namely that we engaged in unlawful unions with mothers and sisters and in unholy food.
7.12| This did not, however, go on for long for him, since the truth established itself and, as time went on, shone out in a great light.
7.13| For the contrivances of the enemies were at once extinguished, refuted by the truth's own power, as one new heresy after another was devised, the earlier ones always slipping away and dissolving at various times into many-sided and many-shaped forms. But the splendor of the universal and only true church advanced in growth and greatness, always remaining the same and unchanged, shining out upon the whole race of Greeks and barbarians alike with its dignity, sincerity and nobility, and the temperance and purity of its God-inspired way of life and philosophy.
7.14| Together with time, then, the slander against the whole teaching also died away, and our doctrine alone remained, prevailing among all and acknowledged as preeminent above all in dignity and self-control and in its divine and philosophical teachings, so that to this day no one dares to bring any shameful slander against our faith, or any such accusation as those who set themselves against us used to be fond of in former times.
7.15| Nevertheless, in the times just described, the truth again brought forward more champions of itself, who campaigned against the godless heresies not only by unwritten refutation but also by written demonstrations;
8.1| In these times Hegesippus was well known. I have already drawn on many of his statements before, since through his tradition I have set down some of the events of the apostles' age.
8.2| In five treatises he recorded the unerring tradition of the apostolic preaching in the plainest style of writing, and he shows the time in which he was well known when he writes as follows about those who from the beginning set up idols: "For these they made empty tombs and temples, as they do even to this day. Among them is Antinous, a slave of the Caesar Hadrian, in whose honor the Antinoeian games are held, instituted in our own time. For he even founded a city named after Antinous, and prophets."
8.3| In his time too Justin, a true lover of genuine philosophy, was still spending his time on the discourses of the Greeks. He himself also indicates this period in his Apology addressed to Antoninus, writing thus: "We think it not out of place to mention among these matters also Antinous, who lived only recently, whom everyone was eager to worship as a god out of fear, though they knew who he was and where he came from."
8.4| The same man, mentioning the Jewish war of that time, adds these words: "For in the recent Jewish war Barchochebas, the leader of the Jewish revolt, ordered that Christians alone be taken away to dreadful punishments unless they denied Jesus the Christ and blasphemed him."
8.5| In the same work, showing that his change from Greek philosophy to the worship of God came not without reason but after judgment, he writes this: "For I myself, when I was delighting in the teachings of Plato and heard Christians being slandered, and saw that they were fearless in the face of death and of everything else that is held to be terrifying, concluded that it was impossible for them to live in wickedness and love of pleasure. For what lover of pleasure or self-indulgent person, who considered the eating of human flesh a good thing, could welcome death in order to be deprived of his own desires, and would not rather try by every means to live on forever in this present life and to elude the rulers' notice, instead of denouncing himself to be put to death?"
8.6| The same writer further reports that Hadrian received a letter from Serennius Granianus, a most distinguished governor, concerning the Christians, saying that it was not just to kill them without trial, merely to gratify the shouting of the mob, when no charge had been made against them; and that Hadrian wrote back to Minucius Fundanus, proconsul of Asia, ordering that no one be tried without an accusation and a reasonable charge.
8.7| He has also appended a copy of the letter, preserving the Roman language as it stood, and he introduces it with these words: "Since we can demand from you, on the basis of a letter of the greatest and most illustrious Caesar Hadrian, your father, that you order trials to be held as we have requested, we have made this request not so much because Hadrian ordered it, but because we know that the petition we address to you is just. We have also subjoined a copy of Hadrian's letter, so that you may recognize that we speak the truth in this too. It is as follows."
8.8| After these words the man mentioned appends the Roman copy itself, but we have rendered it into Greek as best we could. It reads as follows.
9.1| "To Minucius Fundanus. I have received a letter sent to me by Serennius Granianus, a man most distinguished, whom you have succeeded. To me, then, it does not seem right to leave the matter without inquiry, lest people be thrown into disorder and a supply of opportunity for wrongdoing be furnished to the informers.
9.2| If, then, the people of the province are clearly able to make good this petition against the Christians in such a way as to answer even before a tribunal, let them turn to that course alone, and not to petitions or mere shouting. For it is far more fitting, if anyone wishes to bring an accusation, that you should decide the matter.
9.3| If, then, someone brings an accusation and shows that they are doing something contrary to the laws, you are to decide accordingly, in proportion to the gravity of the offense. But, by Hercules, if anyone puts the charge forward for the sake of slander, determine how serious that is, and take care to punish it." Such were the contents of Hadrian's reply.
10.1| When Hadrian had paid his debt to nature, having completed twenty-one years of reign, Antoninus, called Pius, succeeded to the Roman empire. During his first year Telesphorus died, when his ministry had reached its eleventh year, and Hyginus took over the lot of the Roman bishopric. Irenaeus records that Telesphorus was distinguished by a martyr's death at the end, and in the same place he makes clear that in the time of the Roman bishop Hyginus just mentioned, Valentinus, the introducer of his own heresy, and Cerdo, the originator of the error associated with Marcion, both became known at Rome. He writes as follows:
11.1| Valentinus came to Rome under Hyginus, was at his height under Pius, and stayed on until Anicetus. Cerdo, who came before Marcion, also came into the church while Hyginus, the ninth bishop, was in charge, and made his confession; and so he continued to the end, at one time teaching in secret, at another confessing again, at another being convicted of his bad teaching and withdrawing from the company of the brethren.
11.2| He says this in book three of his treatise against the heresies. In his first book he discusses Cerdo again, as follows: A certain Cerdo, who took his starting points from the followers of Simon and settled in Rome when Hyginus held the ninth place in the bishops' succession from the apostles, taught this: the God proclaimed through the Law and the prophets is not the Father of Jesus Christ our Lord, because the one, he said, is known, the other unknown, and the one is just, the other good. Marcion of Pontus succeeded him and enlarged the school, blaspheming shamelessly.
11.3| The same Irenaeus, having sailed most vigorously across the boundless deep of Valentinus' wandering and many-sided material, strips bare the wickedness of the man, which, like a serpent in its lair, lay hidden and unnoticed;
11.4| and besides these he says that there was another among them, named Marcus, most skilled in the trickery of magic. He also writes down their uninitiating initiations and abominable rites, exposing them in these very writings:
11.5| Some of them set up a bridal chamber and perform a rite of initiation with certain incantations over those being initiated, and they claim that what they do is a spiritual marriage, modeled on the unions above. Others lead people to water and baptize them, saying as they do so: Into the name of the Father of the universe, who is unknown, into Truth, mother of all things, and into him who descended into Jesus. Still others pronounce Hebrew names, the better to astonish those being initiated.
11.6| But when Hyginus died, in the fourth year of his episcopate, the ministry at Rome was entrusted to Pius. At Alexandria, Marcus was appointed shepherd once Eumenes had completed a total of thirteen years; and when Marcus, after ten years, had rested from his ministry, Celadion took over the ministry of the Alexandrian church.
11.7| And in the city of the Romans, Anicetus took charge of the church there after Pius passed away in the fifteenth year of his own episcopate. In his time Hegesippus records that he himself came to Rome and stayed there until the episcopate of Eleutherus.
11.8| Justin was at his greatest in these times; wearing the garb of a philosopher, he served as an ambassador of the divine Word and contended in his writings on behalf of the faith. He also composed a treatise against Marcion, and mentions him as a man still alive and known among the living at the time Justin was writing; he says as follows:
11.9| A certain Marcion of Pontus, who even today continues to teach those who obey him to think of some other god as greater than the Maker. Through the aid of demons he has led many people of every race to speak blasphemies, and to refuse to admit that the creator of this whole is the Father of Christ; he has made them profess instead that some other, who is greater than this one, has made it. And all who set out from these men, as we said, are called Christians, in the way that the name of philosophy is shared by the philosophers even though their doctrines are not shared.
11.10| To this he adds: And we have a treatise against all the heresies that have arisen; if you wish to read it, we will give it to you.
11.11| This same Justin, who labored very effectively against the Greeks as well, addressed other discourses, containing a defense of our faith, to the emperor Antoninus, surnamed Pius, and to the senate of the Romans, since he was living in Rome. In the defense he makes clear who he was and where he came from, in these words:
12.1| To the Emperor Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Pius, Caesar Augustus, and to Verissimus his son, a philosopher, and to Lucius, natural son of Caesar the philosopher, a lover of learning, and adopted by Pius, and to the holy senate and to all the Roman people, on behalf of men of every race who are hated and abused without cause, I, Justin, son of Priscus, who was son of Bacchius, of the people of Flavia Neapolis in Syria Palestine, being one of them, have made this address and petition. The same emperor, when petitioned also by other brethren in Asia who were being oppressed by every kind of outrage at the hands of the local populations, thought the commonalty of Asia worthy of the following ordinance:
13.1| The Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, Armeniacus, supreme pontiff, holding tribunician power for the fifteenth time, and consul for the third time, to the commonalty of Asia, greetings.
13.2| I myself know that the gods too take care that such people do not go unnoticed; for they would punish those who refuse to worship them far more than you would.
13.3| You throw these people into turmoil, and you confirm the very conviction they hold by accusing them of godlessness. Yet even for them, accused as they are in name only, it would be preferable to die rather than live for the sake of their own god; hence they prevail, giving up their lives rather than obeying what you demand of them.
13.4| As for the earthquakes that have happened and are happening, it is not out of place to remind you, since you lose heart whenever they occur, to compare our conduct with theirs.
13.5| They, for their part, grow bolder in speaking to God, whereas you, throughout the whole time in which you seem to be ignorant, pay no heed to the other gods or to the worship of the Immortal One; and when Christians worship him, you drive them out and persecute them to the death.
13.6| On behalf of such people many governors of the provinces have already written also to my most divine father, and he wrote back to them not to trouble such people, unless they were shown to be attempting something against the Roman government. And many have reported to me as well about such people, and I wrote back to them in turn, following my father's judgment.
13.7| But if anyone persists in bringing one of these people to trial simply as being of this kind, let the one so charged be released from the accusation, even if he is shown to be such a person, and let the accuser be liable to punishment. This was displayed in Ephesus, at the common assembly of Asia.
13.8| To these events, which turned out in this way, Melito bears witness. He was bishop of the church in Sardis and known at that very time, and this is clear from what he said in the defense of our doctrine which he made to the emperor Verus.
14.1| In the time of those just mentioned, when Anicetus was head of the church of the Romans, Irenaeus records that Polycarp, who was still alive, came to Rome and met with Anicetus because of a question about the day of the Passover.
14.2| The same Irenaeus hands down another account about Polycarp as well, which I must attach to what has been said about him; it runs as follows.
14.3| From the third book of Irenaeus Against the Heresies: And Polycarp was not only instructed by apostles and in the company of many who had seen the Lord, but was also appointed by apostles for Asia as bishop in the church in Smyrna,
14.4| whom we too saw in our early youth (for he remained a long time, and in extreme old age departed this life, having been martyred gloriously and most conspicuously), always teaching what he had been taught by the apostles, what the church also hands on, and what alone is true.
14.5| All the churches throughout Asia bear witness to these things, as do those who down to the present have succeeded Polycarp, a witness to the truth far more trustworthy and reliable than Valentinus, Marcion and the remaining men of perverse opinions. When he visited Rome in the time of Anicetus, he turned many of the heretics just mentioned back to the church of God, preaching that this one and only truth, the one handed down by the church, he had received from the apostles.
14.6| And there are those who heard him say that John, the Lord's disciple, went to bathe in Ephesus, and seeing Cerinthus inside, leapt out of the bathhouse without bathing, saying instead, "Let us flee, lest even the bathhouse fall down, since Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is inside."
14.7| Polycarp himself, too, when Marcion once met him face to face and said, "Recognize us," answered, "I recognize you; I recognize the firstborn of Satan." So great was the caution of the apostles and their disciples against sharing even a word with any who falsify the truth, as Paul also said: "A heretical man, after one and a second admonition, avoid, knowing that such a person has been perverted and sins, being self-condemned."
14.8| There is also a most substantial letter of Polycarp, addressed to the Philippians, from which any who wish and care about their own salvation can discover the character of his faith and the proclamation of the truth.
14.9| So far Irenaeus. Polycarp, at any rate, in his letter to the Philippians mentioned above, which is still in circulation today, has used certain testimonies taken from the first letter of Peter.
14.10| Now when Antoninus, called Pius, had brought his twenty-second year of rule to its end, his son Marcus Aurelius Verus, likewise named Antoninus, took over from him together with his brother Lucius.
15.1| At this time Polycarp, while very great persecutions were stirring up Asia, was brought to completion by martyrdom. I think I must set down his end, which is still circulating in writing, as a record in this history, since it is most necessary.
15.2| The document is written in the name of the church that he himself led, and it reports the events concerning him to the communities in each place, in these words:
15.3| The church of God that sojourns in Smyrna, to the church of God that sojourns in Philomelium, and to all the communities in every place belonging to the holy catholic church: from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, may mercy, peace and love be multiplied. We have written to you, brothers, about those who bore witness and about the blessed Polycarp, who, as though setting a seal by his martyrdom, brought the persecution to a halt.
15.4| After this, before the account of Polycarp, they relate the story of the other martyrs, describing what steadfastness they showed against their pains. For they report that the bystanders standing in a circle were struck with amazement, as they watched some of them torn by whips as far as the innermost veins and arteries, so that even the hidden inner parts of their bodies, their entrails and limbs, could now be seen; and at other times, laid on sea-shells and sharp little spits, passing through every kind of punishment and torture, and finally handed over to wild beasts to be devoured.
15.5| They report that the most noble Germanicus shone out above all, by divine grace overcoming the natural fear of the body's death. Indeed, when the proconsul wished to persuade him, pointing to his age and begging him, as he was quite young and in his prime, to have pity on himself, he hesitated not at all, but eagerly drew the beast toward himself, all but forcing and provoking it, so that he might be released the sooner from their unjust and lawless life.
15.6| At this man's glorious death the whole crowd was amazed at the courage of the martyr dear to God, and at the virtue of the entire Christian race, and began to shout out all together: "Take the atheists away! Let Polycarp be sought!"
15.7| And when a very great uproar had arisen from these shouts, a certain Phrygian by birth, Quintus by name, who had only recently come from Phrygia, saw the beasts and the threats that went with them, and his soul cowered; he lost his nerve and finally gave way on his own salvation.
15.8| The account in the document mentioned above made clear that this man had rushed up to the tribunal with others rather rashly and not with due caution; yet, though seized, he nevertheless gave everyone a plain example that one should not venture on such things recklessly and without caution. Such was the end of these men.
15.9| The most admirable Polycarp, on first hearing of these things, remained undisturbed, keeping his character steady and unmoved, and wished to stay on in the city. But he was persuaded by those around him, who begged him and urged him to slip away, and he withdrew to a farm not far from the city and stayed there with a few companions, doing nothing but persevering night and day in prayers to the Lord. In these he petitioned and entreated, asking for peace for the churches all over the world, since this was altogether his habit.
15.10| And while he was praying, three days before his arrest, he saw in a night vision the pillow under his head suddenly catch fire and be consumed. On waking from this he immediately explained what he had seen to those present, all but prophesying what was to come, and told his companions plainly that he must end his life by fire for the sake of Christ.
15.11| As those who were searching for him pressed on with all diligence, they say that, forced once more by the affection and tenderness of the brothers, he moved to another farm. There, not long afterward, his pursuers arrived and seized two of the slave boys who were there; after torturing one of them, they came through him to the place where Polycarp was staying,
15.12| and arriving late in the day, they found him lying down in an upper room, from which he could have moved to another house, but he did not wish to, saying, "Let the will of God be done."
15.13| And on learning that they had come, he went down, the account says, and spoke with them with a very cheerful and gentle face, so that those who had not known the man before marvelled to see it, as they looked at the great age of his years and at the dignity and steadiness of his bearing, and wondered that such eagerness had been shown to arrest an old man of that kind.
15.14| He did not hesitate, but at once ordered a table to be set before them, then invited them to share in plentiful food, and asked them for a single hour so that he might pray without fear. When they allowed it, he stood up and prayed, so full of the Lord's grace that those present were astonished as they listened to him praying, and many of them were already repenting that they were about to put to death so dignified and godly an old man.
15.15| After this, the account written about him gives the rest of the story word for word somewhat as follows: When at last he ended his prayer, having remembered everyone who had ever met with him, the small and the great, the renowned and the unknown, and the entire catholic church throughout the inhabited world, and when the hour for his departure had come, they seated him on a donkey and brought him into the city; it was a great sabbath. The police chief Herod and his father Nicetes met him, and moving him into their carriage, they sat beside him and tried to persuade him, saying: "What harm is there in saying 'Caesar is lord,' and in sacrificing, and so being saved?"
15.16| To begin with he gave no answer, but as they persisted, he said: "I am not about to do as you advise me." Having failed to persuade him, they spoke terrible words and hurriedly pushed him out, so that as he came down from the carriage he scraped his shin. But without turning back, as though he had suffered nothing, he went on eagerly and quickly, being led to the stadium.
15.17| There was such an uproar in the stadium that hardly anyone could be heard, but as Polycarp was entering the stadium a voice came from heaven: "Be strong, Polycarp, and be a man." No one saw the speaker, yet many of our people heard the voice.
15.18| As he was led forward, a great tumult arose when people heard that Polycarp had been arrested. Then, when he came up, the proconsul asked whether he was Polycarp; and upon his admitting it, he tried to talk him into denying, saying: "Have respect for your age," and the other things that follow from these, as they are accustomed to say: "Swear by the Fortune of Caesar; repent; say, 'Away with the atheists.'"
15.19| But Polycarp, with a stern face, looked at the whole crowd in the stadium, shook his hand at them, and groaning and looking up to heaven, said: "Away with the atheists."
15.20| When the governor pressed him, saying, "Swear, and I will release you; curse Christ," Polycarp said: "For eighty-six years I have been his servant, and he has never wronged me. How can I blaspheme my king, who has saved me?"
15.21| When the proconsul persisted again and said, "Swear by the Fortune of Caesar," Polycarp said: "If you are vainly hoping that I will swear by the Fortune of Caesar, as you say, pretending not to know who I am, listen plainly: I am a Christian. And if you want to learn the doctrine of Christianity, set a day and listen."
15.22| The proconsul said: "Persuade the people." Polycarp said: "You I have thought worthy of a reply, for we have been taught to give to rulers and authorities appointed by God the honor due to them, so long as it does us no harm. But those people I do not consider worthy of having me defend myself before them."
15.23| The proconsul said: "Wild beasts are at hand; to them I will throw you unless you repent." He answered: "Summon them. For a change of heart from the better to the worse is not permitted us, but it is good to change from what is harsh to what is just."
15.24| Again the proconsul said to him: "I will have you consumed by fire, if you despise the beasts, unless you repent." Polycarp said: "You threaten a fire that burns for an hour and soon goes out; for you do not know the fire of the coming judgment and eternal punishment kept in store for the ungodly. Why, then, do you hesitate? Bring whatever you wish."
15.25| While he was saying these things and many more, courage and joy filled him, and his face was brimming with grace, with the result that he not only failed to collapse in confusion over the words addressed to him, but the proconsul, quite the opposite, was amazed, and dispatched his herald to announce three times in the center of the stadium: "Polycarp has confessed himself a Christian."
15.26| When the herald had said this, the whole crowd of Gentiles and Jews living in Smyrna cried out in uncontrollable rage and with a loud voice: "This is Asia’s teacher, the father of the Christians, the demolisher of our gods, who instructs many neither to sacrifice nor to worship."
15.27| As they said this, they shouted and asked the Asiarch Philip to set a lion on Polycarp; but he said it was not permitted to him, since he had finished the wild-beast hunts. Then they resolved to cry out unanimously that Polycarp should be burned alive.
15.28| For the vision that had appeared to him on the pillow had to be fulfilled, when he saw it burning as he prayed, and, turning to the faithful with him, said prophetically, "I must be burned alive."
15.29| All this then happened with such speed, faster than it can be told, as the crowds at once gathered logs and brushwood from the workshops and the baths, the Jews in particular eagerly lending their help in this, as is their habit.
15.30| But when the pyre was ready, he laid aside all his garments himself and loosened his belt, and tried to take off his shoes as well, something he had not done before, because each of the faithful always strove to be the quicker to touch his skin; for in every respect he had been adorned for the sake of his good conduct, even before his hair turned grey.
15.31| At once, then, the instruments fitted for the pyre were placed around him; but when they were about to nail him as well, he said, "Leave me as I am. He who grants me to endure the fire will grant me also to remain on the pyre without flinching, even without the security you would give by the nails." They therefore did not nail him but bound him fast.
15.32| With his hands put behind him and bound, like a splendid ram taken from a great flock and presented as a whole burnt offering, acceptable to God the Almighty,
15.33| he said, "Father of Jesus Christ, your beloved and blessed child, by whom we have obtained the knowledge of you, God of angels and of powers, of all creation, and of the entire family of the righteous, who live before you, I bless you because you have judged me fit for this day and hour, to receive a portion in the cup of your Christ, within the number of the martyrs, for the resurrection to eternal life of soul and body in the incorruption of the Holy Spirit;
15.34| among them may I be received before you today as a rich and acceptable sacrifice, just as you prepared and revealed it beforehand and have now fulfilled it, you who are the God who does not lie and is true.
15.35| For this reason, and for all things, I praise you, I bless you, I glorify you, by means of the eternal high priest Jesus Christ, your dearly beloved child, through whom glory is yours, together with him, in the Holy Spirit, now and for the coming ages. Amen."
15.36| When he had sent up the Amen and finished his prayer, the men at the fire lit it, and as a great flame blazed up we saw a marvel, we to whom it was granted to see it, who were also preserved so that we might report what happened to the rest.
15.37| For the fire made the form of an arch, as a ship's sail is filled by the wind, and walled the martyr's body round on every side; and he was in the middle of it, not as burning flesh, but as gold and silver glowing in a furnace. And we also caught such a fragrance as if frankincense or some other precious spice were breathing out.
15.38| In the end, then, when the lawless men saw that the fire was unable to consume the body, they commanded an executioner to step up and drive a sword into him.
15.39| When he did so, such a quantity of blood came out that it put out the fire, and the whole crowd marvelled that the unbelievers and the elect differed so greatly. This man too was one of the elect, a most wonderful teacher in our own times, who became an apostolic and prophetic bishop of the catholic church of Smyrna; for every word that he let fall from his mouth was fulfilled, and will be fulfilled.
15.40| But the jealous and envious evil one, who opposes the race of the righteous, seeing how great his testimony was and how blameless his conduct had been from the start, and that he had been crowned with the crown of incorruption and had carried off an undisputed prize, contrived that even his poor body should not be taken by us, although many desired to do this and to share in his holy flesh.
15.41| Some, then, put Nicetes, Herod's father and the brother of Alce, up to approaching the governor so that he would not give up the body, "lest," he said, "they leave the crucified one and start to worship this man." This they said at the prompting and insistence of the Jews, who also kept watch when we were about to take him out of the fire, unaware that it will never be possible for us to abandon Christ, the one who suffered on behalf of the salvation of all throughout the whole world who are being saved, nor to worship any other.
15.42| Him we worship, since he is God's Son, while the martyrs we love, as is right, as disciples and imitators of the Lord, for their unsurpassable goodwill toward their own King and Teacher. May it be granted that we too become their partners and fellow disciples.
15.43| When the centurion saw the contentiousness the Jews had stirred up, he set the body in the middle, as is their custom, and burned it. So we afterward gathered up his bones, which are more precious than costly stones and more tried than gold, and laid them where it was fitting.
15.44| There, as far as we are able, the Lord will grant that we gather in exultation and joy to keep the birthday of his martyrdom, as a memorial of those who have already contended, and to train and prepare those who are yet to contend.
15.45| Such is the account of the blessed Polycarp, who was martyred at Smyrna together with those from Philadelphia, the twelfth of them; he alone is remembered more than all the rest, so that even among the pagans he is spoken of in every place.
15.46| Such was the end for which the admirable and apostolic Polycarp was thought worthy, the brothers of the church of Smyrna having set down his history in the letter we have mentioned. In the same writing about him, other martyrdoms were also attached, carried out in that same Smyrna during the same period of time as the martyrdom of Polycarp. Among them Metrodorus, who was held to be a presbyter of the error of Marcion, was handed over to fire and put to death.
15.47| Among those of that time one martyr in particular was widely renowned, Pionius. The writing about him contains in fullest detail his confessions one by one, the boldness of his speech, his defenses of the faith made before the people and the magistrates, his public teaching addresses, and also his welcomes to those who had fallen in the trial of the persecution, the consolations he offered to the brothers who came to him in prison, the tortures he endured besides these, the pains that followed them, the nailings, his steadfastness on the pyre, and his death after all these marvels. Those who care to know these things we shall refer to that writing, which is included in the martyrdoms of the ancients that we have collected.
15.48| Next there are also records, still in circulation, of others who bore witness in the city of Pergamum in Asia: Carpus, Papylus, and a woman, Agathonice, who after very many distinguished confessions came gloriously to their end.
16.1| In the time of these men, Justin, whom we mentioned a little earlier, submitted a second book in defense of our doctrines, to the rulers mentioned already, and was adorned with a divine martyrdom. The philosopher Crescens, who pursued a way of life and manner matching the Cynic name he bore, had plotted against him, because Justin had more than once refuted him in debates with listeners present. At his end Justin won, through his own martyrdom, the victory crown for the truth he had championed.
16.2| Justin himself, truly the most philosophical of men, indicates this clearly in the defense mentioned, foreseeing, just as it was soon to happen to him, in these words:
16.3| "I too, then, look to be the victim of a plot by one of those I have named, and to be fixed in the stocks, or at least by Crescens, that unphilosophical lover of boasting. For it is not right to call the man a philosopher who publicly testifies about things he does not know, saying that Christians are godless and impious, and does this to please and gratify the many who are misled.
16.4| For if he assails us without ever having met the teachings of Christ, he is utterly wicked, and much worse than ordinary people, who often take care not to speak or bear false witness about matters they do not know. And if he met with them but did not grasp their grandeur, or grasped it but acts like this so as not to be suspected of it, he is far more base and thoroughly wicked, giving way to vulgar, irrational opinion and fear.
16.5| For I want you to know that when I put certain such questions to him and asked him, I learned and proved that he truly knows nothing. As proof that I speak the truth, if the records of our exchanges were not reported to you, I am ready to share the questions again in your presence; and that too would be a task worthy of an emperor.
16.6| If, however, my questions and his answers have come to your knowledge, it is evident to you that he knows none of our teachings; or if he does know them but, because of those listening, does not dare to speak, as I said before, he shows himself not a philosopher but a lover of reputation, who does not even honor the Socratic principle, so worthy of love."
16.7| So Justin writes. That he was plotted against by Crescens and met his end, as he had predicted, is recorded by Tatian, a man who in his early life was a teacher of rhetoric in Greek learning, won no small repute in it, and left very many memorials in his writings. In his Against the Greeks he reports it, saying: "And the most admirable Justin rightly declared that the men mentioned before are like robbers."
16.8| Then, after adding some remarks about the philosophers, he continues with these words: "Crescens, at any rate, who had built his nest in the great city, surpassed everyone in pederasty and was extremely attached to money.
16.9| And although he advised others to despise death, he himself feared it so much that he schemed to bring death upon Justin, as though it were a great evil, because Justin, by proclaiming the truth, had convicted the philosophers of being gluttons and deceivers." Such was the cause behind Justin's martyrdom.
17.1| The same man, before his own contest, recalls in his first Apology others who had been martyred before him, and he reports these events usefully for the subject at hand. He writes as follows:
17.2| "A certain woman lived with a husband who was dissolute, having herself been dissolute before. Once she had come to know the teachings of Christ, she became self-controlled, and she tried to persuade her husband likewise to be self-controlled, relating the teachings and announcing that there will be punishment in eternal fire for those who do not live self-controlled and according to right reason.
17.3| But he persisted in the same acts of licentiousness, and by his deeds made his wife a stranger to him. For the woman now considered it impious to share a bed with a husband who, against the law of nature and against what is right, sought out every means of pleasure, and she wished to be separated from the marriage.
17.4| Yet she was shamed by her own family, who advised her to stay on, in the hope that her husband would one day change, and so she forced herself to remain.
17.5| When her husband, however, departed for Alexandria and was said to be behaving even worse, she gave him what is called among you a notice of divorce, and left, so that she might not become a partner in his wrongs and impieties by staying in the marriage, sharing his table and his bed.
17.6| And this fine gentleman of a husband, who ought to have been glad that she had given up the things she used to do readily with servants and hired hands, delighting in drunkenness and every vice, and that she wanted him too to stop doing the same things, brought an accusation against her when she left against his will, saying that she was a Christian.
17.7| She presented a petition to you, the emperor, asking first to be permitted to settle her affairs, and then to defend herself against the charge after arranging her affairs; and you granted this.
17.8| Her former husband, being no longer able to proceed against her for the present, turned instead against a certain Ptolemaeus, whom Urbicius punished, who had been her teacher in the Christian lessons, and he did so in this way.
17.9| He persuaded a centurion, who was a friend of his and had thrown Ptolemaeus into chains, to seize Ptolemaeus and ask him this one question only: whether he was a Christian. And Ptolemaeus, a lover of truth, not deceitful or false in disposition, confessed that he was a Christian, and the centurion had him put in chains and punished him in the prison for a long while.
17.10| Finally, when the man was led before Urbicius, he too was asked this one thing only: whether he was a Christian. And again, conscious of the good things that came to him through Christ's teaching, he confessed the school of divine virtue.
17.11| For whoever denies anything either denies it because he condemns the thing itself, or he shuns confession because he knows himself to be unworthy of it and alien to it; and neither of these applies to the true Christian.
17.12| When Urbicius gave orders that he be led away, a certain Lucius, himself also a Christian, seeing a judgment so senselessly made, said to Urbicius: 'What is the reason for punishing this man, who has not been convicted as an adulterer, fornicator, murderer, thief, or robber, or of having committed any wrong at all, but has only confessed to the name and title of Christian? Your judgment, Urbicius, is not worthy of the Pious Emperor, nor of the philosopher son of Caesar, nor of the sacred senate.'
17.13| And Urbicius, answering nothing else, said to Lucius as well: 'You seem to me to be such a man too.' And when Lucius said, 'Most certainly,' he ordered that he too be led away. Lucius declared himself grateful, saying that he was being freed from such wicked masters and was departing to God, the good Father and King. And a third man came forward and was sentenced to punishment." To this account Justin appropriately and consistently adds the words we quoted earlier from him, saying: "I too, then, expect that I shall be plotted against by one of those named," and the rest.
18.1| This man has left us very many memoirs, full of every benefit, which show a cultured mind devoted to divine matters. We shall refer lovers of learning to them, marking out for their use those that have come to our knowledge.
18.2| One of these is a discourse directed to Antoninus, who was called the Pious, together with his sons, and also to the Roman senate, on behalf of our doctrines. The other contains a second defense of our faith, which he made to Antoninus Verus, the successor and namesake of the emperor just mentioned, whose times we are now going through.
18.3| Another is the work To the Greeks, in which he draws out a long discussion of very many questions debated among us and among the philosophers of the Greeks, and treats the nature of demons. There is no pressing need to set these matters out now.
18.4| A further treatise of his addressed to the Greeks has also come down to us, which he entitled Refutation, and besides these another, On the Monarchy of God, which he proves not from our scriptures only but from Greek books too.
18.5| After these there is one entitled The Psalmist, and another, a school work On the Soul, in which he puts forward various inquiries on the problem raised by the subject, sets out the opinions of the Greek philosophers, promises to argue against them, and says he will give his own opinion in another treatise.
18.6| He composed, too, a dialogue directed at the Jews, which he held with Trypho, the most distinguished of the Hebrews of that time, in the city of the Ephesians. In it he shows how divine grace urged him toward the message of the faith, what zeal he had earlier brought to the study of philosophy, and how ardent a search for the truth he had made.
18.7| In the same work he reports that the Jews plotted against the teaching of Christ, addressing these very words to Trypho: "You did not merely fail to repent of the wrong you had done, but you chose out picked men and sent them from Jerusalem into all the earth, declaring that a godless sect of Christians had appeared, and relating all the things said against us by those who do not know us. Thus you are the cause of injustice not only to yourselves but to all other human beings without exception."
18.8| He also writes that prophetic gifts still shone in the church up to his own time. He mentions the Revelation of John, saying plainly that it is the apostle's, and he cites certain prophetic sayings, accusing the Jews, in speaking to Trypho, of having cut them out of the scripture. Very many other works of his are also in circulation among many of the brothers.
18.9| The writings of this man seemed so worthy of serious attention even to the ancients that Irenaeus recalls his words. In book four of Against the Heresies he adds the following words: "And Justin rightly says in his treatise against Marcion that he would not have been persuaded even by the Lord himself, if he proclaimed some other god besides the Maker." And in the same work's fifth book he says, in these terms: "And Justin rightly said that before the Lord's coming Satan never dared to blaspheme God, since as yet he did not know his own condemnation."
18.10| Let this also be said out of necessity, to encourage those who love learning to take up this man's writings with diligence. So much, then, for his affairs.
19.1| When the reign just described was driving into its eighth year, Soter succeeded Anicetus, who had completed eleven years in all, in the episcopate of the Roman church; and Celadion had also presided for fourteen years over the Alexandrian community.
20.1| Agrippinus took up the succession. And in the church of the Antiochenes Theophilus was known as the sixth from the apostles, Cornelius having been appointed fourth there after Heron, and Eros, in fifth place after him, having succeeded to the episcopate.
21.1| At this time Hegesippus, whom we know from earlier passages, was a distinguished figure in the church; so were Dionysius, bishop of the Corinthians, and Pinytus, another bishop, of those in Crete, and also Philip, with Apolinarius, Melito, Musanus, Modestus, and above all Irenaeus. From these the orthodoxy of the sound faith, handed down from the apostles, has come to us in writing.
22.1| Hegesippus, then, in the five memoirs that have reached us, has left the most complete record of his own judgment. In these he makes clear that he travelled abroad all the way to Rome, fell in with a great many bishops, and received the same teaching from every one of them. One may hear for oneself, after some remarks he makes about the letter of Clement to the Corinthians, what he adds, as follows:
22.2| And the church of the Corinthians remained in the right doctrine until Primus became bishop in Corinth. I mixed with them as I sailed to Rome and spent a good many days with the Corinthians, and in those days we gave one another mutual refreshment in the right doctrine.
22.3| When I reached Rome, I drew up a succession down to Anicetus, whose deacon was Eleutherus; and after Anicetus, Soter succeeds, and after him Eleutherus. In each succession and in every city, things stand just as the law proclaims, and the prophets, and the Lord.
22.4| The same author also lays out the origins of the heresies of his own time, in these words: And after James the Just had borne witness, as the Lord had, for the same teaching, Symeon son of Clopas, his uncle's son, was in turn appointed bishop. All put him forward, since he was a cousin of the Lord, the second such to hold the office. On this account they were accustomed to call the church a virgin, for it had not yet been corrupted by empty teachings.
22.5| But Thebouthis, because he had not been made bishop, begins to corrupt it among the people, out of the seven heresies to which he himself belonged. From these came Simon, from whom the Simonians; and Cleobius, from whom the Cleobians; and Dositheus, from whom the Dositheans; and Gorthaeus, whence the Gorathenes; and the Masbotheans. From these came the Menandrians, Marcionists, Carpocratians, Valentinians, Basilidians and Saturnilians, each of whom, in his own way and differently, introduced his own opinion,
22.6| and from these came false christs, false prophets and false apostles, who split the unity of the church with corrupting words against God and against his Christ.
22.7| The same author also recounts the heresies that arose long ago among the Jews, saying: There were various opinions among the circumcision, among the Israelite sons, against Judah's tribe and the Christ. They were these: Essenes, Galileans, Hemerobaptists, Masbotheans, Samaritans, Sadducees, Pharisees.
22.8| He writes very many other things as well, some of which we have already mentioned, setting the accounts in their proper times. He draws some material from the Gospel according to the Hebrews and from the Syriac Gospel, and in particular some from the Hebrew tongue, making clear that he himself had come to believe from among the Hebrews; and he records other matters as from unwritten Jewish tradition.
22.9| Nor was he alone in this: Irenaeus and the entire company of the ancients called Solomon's Proverbs "all-virtuous Wisdom." And when treating the so-called apocryphal books, he relates that some of them had been fabricated in his own time by certain heretics. But we must now move on to another subject.
23.1| First, then, we must say of Dionysius that the episcopal throne of the community at Corinth had been entrusted to him, and that he shared his God-inspired labor generously not only with those under him but also with those abroad, through letters, making himself most useful to all in the catholic letters he composed for the churches.
23.2| Among these is the letter to the Lacedaemonians, instructing them in orthodoxy and urging peace and unity; and the one to the Athenians, rousing them to faith and to the way of life according to the gospel, which he reproves them for neglecting, as though they had all but fallen away from the word, ever since their leader Publius happened to be martyred in the persecutions of that time.
23.3| He mentions Quadratus, who was appointed as their bishop after Publius had been martyred, and attests that through his zeal they were gathered together again and received a rekindling of their faith. He also reveals that Dionysius the Areopagite, urged on to the faith by the apostle Paul, as is related in the Acts, was the first to be entrusted with the bishopric of the community at Athens.
23.4| Another letter of his, to the Nicomedians, is also in circulation; in it he attacks the heresy of Marcion and takes his stand by the rule of truth.
23.5| He also wrote to the church sojourning at Gortyna along with the other communities in Crete, and he commends Philip, their bishop, because the church under his charge is attested for very many deeds of courage, and he reminds them to guard against the distortion of the heretics.
23.6| He also wrote to the church sojourning at Amastris together with those in Pontus. He mentions Bacchylides and Elpistus as the men who urged him to write; he also sets out expositions of the divine Scriptures, indicating by name their bishop, Palmas. He gives much advice to the same people about marriage and chastity, and he commands them to welcome back those who return, whatever the fall may have been, whether a fault or even heretical error.
23.7| To these is added another letter, to the Cnossians, in which he urges Pinytus, bishop of that community, not to lay upon the brethren as a necessity the heavy burden of chastity, but to take thought for the weakness of the many.
23.8| Pinytus wrote back to this letter. He expresses admiration for Dionysius and welcomes his words, but urges him in turn to provide more solid food from now on, nourishing his people in future with more mature writings, so that they would not spend their whole lives on milk-like discourses and unwittingly grow old under a childish upbringing. Through this letter the orthodoxy of Pinytus in the faith, his concern for the benefit of those under his care, and his learning and understanding of divine matters are displayed as in the most accurate of portraits.
23.9| There is also extant a letter of Dionysius sent to the Romans, directed to Soter, their bishop at that time. Nothing is better than to quote from it the words in which he approves the custom of the Romans, kept up until the persecution in our own day, and writes as follows:
23.10| For from the beginning this has been your practice, to benefit all the brothers in various ways and to send provisions to many churches in every city, in one place relieving the poverty of the needy, and in another supplying brothers who are in the mines. By the provisions you send from the very first, you Romans preserve the ancestral custom of Romans. Your blessed bishop Soter has not only preserved this custom but has increased it, by furnishing the abundant gift sent to the saints, and by encouraging the brothers who come to Rome with blessed words, as a loving father does his children.
23.11| In this same letter he also mentions the letter of Clement to the Corinthians, showing that from ancient custom it had been read in the church from the earliest times. At any rate he says: "Today, then, we kept the holy Lord's day, on which we read your letter. We shall always have it to read and be admonished by, just as we do the earlier one written to us through Clement."
23.12| The same man also says this about his own letters, which had been tampered with: "I wrote letters when the brothers asked me to. And the apostles of the devil have filled them with weeds, taking some things out and adding others. For them the woe is reserved. It is no wonder, then, if some have set about tampering even with the Lord's scriptures, when they have plotted against writings that are not of that kind."
23.13| Besides these, another letter of Dionysius is extant, sent to Chrysophora, a most faithful sister. Writing to her in suitable terms, he gives her too the rational nourishment that fits her. So much for Dionysius.
24.1| Of Theophilus, whom we have shown to be the bishop of the Antiochene church, three elementary books to Autolycus survive, and another entitled Against Hermogenes' Heresy, in which he cites testimonies from the Revelation of John; some other catechetical books of his also survive. Heretics at that time were no less ruinous, like weeds, to the unmixed seed of apostolic teaching. The shepherds of the churches everywhere, driving them off like wild beasts from the sheep of Christ, kept them in check, sometimes by admonitions and exhortations to the brothers, sometimes by stripping for more open combat against the heretics themselves, with unwritten inquiries and refutations face to face, and then too by correcting their opinions with the most exact proofs in written treatises. That Theophilus, along with the others, fought against them is clear from a work he composed against Marcion with no little vigor, which has survived to the present day along with the others we have mentioned. He was succeeded in the church of the Antiochenes by Maximinus, seventh in line from the apostles.
25.1| Philip, too, whom we learned from the words of Dionysius to have been bishop of the diocese at Gortyna, wrote a most earnest work against Marcion, as did Irenaeus likewise, and Modestus, who more than the others exposed the man's error so that it was plain to all; and there were many others besides, whose labors are still preserved among very many of the brothers to this day.
26.1| In their time Melito, bishop of the diocese at Sardis, and Apolinarius, bishop of Hierapolis, flourished with distinction. Each of them separately addressed to the emperor of the Romans mentioned above, who reigned in those years, speeches in defense of the faith.
26.2| These of his works have come to our knowledge. Melito's: the two books On the Passover, On Conduct and the Prophets, a discourse On the Church, the one On the Lord's Day, and also On Man's Faith, On Creation, On the Obedience of Faith, On the Senses, and in addition to these On Soul and Body, On Baptism, On Truth, On Faith and the Birth of Christ, his discourse on prophecy, On Soul and Body again, On Hospitality, The Key, the works On the Devil and On the Revelation of John, On God Incarnate, and last of all the Little Book to Antoninus.
26.3| In the work On the Passover he indicates at the outset the time at which he was composing it, in these words: In the time of Servilius Paulus, proconsul of Asia, at the moment when Sagaris bore witness by his death, there arose a great dispute in Laodicea over the Passover, which happened to fall at that time; and these things were written.
26.4| Clement of Alexandria mentions this work in the discourse On the Passover that he wrote himself, which, he says, he composed as a result of Melito's writing.
26.5| In the book addressed to the emperor, Melito records that the following kinds of things were being done against us in his reign: For what has never happened before, the race of those who revere God is now being persecuted, driven by new decrees throughout Asia. Shameless informers, greedy for other people's property, take advantage of the edicts and plunder openly, robbing by night and by day those who have done no wrong.
26.6| And after other remarks he says: If this is done at your command, let it be considered well done; for a just emperor would never decide anything unjustly, and we gladly accept the recompense of such a death. But we put to you this one request, that you first examine for yourself the men who stir up this quarrel, and judge justly whether they merit death and punishment, or safety and peace. But if this plan and this strange decree did not come from you, a decree that would not be fitting even against barbarian enemies, then we beg you all the more not to leave us exposed to such public pillaging.
26.7| To this he adds again: For our philosophy first flourished among barbarians, but when it blossomed among your own nations during the great reign of Augustus, your ancestor, it became above all a good omen for your empire. For from that time the power of Rome grew great and splendid; you have become its longed-for successor, and will remain so together with your son, if you protect the philosophy that was nursed along with the empire and began with Augustus, a philosophy that your ancestors also honored alongside the other religions,
26.8| and the greatest proof that our teaching flourished together with an empire that began well is this: nothing bad befell it from the reign of Augustus onward, but on the contrary everything has been brilliant and glorious, in accordance with everyone's prayers.
26.9| Alone of all emperors, persuaded by certain malicious men, Nero and Domitian wished to bring our teaching into disrepute, and from them the falsehood of slander against such people has flowed on through an unreasoning habit.
26.10| But your devout fathers corrected their ignorance, often rebuking in writing the many who dared to make trouble over these matters. Among them your grandfather Hadrian is shown to have written to many others, and to Fundanus the proconsul as well, who governed Asia; and your father, when you were administering everything with him, wrote to the cities that they should make no trouble for us, among them to the Larisaeans, the Thessalonians, the Athenians, and all the Greeks.
26.11| As for you, who hold the same opinion as they did on these matters, and hold it even more firmly, and one far more humane and philosophical, we are persuaded that you will do everything we ask of you.
26.12| These things, then, are set down in the work mentioned. In the Extracts he wrote, the same man, at the beginning in the preface, draws up a list of the acknowledged scriptures of the Old Testament, which we must set out here too. He writes as follows:
26.13| Melito to his brother Onesimus, greetings. Since in your zeal for the word you have often asked to have extracts made for you out of the Law and the Prophets concerning the Savior and our whole faith, and since you also wished to learn the exact facts about the ancient books, how many they are in number and what their order is, I have taken pains to do this, knowing your earnestness about the faith and your love of learning in matters of doctrine, and that above all else, out of longing for God, you rank these things first, as you strive for eternal salvation.
26.14| So I went up to the East, and arriving at the spot where these things were preached and done, and having learned the books of the Old Testament accurately, I set them out below and sent them to you. These are their names: five of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, Deuteronomy; Jesus Son of Nave; Judges; Ruth; four of Kingdoms; two of Chronicles; the Psalms of David; Solomon's Proverbs, also called Wisdom; Ecclesiastes; the Song of Songs; Job; of the Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Twelve in a single book, Daniel, Ezekiel; Ezra. From these I also compiled the extracts, dividing them among six books. Such, then, are the words of Melito.
27.1| Of the many works of Apolinarius preserved in many hands, these are the ones that have reached us: the speech addressed to the emperor mentioned above; Against the Greeks, five treatises; On Truth, two books; Against the Jews, two books; and the works he wrote afterward against the Phrygian heresy, which was introduced not long afterward and was then just beginning, as it were, to put forth shoots, since Montanus, together with his false prophetesses, was still making the first steps of his deviation.
28.1| There is also in circulation a most persuasive discourse of Musanus, whom we listed in the preceding pages, written by him to certain brothers who had turned aside to the so-called Encratites' heresy, which was then just beginning to sprout and was bringing into life a strange and corrupting false doctrine.
29.1| The tradition is that Tatian became the founder of this deviation. A little earlier we set out his words about the admirable Justin, reporting that he had been a pupil of the martyr. Irenaeus makes this clear in the first book of his Against the Heresies, writing about him and about his heresy together in these words:
29.2| From Saturninus and Marcion came those called Encratites, who proclaimed celibacy, rejecting God's original creation and quietly accusing the one who made male and female for the procreation of human beings. They also introduced abstinence from what they call animate creatures, showing ingratitude toward the God who made everything, and they also speak against the salvation of the first-formed man.
29.3| And this has now been discovered among them through a certain Tatian, who was the first to introduce this blasphemy. He had listened to Justin as a student, and so long as he was in his company he revealed nothing of the kind, but after Justin's martyrdom he left the church, and, puffed up and swollen with the conceit of being a teacher, as though he surpassed the rest, he established a school with a character of its own. He spun tales of certain invisible aeons, like the followers of Valentinus, and proclaimed marriage to be corruption and fornication, much as Marcion and Saturninus did, while he himself contrived the denial of Adam's salvation.
29.4| So Irenaeus wrote at that time. Shortly after, a man named Severus strengthened the heresy just described, and became the cause for those who sprang from it of the name Severians, derived from him.
29.5| These people use the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospels, but interpret the meaning of the sacred writings in their own way. They blaspheme Paul the apostle and reject his letters, and they do not even accept the Acts of the Apostles.
29.6| Their earlier founder, Tatian, composed some sort of connecting and gathering together of the Gospels, I do not know how, and called it The Diatessaron, which is still in circulation among some people even now. They say that he also dared to rephrase some of the words of the apostle, as though correcting the arrangement of their wording.
29.7| This man left behind a very large number of writings, of which the one most often mentioned by many is his celebrated discourse Against the Greeks. In it he recalls the earliest times and shows that the prophets of the Hebrews, Moses among them, were older than all the renowned men among the Greeks. This seems to be the finest and most useful of all his writings. Such, then, is what concerns these men.
30.1| During the same reign, as heresies multiplied in Mesopotamia, there was Bardesanes, a most capable man and a highly skilled dialectician in the Syriac language, composed dialogues against the followers of Marcion and against certain others who championed various doctrines, and he published them in his own tongue and script, together with a great many other writings of his. His disciples, of whom he had very many, since he was a powerful champion in argument, translated these from Syriac into Greek.
30.2| Among them is his dialogue to Antoninus, On Fate, a very able work, together with all the other writings that he is said to have composed by reason of the persecution of that time.
30.3| He had earlier belonged to the school of Valentinus, but he came to condemn it and refuted most of its fables, and he seemed to himself to have changed over to the sounder opinion; yet he never entirely washed off the filth of his old heresy. It was at this time, too, that Soter, who was bishop of the Roman church, died.
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