Prelude to the Great Persecution: The Propaganda War

The Journal of Ecclesiastical History

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 1987, Pages 1-18

  Frend, W H C ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84974065386     PISSN: 00220469     EISSN: 14697637     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S002204690002248X     Document Type: Article

References (127)

1. Eusebius, Vita Constantini (ed. I. A. Heikel, GCS, Eusebius I, Leipzig 1902), iv. 39. Compare iv. 37–38 and iii. 54.
2. Adolf von Harnack, Mission and Expansion of Christianity, during the First Three Centuries, trans. J. Moffatt, London 1908, ii. 465. Von Harnack was thinking in particular of the situation in Asia Minor.
3. For evidence, however, that Constantine was already granting Christianity a privileged position among the religions of the empire from 313 onwards, see T. D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, Cambridge, Mass. 1981, 50–53.
4. Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 7. 13.
5. See Acta Purgationis Felicis, GSEL xxvi (= Appendix ii to Optatus, De Schismate Donatistarum), 199. ‘Scripturae legis vestrae’ (i.e. of the Christians) and compare Hermas, Similitudes viii. 3. 2. Eusebius, HE vii. 30. 19. Ibid.
6. Porphyry, cited by Theodoret of Cyrrhus, De Curatione Graecorum Affect., xii (end), PG 83. 1151, and also, as cited by Augustine, De Civitate Dei, xviii. 53. Also, Optatus of Milevis, De Schismate Donatistarum, ii. 4, mentioning that c. ad 314 there were forty Christian churches in Rome.
7. For the evidence, see Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church, Oxford 1965, 450–452.
8. M. Sordi, ‘Dionisio di Alessandria e le vicende della persecuzione di Valeriano in Egitto’, in Paradoxos Politeia (Studi Patristici in Onore di Guiseppi Lazzati), Milan 1979, 288–295.
9. The law, De Nuptiis is preserved in the Codex Gregorianus V (Mosaicarum et Romanarum legum Collectio, vi. 4) ed. C. Riccobono, 2 vols, Florence 1941-3, 560: ‘Nihil enim nisi sanctum et venerabilem nostra iura custodiunt et ita ad tantam magnitudinem Romana majestas cunctorum numinum favore pervenit’.
10. For an example of urban loyalty to the Tetrarchy from Egypt (Oxyrhynchus) see A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, Oxford 1964, 2. 722.
11. See C. G. van Sickle, ‘ Revival of public works in Africa in the reign of Diocletian ’, Classical Philology 25 (1930), 173-179; and C. Lepelley, Les Cites de l'Afrique romaine au Bas Empire, vol. i, Paris 1979. For restoration of temples at this period by individuals, see CIL viii. 8457 (Sitifis) and ILA i. 250 (Calama).
12. The date of the restoration of the two London temples ‘ collapsed through old age’ is not sure, but the lettering of the inscription suggests late third century. The temples were dedicated to Jupiter and Isis respectively, and the two emperors referred to on the latter inscription could be Diocletian and Maximian. See Britannia vii (1976), 378–379 and pls. 36-37.
13. Lepelley, op. cit. 347.
14. The vice-prefect of Egypt, Aemilian, addressing Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria in 257. See Eusebius, HE vii. 11. 7. For a similar view of the Roman deities some thirty years before, see Minucius Felix, Octavius, 8. 1.
15. Two examples of dedications of Saturn dating to 323 have been found in western Tunisia and published by A. Beschaouch, ‘Les steles a Saturne de 8 novembre 323’. Bull. Archeologique du Comite des Travaux Historiques, 1968, 252–68. Otherwise, dated inscriptions to Saturn end at ad 272 and those dedicated to another native deity, Bacax, in 283; see Frend, The Donatist Church, Oxford 1952, 83-5; and Lepelley, Cites de l'Afrique romaine, 333.
16. See H. I. Bell, Cults and Creeds of Greco-Roman Egypt, Liverpool 1957, 64; and J. Leipoldt, ‘Schenute von Atripe’, Texte und Untersuchungen xxv (1903), 19–21.
17. C. H. V. Sutherland, ‘Flexibility in the “reformed” coinage of Diocletian’, in Essays Presented to Harold Mattingly, London 1956, 179.
18. The Edict of Prices dates to November-December 301. Fragments survive from more than forty different cities, but none has so far been found in the West. The commentary of the governor of Caria, Fulvius Asticus, quoted here from Aezani, goes a little further than the Edict itself in claiming that the emperors desired ‘a plentiful livelihood for all’, but it interpreted the spirit of the Edict. See M. H. Crawford and Joyce Reynolds, ‘The publication of the Prices Edict: a new inscription from Aezani’, JRS lxv (1975), 160-4; and Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, 10–11, 290 for other references.
19. I.e. the clash between the Northern and Southern states of the United States leading to the Civil War (1861–5).
20. The only surviving piece of Christian philosophical apologetic from the period 260–95 is long fragment of Dionysius of Alexandria's ‘Against the Epicureans’ quoted by Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica, ed. E. H. Gifford, Oxford 1903, 14. 23–27.
21. H. Chadwick (trans. and ed.), Origen: ‘Contra Celsum’ Cambridge 1953.
22. Contra Celsum iv. it, viii. 41; also v. 14. Ibid, iv, 36.
23. Ibid. viii. 24, 35. Lesser gods were ‘satraps and subordinate governors’.
24. Ibid. ii. 79. Compare i. 69 and ii. 31, Jesus ‘arrested most disgracefully and crucified’. Ibid. 2. 24.
25. Ibid. 1. 28 (gained his knowledge of magic in Egypt). Compare ii. 49, and 55; also, below n. 103.
26. Ibid. 2. 33–35.
27. Ibid. 1. 62, 68; and ii. 55 (Celsus on the resurrection).
28. Ibid. 1. 1 and viii. 17. Ibid. ii. 1, 4.
29. Ibid. 3. 55.
30. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, ed. F. C. Conybeare (Loeb Library 1926), i. 3.
31. Apollonius' mother was visited by an apparition of Proteus who promised that her child would himself be Proteus, ‘the god of Egypt’, Life 1. 4–5.
32. Life 1. 15 (indicts rascally corn-merchants).
33. Life i. ii (insistence on morality in religion), iv. ii (Apollonius' sacrifices at Ilium were ‘of a pure and bloodless kind’). For lack of serious studies connected with temples, ibid. i. 6.
34. Cyprian, Ad Demetrianum, CSEL iii. 1, 351–70. Demetrian complained that the world was being shaken to its foundations, and that every type of disaster, natural, physical and moral was due to the failure of the Christians to give due worship to the gods. For similar views a generation before, see Tertullian, Apology xl. 2.
35. Thus, the citizens of Ansedonia (Cosa) in Italy praised the emperor Decius as ‘restorer of the sacred rites and liberty’, see Année Epigraphique, 1973, 63; while those of Aphrodisias in Caria offered prayers and sacrifices ‘through their solidarity with the Romans’, Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antigua viii. 424 (Oct-Nov. 250).
36. The pagan authorities laughed openly at the confesser Pionius and asked him, ‘ What god do you worship?’, and on his confession of faith replied, ‘You mean then the one that was crucified?’ The answer was received with loud guffaws. Acts of Pionius, 16, ed. H. Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs, Oxford 1972, 156–8. Compare ibid. 9, ‘Which Church do you belong to?’ addressed to Pionius.
37. Thus, Galerius Maximus, proconsul of Africa, addressing Cyprian when he sentenced him to death on 14 September 258. Cyprian was ‘an open enemy of the gods’ and a ringleader of‘an unlawful association’, Acta Proconsularia, CSEL iii. 3, cxii-xiii.
38. Eusebius, Praep. Evangel. 10. 3, xi. 6 and xiii. 3 as examples.
39. Ibid. 11. 6.
40. Ibid. 3. 6 (Christ's teaching superior), iii. 15 (contradictions among philosophers about the gods). See R. MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire, New Haven 1981, 71, 179.
41. Eusebius, HE ix. 11. 6, derided as ‘charlatans’.
42. Enneads, 2. 9. 6 and 9. 14. See J. Vogt, ‘Zur Religiosität der Christenverfolger im romischen Reich’, Sitzungsberichte Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Kl. (1962), 23–4 and A. H. Armstrong, Plotinus (Loeb Library 1979), ii. 220.
43. Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum (ed. J. Moreau, Sources Chrétiennes, Paris 1954, 39) 34.2. Galerius berates the ‘folly’ of the Christians in rejecting the ‘constitutions of the ancients’, which ‘perhaps their own ancestors first established’. For Christianity as a revolt against the ‘traditional religion’, see Eusebius, Praep. Evangel., preface to bk. ii.
44. See Ramsey Macmullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, New Haven 1984, 20. For martyrs and martyrdom as a spur to conversion to Christianity, see Justin, ii Apol. 13 and Tertullian, Apol., 50. 15.
45. An interesting example is provided by Amelius (flor. c. 265), who clearly knew the first chapter of the Fourth Gospel well, but does not mention John by name, simply referring to him as ‘ the barbarian’, in contrast to Heracleitus whom he names immediately after (Eusebius, Praep. Evangel. xi. 18. 26, 19. 1 ff.).
46. Cited from P. de Labriolle, La Reaction Païenne, Paris 1950, 312 = Pap. Lond. 987.
47. Eusebius, Praep. Evangel. 11. 19; also Augustine, De Civitate Dei x. 29 (end).
48. The relationship of these two works to each other is discussed by J. J. O'Meara, Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles, Paris 1959. For his view that all the surviving fragments belong to one book, see p. 145.
49. Augustine, De Civitate Dei 10. 29. ‘a body of every kind is to be escaped from’, and compare, ibid. xxii. 25.
50. Ibid. 10. 29.
51. De Civ. Dei 19. 23. Porphyry only ‘recognised Christ as a man and not as God’. Compare also De Consensu Evangelistarum i. 11: ‘ Christ was the wisest of men, but they deny he is to be worshipped as God.’
52. Ibid. 19. 23. This oracle may have been known to Lactantius, Div. Inst., CSEL xix, iv. 16. 1.
53. Ibid. 18. 53; compare xix. 23 and xx. 24. 1.
54. Lactantius, De Mortibus 13. 7–8.
55. See R. P. C. Hanson, ‘The Christian attitude to pagan religions’, in Studies in Christian Antiquity, Edinburgh 1985, 190–191.
56. Lactantius, Div. Inst. 1. 6, iv. 18.
57. For instance, books iv and v of the Praeparatio are directed very largely against the Philosophy from Oracles.
58. Eusebius, Praep. Evangel. 4. 1–4 and v. 3–4 (citing Plutarch on The Cessation of Oracles), compare iii. 16 (oracles not fulfilled).
59. The dating is very carefully worked out by T. D. Barnes, ‘Porphyry against the Christians’, JTS, ns xxiv (1973), 424—42. The difficulty in pushing the data much beyond 290, however, is the statement in the Souda that Porphyry ‘flourished in the reign of Aurelian and survived until that of Diocletian’. This does not suggest vigorous literary activity much later than the first half of that reign. Harnack's dating is c. 270.
60. Cited by Augustine, De Civ. Dei xix. 23; and for pagan anxiety at the continuous growth of Christianity, ibid. 18. 53.
61. Fragment 13 cited by A. von Harnack, ‘Porphyrius gegen die Christen, 15 Bucher; Zeugnisse, Fragmente und Referate’, Abhandlungen der Koniglich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil. Hist. Kl., Nr. 1, Berlin 1916. Compare also Frag. 1.
62. Frag. 76, tous megistous oikous. Compare Eusebius, HE viii. 1.5, ‘vast and great churches rising up in every town’; for Rome itself, Arnobius, Contra Gentes ii. 12, and Optatus of Milevis, De Schismate 2, 4.
63. Theodoret, Graec. affect. curatio xii (PG 83. 1151), and Eusebius, Praep. Evangel. v. 1 (both citing Porphyry). Frag. 97. See de Labriolle, op. cit. 284–285.
64. Theodoret, Hist. Eccl. (ed. F. Scheidweiler, GCS, Berlin 1954), ii. 7. 4.
65. Gelasius, Hist. Eccl. 2. 36. Compare Socrates, HE 1.9.30.
66. Codex Justinianus 1. 1. 3.
67. See Barnes, art. cit. 428–30, on the relationship between Porphyry and the pagan critic quoted in the Apocritus. Some fragments, however, are quoted elsewhere as from Porphyry.
68. Frag. 15. See P. de Labriolle, Reaction paienne, 251–62, for discussion of this and similar fragments. Frag. 11. Frag. 55. Frag. 15.
69. Frag. 10, a criticism known to Jerome, Comment. in Ps. £7, PL 36. 1045.
70. Frag. 9, see R. L. Wilcken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, New Haven 1984, 145–146.
71. Frag. 25. Also known to Jerome, Ep. 130. 14. 4, as was Frag. 55.
72. Frag. 34; compare 31 and 33.
73. Book xii ‘Against the Christians’, cited by Jerome in the prologue to his Commentary on Daniel, see Wilcken, op. cit. p. 140.
74. Frag. 49.
75. Frag. 58. See de Labriolle, Reaction païenne, 280.
76. Frag. 60 and 63. There must have been more detailed comparisons. During the Great Persecution, Eusebius devoted practically the whole of his answer to the writer of the tract Philalethes ad Christianos (Lover of Truth, to the Christians) who was almost certainly Sossianus Hierocles, to refuting this comparison. The writer drew on ideas popularised by Porphyry, if not the latter's actual work (Philostratus, Loeb edn, ii. 485–603).
77. Frag. 15.
78. Frag. 63; and for his failure to make a spectacle out of his Ascension, Frag. 65, and compare Contra Celsum ii. 53 and 63.
79. Frag. 64, as ‘impious persons who denied the common belief’.
80. Frag, i, lines 14–15. ‘What punishments are too severe to inflict on individuals who desert the laws of their fathers?’ Lactantius, Div. Inst. v. 2.
81. For Hierocles' career, see A. H. M. Jones, J. R. Martindale, and J. Morris, Prosopog raphy of the later Roman Empire, Cambridge 1971, 1. 432.
82. Thus, Lactantius, Div. Inst., v. 2, 12, CSEL xix. 403. For Diocletian's policy in 303, see De Mort. Pers. xi. 8.
83. Div. Inst. v. 2, 3. According to Eusebius, Contra Hieroclen i, the theme of Hierocles' Philalethes was the comparison between Jesus and Apollonius.
84. Div. Inst. v. 3. The idea of Jesus being a robber leader, but not the alleged size of his band is also found in Celsus, see Origen, Contra Celsum 2. 44.
85. Though it seems clear that Augustine must have had a Latin translation of Porphyry's work when he came to write On the Harmony of the Gospels (De Consensu Evangelistarum). See also Wilcken, Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 144–147.
86. For Arnobius' career, see Jerome-Eusebius, Chron. ad ann. 2342. Also W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity, London 1984, 450. For the suggestion that Hermetic oracles allegedly referring to Christ had some influence on his conversion, see J. Carcopino, Aspects mystiques de la Rome païenne, Paris 1942, 293.
87. Arnobius, Contra Genies, 1. 24, CSEL iv; and compare iii. 24 and vii. 48.
88. Ibid. 1. 25.
89. Ibid. 1. 1, i. 9. Compare i. 13, ‘Because of the Christians the gods inflict on us all calamities’ (Demetrianus' argument half a century before).
90. Ibid. 1. 3.
91. See n. 68 above.
92. Ibid. 2. 2.
93. Contra Gentes 1. 43, and compare Contra Celsum i. 28.
94. Ibid. 1. 59, as asserted by Porphyry, Frags. 35 (line 9), 4 and 6.
95. Ibid. 1. 60.
96. Ibid. 2. 63. Porphyry puts the question to Jesus' late arrival on earth in much the same way. Why had Christ allowed humanity to be deprived of his revelation for so long a space of time, and thus caused the destruction of countless souls? Frag. 81, and compare Contra Celsum iv. 7.
97. Arnobius, Contra Gentes 2. 15. See E. L. Fortin, ‘The viri novi of Arnobius and the conflict between faith and reason in the early Christian centuries’, Orientalia Christiana Analecta cxcv (1973), 197–236.
98. Arnobius, Contra Gentes 2. 11.
99. Ibid. ii. 15. A soul ‘not within reach of the body by contact’; see above, n. 54.
100. Ibid. ii. 14. Arnobius' anger at the scorn of his opponents, see ibid. 2. 13–14, 34. In general, see Pierre Courcelle, ‘Anti-Christian arguments and Christian Platonism: from Arnobius to St Ambrose’, in The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, ed. A. Momigliano, Oxford 1963, 151–92, especially pp. 154–5.
101. For example, Alfius Caecilianus, the Duumuir of Apthungi and Bishop Felix, whom he addresses as Parens; see Acta Purgationis Felicis, (= Appendix ii to Optatus of Milevis, De Schismate Donatistarum, CSEL xxvi. 199).
102. Contra Gentes 2. 11.
103. Ibid. 1.43 and following chapters, where Arnobius develops his argument with examples.
104. Ibid. 2. 10. Ibid. i. 28.
105. Ibid. Ibid. i. 43.
106. Ibid. 1. 46.
107. Ibid. 2. 12. Arnobius shows he was acquainted with the apocryphal Acta Petri.
108. Contra Gentes 1. 49–50.
109. Above n. 38.
110. Porphyry, De Abstinentia, quoted by Eusebius in Praep. Evangel. 4. 14.
111. Contra Genies vii. 9.
112. Lactantius, Div. Inst. 6. 2.
113. One notes the example of Christian brotherhood mentioned in the Acta S. Pionii, when Christians were recorded c. ad 240 as having saved the life of a Christian slave who had been left to die of exposure on mountainous wastes by her infuriated mistress (Acta S. Pioniz, 9); and the better known instance of Christians bringing food and other necessities to recruits to Maximin's army in 312, amongst whom was the future monastic leader, Pachomius, who was converted as the result of his experience. See the Greek Life of Pachomius (Vita Prima), ed. F. Halkin, ch. iv. Discussed by P. Rousseau, Pachomius, Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1985, 58. In general, Charles Pietri, ‘Christiana Tempora; une nouvelle image de l'homme’, Cristianesimo nella Storia vi (1985), 221–243.
114. Alexander of Lycopolis, De Placitis Manichaeorum, PG xviii. 411–48, ch. i. He also pays tribute to the Christian aim of directing the moral standard of individuals.
115. Alexander, ibid. Ibid. 24.
116. On the relatively small number of educated Christians, especially in the west, c. 300, see Lactantius, Div. Inst. v. 1. 22–7.
117. De Mortibus Persecutorum xxiii. 8, ‘homo pius’ (Diocletianus). Compare vii. 1.
118. Ibid. 23. 1–7. See Jones, Later Roman Empire i. 42–4.
119. Ibid. 7. 9. The corvees needed for the work would be provided by the cities from among the peasants in their territory.
120. Ibid. 13. 2.
121. Thus, the confessor, Procopius of Gaza quotes a tag from Homer, Iliad iii. 204, ‘The Lordship of many is no good thing. Let there be one lord and one king.’ This was regarded as a treasonable statement. See Eusebius, Martyrs of Palestine i. 1.
122. Arnobius, Contra Genies 2. 5, 12.
123. Theodore, Life of Pachomius iii, PL lxxiii. 231–2.
124. Thus, Arnobius, Contra Genies vii. 34, especially important at festival times in the agricultural year.
125. P. Garnsey, review of Frend, The Rise of Christianity: Times Literary Supplement, 5 April 1985, 380.
126. Thus, Culcianus, the vice-prefect of Egypt to the confessor Bishop Phileas at the latter's trial in 306, Acta Phileae, iii (ed. Musurillo, The Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 246).
127. Arnobius, Contra Gentes 2. 77, and compare v. 30.