This book examines the historical context of the earliest Christian

martyrs, and anchors their grisly and often wilful self-sacrifice to the
everyday life and outlook of the cities of the Roman empire.
Professor Bowersock begins by investigating both the time and the
region in which martyrdom as we know it came into being. He also
offers comparisons of the Graeco-Roman background with the martyr-
ology of Jews and Muslims. A study of official protocols illuminates the
bureaucratic institutions of the Roman state as they applied to the first
martyrs; and the martyrdoms themselves are seen within the context of
urban life (and public spectacle) in the great imperial cities. By consider-
ing martyrdom in relation to suicide, the author is also able to demon-
strate the peculiarly Roman character of Christian self-sacrifice in rela-
tion to other forms of deadly resistance to authority.
 THE WILES LECTURES GIVEN AT
THE QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY OF BELFAST

Martyrdom and Rome

MARTYRDOM
AND ROME

G. W. BOWERSOCK
Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

(CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK
40 West 20th Street, New York NY 10011-4211, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
Ruiz de Alarcon 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain
Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa

http: //www. Cambridge. org

© Cambridge University Press 1995

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1995

First paperback edition 2002

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress cataloguing in publication data

Bowersock, G W (Glen Warren), 1936-
Martyrdom and Rome / G W. Bowersock.
p. cm. - (The Wiles lectures given at the Queen's University
of Belfast)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0 521 46539 7 (hardback)
1. Persecution — History — Early church, ca. 30—600.
2. Martyrdom (Christianity) - History of doctrines - Early church, ca. 30-600.
3. Rome - Politics and government - 30 BC-476 AD.
I. Title. II. Series: Wiles lectures.
BR1604.2.B68 1995
272'.l-dc20 94-28665 CIP

ISBN 0 521 46539 7 hardback

ISBN 0 521 53049 0 paperback

Transferred to digital printing 2002

A la chere memoire
de Louis Robert
 Contents

Preface page xi

I. The making of martyrdom 1

II. The written record 23
III. The civic role of martyrs 41
IV. Martyrdom and suicide 59

Appendixes
1 Protomartyr 75
2 Ignatius and iv Maccabees yj
3 Great Sabbath 82
4 Asia, Aphrodisias, and the Lyon Martyrium 85

Select bibliography 99
Index 103
 Preface

On four luminous days in May of 1993 I had the honour and

the joy of delivering the Wiles Lectures at the Queen's Uni-
versity in Belfast. Before an audience of broad interests and
deep intelligence I touched upon the historical context of a
phenomenon that had, even as I spoke, a powerful resonance
in the political life of Northern Ireland. Martyrdom, I argued,
first came into being in the Roman empire and was inextric-
ably rooted in a society and culture peculiar to that world. The
later transformation of the concept and the practice of martyr-
dom lay outside my theme (and my competence), but I know
that it was never far from the minds of my listeners.
It is a tradition of the Wiles Lectures that the lecturer meet
each evening with university colleagues and invited guests
for discussion of the afternoon's lecture. I am immensely
indebted to all who contributed to the discussions for their
insight, criticism, and benevolence. The late Professor Lewis
Warren led each meeting with wisdom and skill. For this and
for hospitality of many kinds I remain permanently in his
debt. I thank as well those distinguished friends and col-
leagues who came to Belfast to hear the lectures and partici-
pate in the nightly colloquies: David Braund, Averil Cameron,
Werner Eck, Edmond Frezouls, Keith Hopkins, Christopher
Jones, Franqois Paschoud, David Potter, and Lellia Cracco
Ruggini. It was a singularly testing experience to discuss with
specialists a set of lectures addressed, in the first instance, to a
general audience.

XI
 Preface

Janet Boyd endowed the Wiles Lectures and graced each of

mine with her presence. I hope that Martyrdom and Rome may
be, in some measure, worthy of her great generosity and
vision.
G. W. B.
22 December

xn
 I
The making of martyrdom

T owards the end of the reign of the Roman emperor Corn-

modus, in the last years of the decade of the 180s AD, a
Roman governor in the province of Asia was conducting his
normal judicial activities when a throng of excited people
pushed forward to stand before his tribunal. Without provo-
cation or prior accusation they all voluntarily declared them-
selves to be Christians, and by this declaration they pre-
sumably showed themselves unwilling to sacrifice to the
Roman emperor - a test to which governors regularly put
professing Christians. The pious mob encouraged the gover-
nor to do his duty and consign them all promptly to death. He
obligingly had a few of them led away to execution; but, as the
remainder clamored ever more loudly to be granted the same
reward, he cried out to the petitioners in exasperation, "You
wretches, if you want to die, you have cliffs to leap from and
ropes to hang by."1 The Roman official, who was a well-
known member of a famous senatorial family at Rome, would
hardly have confronted Christians for the first time on this
occasion. He must have known their enthusiasm for death at
the hands of the Roman administration. The philosophic
emperor Marcus Aurelius had, not long before, wondered to
himself in his Meditations why it was that the Christians were

1
Tertull., ad Scap. 5. The exasperated proconsul was C. Arrius Antoninus in the
reign of Commodus: B. Thomasson, Laterculi Praesidum 1 (Goteborg, 1984), col.
232, no. 162.
 Martyrdom and Rome

so unreasonable and disorderly.2 Marcus, as a good Stoic,

deplored irrational suicide, and he certainly could not com-
prehend it when others were expected to deliver the fatal
blow.
The scene in the province of Asia, an administrative region
which corresponds roughly today with the central portion of
western Turkey, was recalled by the great patristic writer
TertuUian in an address to a Roman governor in North Africa
early in the third century. TertuUian eloquently threatened
that the scene might be repeated in Carthage:
If you think that Christians should be persecuted, what will you
do with thousands and thousands of men and women of every
age and every rank presenting themselves to you? How many fires
and how many swords will you need? How will Carthage itself
tolerate the decimation of its population at your hands when
everyone knows relatives and friends who have been removed,
when everyone sees even men and women of your own senatorial
order and aristocratic leaders of the city, relatives and friends of
your own friends?3
The rush to martyrdom was presented by TertuUian as an
ever-present danger to the Roman government.
TertuUian himself had, at a stage in his career, imbibed the
sentiments of one of the great leaders of an early Christian
sect in Asia Minor, a certain Montanus, through whom the
Holy Spirit was alleged to have pronounced the following
dire injunction: "Desire not to die in bed, in miscarriages, or
soft fevers, but in martyrdoms, to glorify Him who suffered
for you."4 Suffering and death at the hands of persecuting
magistrates so elevated the status and presumably future
prospects of martyrs that, by the late second century, there
2
Marc. Aur., ad se ipsum 11.3. Cf. the perplexity of the younger Pliny earlier in the
second century, when confronted by Christians who refused to acknowledge
the divinity of the Roman emperor: Epist. 10.96.
3
Tertull., ad Scap. 5.
4
On Tertullian's Montanist period, see T. D. Barnes, TertuUian (Oxford, 1971),
pp. 131-42. For the command of the Holy Spirit, Tertull., defuga 9, ad fin.
 The making of martyrdom

were many Christians (although it is impossible to say just

how many) who actively courted their own deaths as martyrs.
This phenomenon of voluntary martyrdom was by no means
an eccentricity of the period: it continued for more than a
century. Tlte ecclesiastical historian Eusebius reports that he
saw Christians condemned to death in massive numbers in
Upper Egypt in the early fourth century, and he indicates that
most of these were volunteers, who, as soon as one of their
number had been condemned, leapt up one after another
before the judgment seat to confess themselves to be Chris-
tians.5 In Sicily at about the same time another governor was
astonished to hear a man walk past and cry out, "I wish to die,
for I am a Christian." The presiding officer courteously
responded, "Come in, whoever said that. And the blessed
Euplus [for such was his name] entered the courtroom,
bearing the immaculate Gospels." The blessed Euplus's wish
was soon fulfilled.6
Voluntary martyrdom astonished the pagans, as well it
might. Marcus Aurelius was not the only thoughtful person of
the age who contemplated with incredulity what he saw
going on around him. Celsus, the author of a highly sophisti-
cated and detailed tract on the Christians, came to the conclu-
sion that the Christians were simply out of their minds -
insane - because they "deliberately" rushed forward to arouse
the anger of an emperor or a governor in order to bring upon
themselves blows, torture, and even death.7 Half a century
later the Christian apologist Origen attempted to answer this
criticism of Celsus, but he found very little to say because such
conduct was widespread and, in many quarters, admired.8
Although Origen claimed that the Christians were doing

5
Euseb., Hist. Eccles. 8.9.5.
6
Ada Eupli, ad init. (both Greek and Latin recensions). On voluntary martyrdom,
see G. E. M. de Ste Croix, "Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?/' Past
and Present no. 26 (1963), 6-38 (particularly 21-4).
7 8
Celsus, apud Orig., contra Cels. 8.39, 41, 55, 65. Orig., contra Cels, 8.65.
 Martyrdom and Rome

nothing "contrary to the law and word of God/' the spread of

voluntary martyrdoms had become so alarming to many
thoughtful churchmen that they gradually developed a sharp
distinction between solicited martyrdom and the more tradi-
tional kind that came as a result of persecution. Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian, and Lactantius, all great spokes-
men of the early Church, attempted to stop this enthusiasm
and reserve the ranks of the martyrs for those who endured
suffering and death in the face of persecution.9 But the efforts
of leading intellectuals and dignitaries did little to stop the
enthusiasm. By the end of the fourth century the Christian
writer Sulpicius Severus observed wryly that the martyrs of
the early Church desired death even more eagerly than
clergymen desired a bishopric.10
It seems evident that the earliest authentic martyrs suffered
torture and death at the hands of Roman officials who were
determined to enforce the traditional worship of the Roman
emperors and to root out what seemed a seditious new cult.11
Those martyrs had received much recognition and were
believed to have found so great a reward in death that others
clearly wanted to emulate them. As Gibbon remarked with a
characteristically pungent turn of phrase, "The assurance of a
lasting reputation upon earth, a motive so congenial to the
vanity of human nature, often served to animate the courage
of the martyrs."12 For true martyrs were forgiven their sins
and did indeed acquire a lasting reputation upon earth.
Although voluntary martyrdoms are hardly so common in
modern times as they were in the days of the Roman empire,
the fact and the concept of martyrdom continue to be a
powerful force at the intersection of religion and politics even
9
See, for discussion and reference, G. W. Clarke, The Letters of St. Cyprian, vol. 1
(New York, 1984), pp. 303-4.
10
Sulp. Sev., Chron. 2.32.4: . . . multoque avidius turn martyria gloriosis mortibus
quaerebantur, quam nunc episcopatus pravis ambitionibus appetuntur.
11
See de Ste Croix, "Why were the Early Christians Persecuted?"
12
E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 16 [vol. 2, p. 110, Bury].

4
 The making of martyrdom

today. Martyrdom was not something that the ancient world

had seen from the beginning. What we can observe in the
second, third, and fourth centuries of our era is something
entirely new. Of course, in earlier ages principled and cou-
rageous persons, such as Socrates at Athens or the three Jews
in the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar, had provided glori-
ous examples of resistance to tyrannical authority and painful
suffering before unjust judges. But never before had such
courage been absorbed into a conceptual system of posthum-
ous recognition and anticipated reward, nor had the very
word martyrdom existed as the name for this system. Martyr-
dom, as we understand it, was conceived and devised in
response to complex social, religious, and political pressures,
and the date and the circumstances of its making are still the
subject of lively debate.
"Martyr" is now, after all, a technical term and a powerful
one. An honorable or glorious death has nothing like the
resonance of martyrdom, which has inspired sophisticated
and untutored persons alike to plunge eagerly into the after-
life. "Martyr" is in origin the Greek word \iapwq, which
becomes [lapxvpoq, lidpiupec;, in the oblique cases, and this is
a word that simply means "witness." It has a long and inter-
esting history in the Greek language from earliest times in that
sense. It was naturally part of the legal language of the Greek
courts, and it could be used metaphorically for all kinds of
observation and attestation.13 But, until the Christian litera-
ture of the mid-second century AD, it had never designated
dying for a cause. When it finally assumed that sense, its
meaning of "witness" began to slip away, so that the word
"martyr" in Greek and the same word borrowed in Latin
came more and more to mean what it means today. When
Gibbon, in chapter 38 of his Decline and Fall, took note that the
13
Cf. for example, B. W. Frier, American Journal of Legal History 36 (1992), 389,
reviewing P. Cartledge, P. Millett, and S. Todd (eds.), Nomos: Essays in Athenian
Law, Politics, and Society (Cambridge, 1990).
 Martyrdom and Rome

Catholic Sigismund had acquired the honors of a saint and

martyr, he paused to exclaim in a footnote, "A martyr! How
strangely that word has been distorted from its original sense
of a common witness."14
There can be no doubt that among the Christians an intense
and seemingly irrational desire to die at the hands of persecu-
tors antedated the creation of the terminology that trans-
formed the common word for "witness." Consider, for
example, Ignatius of Antioch in the early second century. He
would undoubtedly qualify as a voluntary martyr in terms of
his actions. When he was taken from Antioch on the Syrian
coast to Rome for execution, he was allowed to stop in Smyrna
in Asia Minor. There he communicated with the principal
churches of the region, and he wrote a letter to the Christians
at Rome begging them not to do anything that would prevent
his being given to the wild beasts when he arrived there.15 He
displayed in his writing what has been described as a "patho-
logical yearning for martyrdom."16 But his language nowhere
includes the word. He says that he is in love with death, and
he anticipates with joy the tortures that lie ahead: "Come, fire
and cross, and encounters with beasts, incisions and dissec-
tions, wrenching of bones, hacking of limbs, crushing of the
whole body."17 In one of his most famous metaphors he
expressed his hope of being "ground by the teeth of wild
beasts" into "the pure bread" of Christ.18 Yet with all this,
Ignatius betrays no knowledge of the language or concept of
martyrdom. But he certainly longed for death.
The origins of the phenomenon have long excited scholarly
and theological debate. In his book on pagans and Christians,
Robin Lane Fox asks (and attempts to answer) the question,

14
E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. 38 [vol. 4, p. 121, Bury].
15
Ignatius, Epist. ad Rom. 5.2 and 8.1-3.
16
De Ste Croix, "Why were the Early Christians Persecuted?"
17
Ignatius, Epist. ad Rom. 5.3.
18
Ignatius, Epist. ad Rom. 4.1.

6
 The making of martyrdom

"How had this powerful idea of the martyr been construc-

ted?" 19 The new Oxford History of Christianity observes, with
admirable restraint, "The Christians called heroes of integrity,
'witnesses/ martyrs. Why this word was specially chosen has
been the subject of scholarly controversy."20 And that unim-
peachable German repository of classical learning, Pauly-
Wissowa's encyclopaedia, declares in its article on martyrs,
"The origin of this designation continues to be controver-
sial."21 Thirty years ago a young German theological student
devoted 250 large pages to this subject - very well, I may add -
but in a work that hardly anyone reads because of its
elephantine traversal of the jungle of sources.221 am under no
illusion that the subject will be less controversial when I have
finished this chapter, but I dare to hope that its outline and
issues will be clearer.
As the case of Ignatius reminds us, one must consider the
desire for death in conjunction with the concept of martyr-
dom. But they are not the same. Pathological desire comes
first; but, despite modern claims to the contrary, there is no
reason to think that anyone displayed anything comparable
to martyrdom before the Christians. The only antecedent
parallels that are customarily cited are the death of Socrates at
the very beginning of the fourth century BC and two episodes
in the history of the Maccabees in Palestine during the second
century BC. The story of the fiery furnace had a happy ending
and hardly constitutes anything like martyrdom, despite
claims that it does. Neither the case of Socrates nor that of the
Maccabees demonstrates that the idea of martyrdom should
be attached to earlier societies. I want to argue that martyr-
19
Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians ( N e w York, 1987), p . 436.
20
J. M c M a n n e r s (ed.), Oxford History of Christianity (Oxford, 1990), p . 4 1 , from t h e
experienced pen of Henry Chadwick.
21
Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft 14.2
(Stuttgart, 1930), col. 2044.
22
Norbert Brox, Zeuge und Martyr-er: Untersuchungen zur friihchristlichen Zeugnis-
Terminologie (Munich, 1961).
 Martyrdom and Rome

dom was alien to both the Greeks and the Jews, and the
position I take here is close to that of Delehaye and von
Campenhausen among the many scholars who have dis-
cussed this subject.23
Socrates certainly is, in the modern sense, one of the
greatest martyrs of western civilization; but, if we apply the
word "martyr" to him, it is only retrospectively with full
knowledge of what a real martyr was like. Socrates was cou-
rageous, holding to his principles in the face of unjust con-
demnation, and he hoped (but was certainly not sure) that
things might be better after he drank the hemlock. A real
martyr knows that things will be better, at least for him or for
her. Let us recall, for example, the magnificent ending of the
Apology of Socrates, as Plato has recreated it for us:
But you, men of the jury, must be of good hope when it comes to
the matter of death. Consider this one point to be true - that a
good man cannot suffer evil either when alive or when dead and
that his affairs are not neglected by the gods. Whereas what has
happened to me occurred by accident, this much is clear to me:
that it is better for me to die and to be set free from these troubles.

The Apology goes on to conclude with the celebrated words,

"Now it is time to go away, for me to die and for you to live.
Which of us will have the better fate is unclear to everyone
except to god."24
It is perfectly true that, for a time in the history of the early
Christian Church, Socrates was mentioned as a kind of pre-
Christian martyr, although eventually the Church deplored
such citations of non-Christian examples, and of Socrates in

23
H . D e l e h a y e , Les passions des martyrs et les genres litteraires (Brussels, 1921); H .
v o n C a m p e n h a u s e n , Die Idee des Martyriums in der alten Kirche (Gottingen,
1936). For an altogether different perspective, see T. Baumeister, Die Anfange
der Theologie des Martyriums (Minister, 1980). A useful survey of recent litera-
ture on the theology and origins of martyrdom appears in Boudewijn
Dehandschutter, Aufstieg und Niedergang der ro'm. Welt n.27.1 (1993), pp. 508-14.
24
Plato, Apol. 4ic~42a.
 The making of martyrdom

particular.25 The recorded martyrdoms of Apollonius in the

second century and Pionios in the third both cite Socrates as
an example,26 but it is fair to say that these allusions occur in
the context of persuading incredulous pagans that what the
martyrs are doing is not irrational. It is a rhetorical argument
and admittedly one of considerable force. It does not consti-
tute a statement that Socrates was, in the Christian sense, a
martyr. And, needless to say, Socrates nowhere speaks of
himself as a martyr, nor does anyone else. The word turns up
in the Apology only in its proper sense of "witness" in order to
affirm that the god Apollo at Delphi can attest to the wisdom
of Socrates. "He, the god," says Socrates, "is the witness I shall
give you."27 It is obviously an elevated form of the purely
judicial use of the word.
The so-called martyrdoms in the history of the Maccabees
are another matter altogether. In many treatments of this
problem they have served as the basis for ascribing the whole
concept of martyrdom to the Jews. Both Christians and Jews
in late antiquity and the Middle Ages considered the episodes
of courage in the Books of the Maccabees as examples of
martyrdom. But they are not described as such there. More
important, the whole concept of martyrdom in Judaism, as
expressed by the phrase qiddus ha-shem (sanctification of the
name), does not occur until after the Tannaitic period - not
until late antiquity at the earliest.28 The alleged martyrdoms at
Masada in the first century or of Rabbi Akiva in the second are
all retrospective constructions of a posterior age, an age sub-

25
G. M . A. H a n f m a n n , "Socrates a n d C h r i s t / ' Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
60 (1951), 205-33; K. D o l i n g , Exemplum Socratis ( W i e s b a d e n , 1979), ch. 7: " D a s
Beispiel des Socrates bei den fruhchristlichen Martyrern und Apologeten,"
pp. 143-61. Also see G. W. Clarke, The Octavius of Marcus Minucius Felix (New
York, 1974), pp. 240-1.
26 27
Mart. Pionii 17; Ada Apollonii 4 1 . Plato, Apol. 2oe.
28
S. Safrai, "Martyrdom in the Teachings of the Tannaim," in T. C. de Kruijf,
H.v.d. Sandt, Sjaloom (Arnhem, 1983), pp. 145-64. On the whole subject, see
J. W. van Henten (ed.), Die Entstehung der jiidischen Martyrologie (Leiden, 1989).
 Martyrdom and Rome

stantially later than that of the first Christian martyrdoms.

Now let us look at the Maccabean episodes in detail.
Among the books of the Biblical Apocrypha is a moving
account of the resistance of the Maccabees to the strenuous
efforts of the Seleucid monarch Antiochus IV to force Jews
into a Hellenic way of life. These struggles took place a little
before the middle of the second century BC. What we now
possess are abbreviated versions, known as epitomes, of an
allegedly longer account that is lost. In the so-called second
book of Maccabees, two powerful stories are told of resistance
to the royal order that Jews should eat pork.29 These two
stories are absent from the account in the first book of Mac-
cabees, and there is good reason, both textual and historical, to
believe (as most scholars now do) that at least the second story
is a later insertion into the narrative given in the second book
of Maccabees. It is possible that the first is an addition as well.
In a work that celebrates in almost every chapter the Second
Temple at Jerusalem (destroyed in AD 70) as still standing,
doubtless reflecting an obsession of the longer original text,
the two tales of resistance utterly lack any reference to the
Temple. And the second tale puts the Seleucid king in Pal-
estine when he was not there.
Both of these intrusive stories received dramatically ampli-
fied treatment at an unknown date in the work that we know
today as the fourth book of Maccabees. There can be no doubt
that this latter work was written under the Roman empire.
Although current opinion puts the second book a century or
more earlier,30 it could equally be of Roman imperial date
(although before 70). It is often forgotten that the first allusion
to the extant books of the Maccabees does not appear until the
writings of Clement of Alexandria in the late second century.31
29
11 Mace. 6-7.
30
Cf. Chr. Habicht, 2. Makkabaerbuch, Jiidische Schriften aus hellenistisch-romischer
Zeit, vol. 1 (Giitersloh, 1976).
31
Clem. Alex., Strom. 5.14.97 (f| TCOV MaiacaPaicov enuo\ir\).

10
 The making of martyrdom

The stunning resemblance of the resistance shown in the two

stories of the second and fourth books to the resistance shown
in various Christian martyrdoms has led many to believe that
these accounts reveal a Jewish tradition that surfaced here to
provide the inspiration and model for what came later. Cer-
tainly one can readily admit that they were a primary justi-
fication for including books of the Maccabees in the Biblical
Apocrypha, and they were undoubtedly much appreciated by
the apologists of the early Church. But since there is no reason
to think that the two accounts reflect the historical time of the
Maccabees, what time they do reflect is anyone's guess. Inas-
much as they do not make reference to the Temple and seem
to be additions to the narrative, they could even be associated
with the Roman empire after AD 70.
The first story concerns the aged Eleazer, who refused to eat
pork and refused equally to engage in a subterfuge proposed
by his friends and well-wishers to extricate him from the
difficult situation in which he found himself. He stood by his
principles with courage and eloquence. He declared that, if he
escaped the punishment of man, he would then be subject to
the punishment of the Lord, which he could escape neither in
life nor in death. The author of Second Maccabees said that he
preferred death with glory to life with pollution, and con-
sequently he went voluntarily (aoGaipexcoc; in Greek) to the
execution block. At the end of his narration the author
observes that he left behind an example of nobility and a
reminder of virtue for generations to come. Nowhere in the
Greek of Second Maccabees (nor in the considerably more
elaborate account in Fourth Maccabees) does the word
"martyr" appear. Eleazer is presented as a shining example of
death with glory (6 iiexd euK^eiaq Gdvaioq),32 a death as old
as the Iliad.
The second story carries an even greater impact because it

32
n Mace. 6.19.

11
 Martyrdom and Rome

involves an entire family - a mother with her seven children.

Each of the children in turn refuses to cooperate with the
royal order and goes to his death. Finally the mother herself
ends her life after her children. This powerful narration is, like
the account of Eleazer, vastly amplified in the fourth book of
Maccabees. But again the word "martyrdom" does not
appear, although in one passage in the later Fourth Maccabees
5ia|iapxupia is used in a conventional judicial sense.33 Pro-
testations of the sons and what the author of Second Mac-
cabees calls "the excessive torments" they suffered inevitably
recall the Martyr Acts and constitute a parallel to them. The
question is, quite simply, whether or not the accounts of
Eleazer and the mother with her sons antedate the concept of
martyrdom as it was shaped by the Christians.
As we have seen, no one believes that any of the books of
the Maccabees are actually contemporaneous with the events
they describe. If the narratives of Eleazer and the mother with
her sons are insertions into the second book of Maccabees by
the epitomator (or subsequently by someone else), there is no
indication that these two stories must belong before the
middle of the first century AD. The only thing of which we can
be certain is that the narratives in the second book of Mac-
cabees must precede the more amplified versions in the
fourth, which could have been composed at any time down to
Clement of Alexandria. This leaves us with a possible date for
the stories of Eleazer and the mother with her sons in the
second half of the first century, in other words, in the time
when the New Testament documents were coming into being
and the zealous Ignatius was growing up.
This was the time in which we first glimpse, in a chrono-
logically secure context, the new concept of martyrdom,
although still without the word. So if the two stories in the
books of the Maccabees have nothing to do either with the

33
rv Mace. 16.16.

12
 The making of martyrdom

authentic history of the Maccabees or with the lost original

text that recounted it, it may be suggested that they have
everything to do with the aspirations and literature of the
early Christians. There are some indications that the Greek
text of the story of the mother with her sons in Second
Maccabees was translated from a Hebrew or Aramaic origi-
nal.34 This intimation of a Semitic source for the heroic tales
that the Christians soon absorbed into their own tradition
makes it reasonable to suggest that they arose in the world of
mid first-century Palestine or slightly later.
Consideration of the so-called Maccabean martyrs brings
us, therefore, precisely to the period and language of the New
Testament. It is through the texts preserved there that we
must look for possible allusions to the idea and terminology of
martyrdom. The earliest appearance of the words "martyr"
and "martyrdom" in the clear sense of death at the hands of
hostile secular authority is the martyrdom of Poly carp in Asia
(western Asia Minor) in about 150. The narrator says:
We are writing to you, dear brothers, the story of the martyrs and
of blessed Polycarp who put a stop to the persecution by his own
martyrdom [5id xfjc; napxupiac;] as though he were putting a seal
upon i t . . . Blessed indeed and noble are all the martyrdoms that
took place in accordance with God's will ... For even when [the
martyrs] were torn by whips until the very structure of their
bodies was laid bare down to the inner veins and arteries, they
endured it, making even the bystanders weep for pity.35

The account of Polycarp's martyrdom is not likely to have

been written very much after the event. Accordingly it looks
as if the concept of martyrdom was constructed by the Chris-
tians in the hundred years or so between about 50 and 150,
and the word adapted in the second half of that period. The
coincidence with the composition of the New Testament
would suggest that the stories of Jesus's life and death were
34 35
Cf. Habicht, 2. Makkabaerbuch (n. 30 above), p. 171. Mart. Polycarpi 2.

13
 Martyrdom and Rome

related in one way or another to this extraordinary devel-

opment.
The Greek word (lapxix; appears frequently in the New
Testament, but nowhere can it be shown without question to
be used in any sense other than that of "witness."36 In the
Gospels and particularly in the Acts of the Apostles, the word
is used to designate those who witnessed Jesus's suffering
and those who witnessed his resurrection. Hence the word is
in many cases simply another way of describing an apostle. In
the Apocalypse (the book of Revelation) Jesus himself appears
as a faithful witness (6 iidpxix; 6 niOToq), a striking phrase
that may even reflect John's deep knowledge of classical
Greek since that expression can be traced back to the poet
Pindar.37 It is obvious that Jesus bore witness to the glory of
God, and there is nothing to suggest here that John refers to
him as a martyr who died at the hands of the Roman
authorities.
There are only two passages in the entire text of the Greek
New Testament that could conceivably be interpreted as
using the word |idpxuq in the new sense of martyr. But the
improbability of such a use even in these instances is under-
scored by the many cases in the New Testament in which the
word means simply "witness." Nonetheless, these two pas-
sages could have provided a solid foundation for any sub-
sequent redefinition of the word. Both involve persons who
were put to death. Hence the ambiguity of their being
described as (aapxix;. John, in the second chapter of the
Apocalypse, makes reference to an otherwise unknown
Antipas whom he describes, curiously, in the same words that
he actually uses for Jesus himself, "a faithful witness," in this
case qualified with the possessive "my faithful witness":
"Antipas was my faithful (idpiog [witness], who was slain
36
Cf. W . Bauer, K. a n d B. A l a n d , Worterbuch zutn Neuen Testament, 6th e d n
(Berlin, 1988), s.v. n&pxix;, cols. 1001-2.
37
A p o c . 1.5, 3.14. Cf. Pind., Pyth. 1.88.
 The making of martyrdom

among you."38 He was not a \idpxvq because he was slain, but a

witness who was slain.
The other case is better known and more amply described
in the New Testament: it is the story of Stephen, stoned to
death after delivering an eloquent speech in response to an
accusation of blasphemy. The speech concludes with
Stephen's literally bearing witness, as he declares that he sees
the heavens opening before him and Jesus standing on the
right hand of God. At this point his audience "cried out with a
loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with
one accord, and cast him out of the city, and stoned him."39
Later in the book of Acts Paul alludes to the stoning of
Stephen by the words, "When the blood of your martyr
Stephen was shed."40 Only a few verses earlier Paul had
referred to God's choice of himself as "a witness to all men" of
what he had seen and heard,41 and so it is hard to believe that
in his reference to Stephen, almost immediately after, the
sense of witness would be any more loaded than it was in the
reference he made to himself. Stephen was a witness of the
glory of the Lord and could legitimately be called "your
witness." On the other hand, since he did suffer a violent
death (albeit at the hands of his fellow Jews) and the shedding
of his blood is linked to his being called witness, his witness-
ing could obviously be construed as consisting in that death.
This, in my view, is the one passage in the entire New Testa-
ment that might have effectively encouraged the sense of
martyrdom as it was to develop. The allusion to Antipas could
then have been construed in a similar way.
We have already observed that, when Ignatius was craving
to be burned, eaten, and ground up into the pure bread of
Christ, he never once availed himself of the term "martyr,"
and he was certainly writing after the composition of the Acts.
38 39
A p o c . 2.13. A c t a A p o s t . 7.56-8.
40
Acta A p o s t . 22.20: o r e e^exuvveio T 0 a ^ a £x£<|)dvoi> xoO fiapxopog a o o .
41
A c t a A p o s t . 22.15: \iapTvq ... npoq navxac, dv0p67ioi)<;.

15
 Martyrdom and Rome

His example suggests that, although the sacrifice and death

that we associate with martyrdom was already appreciated
and sought after, it had not yet received a name. The example
of Jesus himself, to say nothing of Stephen, Antipas, and
others, must surely have constituted the ultimate background
for the development of aspirations such as those of Ignatius. It
is worth comparing parallel developments in secular history
of the same period (the second half of the first century). This
was an age in which philosophers as well as Christians stood
up to the tyrannical authority of Rome and its emperor, even
to the point of exile and death. Their resistance, documented
in traditional classical texts as well as modern discoveries on
papyrus, shows a spreading desire for liberty and for freedom
from the oppressor that, in those terms, has a deep and
memorable history across the centuries and particularly in the
Old Testament. None of these Acts of the Pagan Martyrs, as
some of these narratives have been called, has the character-
istics of Christian martyrdom except insofar as they oppose
the ruling authority.42 The Stoics were particularly famous for
resisting the emperor, and a well-known group of Stoic philo-
sophers at Rome earned everlasting fame for their outspoken
resistance.43 Nor were the Stoics alone in this. The fabulous
wonder-worker, Apollonius of Tyana, was a Pythagorean,
who showed no less courage, it seems, before the tyrant
Domitian.44
Early in the second century the philosopher Epictetus in his
Dissertations proclaimed that the philosopher was called by
Zeus to be his witness. The language of Epictetus has long
been seen to provide an interesting parallel with the language
of the New Testament. Zeus sends evil to test men, and he
uses philosophers to instruct them, says Epictetus: "The philo-
42
Cf. H . M u s u r i l l o , Acts of the Pagan Martyrs (Oxford, 1954).
43
See Ch. W i r s z u b s k i , Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and
Early Principate ( C a m b r i d g e , i960).
44
Philostr., Vit. Apoll. 7.32-4.

16
 The making of martyrdom

sophers are the witnesses for the uneducated."45 They are

also, according to Epictetus, the witnesses of those matters in
which mortal man has no choice. "The philosopher is, for the
benefit of others," says Epictetus, "a witness [the word is
martyr] of those things that cannot be chosen."46 In another
remarkable passage the philosopher is described simply as "a
martyr called by God"47 - martyr here clearly in the sense of
"witness" but allowing, even in this polytheist context, a
sense of mission that resembles, although in a far less sanguin-
ary way, the self-perception of Ignatius.
In these early years of the second century, in both the
polytheist and Christian contexts and also, I suspect (on the
basis of my interpretation of Second Maccabees), the Pal-
estinian Jewish context, the concept of martyrdom as we
know it gradually took shape. With it soon came the word
"martyrdom" among the Christians in its modern sense. If the
martyrdom of Polycarp is the first attested example of word
and act together, obviously it need not have been the first. The
subsequent early examples of martyrs, however, seem often
to come from Asia Minor (the martyrdoms of Polycarp,
Pionios, and all those voluntary martyrs before the governor
mentioned by Tertullian). Even Ignatius, who sounds so much
like a martyr, wrote his fiery letters in the bosom of the
Christian churches of Asia Minor. One cannot help wonder-
ing therefore whether or not this invention of martyrdom had
some kind of root in western Asia Minor, that is to say Anato-
lia - the part of the Roman empire in which it first and
repeatedly appeared. Even the martyrs of Lyon in 177, going
to their deaths far away in France, were in close touch with
their brethren in Anatolia. Our knowledge of their martyr-
doms comes from a letter they wrote to the churches of Asia
and Phrygia (a region within western Asia Minor).48
The Asian, or more precisely the Anatolian connection,
45 46
Epict., Diss. 3.26, 28. Epict., Diss. 3.24,112: n&pTupa xcov arcpoaipexcov.
47 48
Epict., Diss. 1.29, 47. Mart. Lugdun., ad init.
 Martyrdom and Rome

seems to be reflected in the preaching of Montanus, which we

have already heard: it is better to die the martyr's death than
to die in one's bed, in childbirth, in sickness, or in any other
more natural way. It can hardly be an accident that this kind
of preaching was carried out in the very area in which martyr-
dom proved to be so popular. But more than that - Asia Minor
was unusually fond of spectacles and public entertainments. It
was one of the major training areas for gladiators, and many
of the great cities of the region had extravagant provisions for
gladiatorial shows and the display of wild animals.49 Pressure
on the part of local authorities to find victims over and above
the criminals who would normally be provided for a show
must have been unusually great. Various forms of torment to
which Christian martyrs were subjected, as we hear of them
from Tertullian and other writers, fit perfectly within the
framework of those popular entertainments which have been
described recently by an outstanding young scholar as "fatal
charades."50 The criminals, or martyrs, would be dressed up as
mythological characters and asked to enact bloody roles that
would culminate in their real death in some titillatingly grue-
some way. The popularity of these fatal charades was hardly
peculiar to Asia Minor, but it was certainly conspicuous there.
As we saw at the beginning, martyrdom soon spread. In
North Africa early in the third century Tertullian confronted
the issue with eloquence and an abundance of examples. By
the time of Cyprian in the middle of the third century, the
Church had already begun a vigorous effort to discourage
voluntary martyrdoms and reserve the martyr's crown for
those whose faith was truly tested by the secular authority.51
49
L o u i s Robert, Les gladiateurs dans VOrient grec (Paris, 1940). T h e r e w a s a t r a i n i n g
school for gladiators at Pergamum, where the young Galen was able to
sharpen his medical skills by direct observation and treatment: Galen 13.599 ff-
and 18B, 567 (Kiihn).
50
Kathleen M. Coleman, "Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mytho-
logical Enactments/ 7 JRS 80 (1990), 44-73.
si G. W. Clarke, Letters.

18
 The making of martyrdom

But the discouragement of ineffectual martyrdoms only

served to confirm the sense of real ones. The word "martyr"
was now securely established in its new meaning. It was soon
taken over into other languages, as, for example, a loan word
in Latin. It was never translated into Latin as testis. In Syriac,
by contrast, it was translated: the word for "witness" was
given the new meaning of "martyr" by reference to the Greek
use.
Perhaps the most astonishing and influential extension of
the concept of martyrdom as witnessing came in Arabic after
the Muslim conquest of Palestine in the seventh century. Just
as the Syriac speakers had done, the Arabs translated the
Greek word as "witness" into Arabic (shahid). This was to
become a designation of Muslim martyrs who fell in battle
before the infidel and could therefore count on great rewards
in the afterlife. The Islamic concept of martyrdom has had far-
reaching consequences, as everyone who reads the news-
papers today will know. The terrorists who blew up American
soldiers in Beirut are martyrs. The Iraqis who died in the
invasion of Kuwait are martyrs. There can be little doubt that
this concept - and this word - was absorbed directly from
Greek during those early centuries of Islam when Christian
churches still flourished in Palestine and Greek was still
spoken.
Arab theologians were confronted by a curious dilemma in
interpreting the word for "witness," shahid, because the form,
unlike the Greek equivalent (or indeed the Syriac one), is a
passive form and can therefore also mean "witnessed." The
Arabs had accordingly to confront the awkward question of
whether a martyr was witnessing, and if so what or whom, or
whether he was witnessed by another. If the word was to be
understood as "being witnessed" rather than "witnessing,"
then the witness could only be God Himself (or His angels),
and hence the occasional interpretation of the Islamic martyr
as a person whose death was witnessed by God or the

19
 Martyrdom and Rome

angels.52 Such an interpretation brings us, in a curious way,

full circle to the death of Socrates, for Socrates too claimed that
he was witnessed by god - it was Apollo, you will recall, that
bore witness to him, although in life not in death.
The structure of the language of Islam made the notion of
martyrdom rather more complex than it was in its original
Christian form. In popular contexts it was even extended to
the deaths of pious Muslims on the pilgrimage route to Mecca.
Many travelers have observed that the graves of pilgrims
often identified them as, in Arabic, "martyrs" (shuhild). This
point was of sufficient interest to that crusty but indomitable
traveler, Charles Doughty, that he remarked in his Travels in
Arabia Deserta, "Many are the hasty graves of buried pilgrim
'witnesses' in this station; upon the headstones of wild blocks
pious friends have scored the words which were their names.
To be accounted 'witnessing,' surely for civil souls, is the
creeping plague of Egypt."53
By contrast, the effort of the young Christian Church to
reduce the enthusiasm for martyrdom that had caused some
embarrassment in the early centuries seems generally to have
been successful and to have left martyrdom for those who
earned it. But human history is never, unfortunately, free
from oppression, tyranny, and cruelty. Tertullian had once
declared to a Roman governor, "Your cruelty is our glory."54
And that would seem to be a human predicament that has no
end. Martyrdom as it was invented and martyrdom as it is
now understood is as powerful a force in the Church that
created it as it is in Islam, though obviously in a different way.
When the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoffer was exe-
cuted at Flossenburg on 9 April 1945, the removal of this good
and courageous man at a time when the war was near its end
52
See the citations marshalled b y E. W. Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon (London,
1872), 1.4, p. 1610.
53
C. Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta, 3rd e d n ( N e w York, 1921), p . JJ.
54
Tertull., ad Scap. 5: crudelitas vestra gloria est nostra.

20
 The making of martyrdom

has moved many an observer to speak of martyrdom. One

such was the poet W. H. Auden, who, a little over a decade
later, wrote a poem in memory of Bonhoffer, whom he
described in the title as "Martyred at Flossenburg."55 Some
verses from this poem encapsulate better than any prose what
lay behind the making of martyrdom:
What reverence is rightly paid
To a Divinity so odd
He lets the Adam whom He made
Perform the Acts of God? ...
Now, did He really break the seal
And rise again? We dare not say;
But conscious unbelievers feel
Quite sure of Judgment Day.
Meanwhile, a silence on the cross,
As dead as we shall ever be,
Speaks of some total gain or loss,
And you and I are free
To guess from the insulted face
Just what Appearances He saves
By suffering in a public place
A death reserved for slaves.

55
W. H. Auden, Collected Poems (New York, 1976), pp. 509-10.

21
 II
The written record

I n the first poem of his anthology of lyrics on the crowns

of martyrdom (Peristephanon Liber), the Christian Latin poet
Prudentius finds that his zeal for recounting the excruciating
tortures suffered by the martyrs is severely limited by the loss
of records about them. "Alas," he exclaimed, "for the all too
common forgetfulness of the voiceless past [o vetustatis silentis
obsoleta oblivio]!"1 When we are denied the details, the story
itself may be extinguished. Long ago, according to Prudentius,
a blasphemous soldier took away the records of martyrs so
that subsequent generations, trained in the preservation of
memory by written account, should not disseminate to post-
erity, in sweet language, "the order, time, and manner that
was handed down about the martyrdom."2
The fundamental written texts, what Prudentius called the
tenaces libelli,3 obviously contained the raw material for those
inspiring stories of martyrdoms that circulated in the Roman
empire from the middle of the second century onwards and
perhaps even earlier. These were texts that were adapted,
expanded, altered, and imitated throughout the Roman
imperial and Byzantine periods. Since the formative period of
martyrdom was over by the early fourth century, when the
empire became Christian, there could be no more documents
of the struggles of the early Church against an intolerant and
polytheist bureaucracy. The golden age of Martyr Acts was
1 2
Prudentius, Peristeph. 1.73. Prudentius, Peristeph. 1.77.
3
Prudentius, Peristeph. 1.76.

23
 Martyrdom and Rome

not to come again, even though the Church could go on

registering new martyrs down to the present time. Imagin-
ation and rhetoric could fill in gaps for the early centuries, but
even so prolific and rhapsodic a writer as Prudentius knew
that his account was ultimately at the mercy of those who, like
the blasphemous soldier, chose to destroy the written record.
Whatever authentic memorials survived of the martyrdoms
of the pre-Constantinian empire - these were precisely those
martyrdoms suffered by Christians who refused to sacrifice to
the Roman emperors - served as the basis for all subsequent
accounts of the martyrdoms of that period and provided the
inspiration for new martyrs whose faith was to be tested in the
centuries to follow. The miracles of endurance and fidelity
that characterize the Martyr Acts of the Roman imperial
period also inspired those hagiographers who recorded the
lives of saints with such loving detail. Martyrology and hagio-
graphy constitute a twin literary offspring of early Chris-
tianity, as opposed to homiletics, exegesis, or epistolography.
The personal sufferings of martyrs and saints created a
wholly new literature that was as exciting to read as it was
edifying. This literature passed back and forth easily across
the frontier between fiction and history, and it acquired its
impact from the apparent historicity of its details. It can hardly
be accidental, and has often been remarked, that the decline of
historical fiction in the Roman empire (the Greek novels in
particular) coincided quite precisely with the rise of Martyr
Acts. Even if (as I believe) Heliodorus's novel, the Aethiopica,
represents a return to the novel genre in the later fourth
century - perhaps even inspired by the polytheist revival
under Julian - the enthusiasm was short-lived and almost
immediately followed by a burst of creativity in hagiography.
The transitional work in the whole evolution from fiction to
martyrology and hagiography is certainly, among the texts
that survive, the so-called Clementine Recognitions. This bizarre
work is nothing less than a piece of historical fiction, much on

24
 The written record

the lines of the Greek novels we possess, but with a Christian

hero and an abundance of inspiring Christian homilies in
place of the rhetorical speeches of pagan fiction.4
The early Martyr Acts are, therefore, potentially important
documents for the taste and nature of Christianity when
Rome still had its empire and empowered its far-flung
bureaucracy to process recalcitrant Christians within the legal
system of the age. This was a world that was manifestly very
different from the post-Constantinian one, with a capital in
Byzantium as well as in Rome, and with much of the suffer-
ings of Christians inflicted by other Christians. Doctrinal dis-
putes and heresies subsequently provided the fuel for vio-
lence in an empire that was no longer administered by
pagans. This is not the place to resume the knotty problem of
the stages of Roman imperial legislation against Christianity.5
It will suffice to state the obvious: some emperors and some
bureaucrats were more zealous in prosecuting Christians than
others, and hence there was an irregular rhythm in the out-
breaks of persecution. But one thing is clear, and that is that a
Christian who refused to sacrifice to the emperor when called
upon to do so was in violation of the law and subject to the
extreme penalty. Inevitably all those who became martyrs
refused to make such a sacrifice and persisted defiantly to
confess their Christian faith. The severity of their punish-
ments depended to some extent upon their status, the blood-
thirstiness of the magistrate in charge, and the interests of the
community in providing public entertainments. Those who
became martyrs were united in refusing the sacrifice test and
in persisting openly to confess their Christianity.
The Acts of the early martyrs that we possess clearly contain
4
On the subject of secular fiction in relation to Christian literature, see G. W.
Bowersock, Fiction as History: Nero to Julian, Sather Lectures (California, 1994).
The present Wiles Lectures may be considered as a kind of pendant to the
Sather Lectures.
5
For a survey of the evidence and issues, W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecu-
tion in the Early Church (Blackwell, 1965).

25
 Martyrdom and Rome

much that is fictional and was introduced by subsequent

redactors. But equally clearly these Acts contain much authen-
tic material excerpted and included by the redactors, if occa-
sionally supplemented or altered. In combining fictional
elaboration with historical substance, the Martyr Acts bear a
relation to the historical events of the time not unlike that of
the Gospels. I have argued elsewhere that the historical narra-
tives of the Gospels provided a powerful stimulus to the
production of pagan historical fiction.6 In turn, with the
passage of time, the production and popularity of that fiction
itself provided an equally powerful stimulus to the com-
position and dissemination of the Martyr Acts. The mediating
role of secular fiction between the Gospels and the Martyr
Acts (to say nothing of later hagiography) is guaranteed, it
may be argued, by the narrative technique, especially in the
handling of circumstantial detail, that characterizes those
Acts. Even the literary style of the Martyr Acts is far closer to
secular fiction in Greek than it is to the style of the Gospel
narratives. The Gospels were products of Hellenized Judaism
in Palestine in the late first century, whereas the Martyr Acts
are quite palpably the product of the non-Jewish Graeco-
Roman society of Asia Minor, Greece, and North Africa.
But the purely literary features of early Christian martyr-
ology hold little or no promise for the historian, and in my
view generations of scholars have labored abortively to trace
literary motifs that could be paralleled in other texts such as
the Old Testament (Daniel, in particular) and the second and
fourth books of Maccabees. Perler in 1949/ Frend in 1965,8 and
most recently Baumeister in 19809 have practiced a kind of
crude and antiquated literary criticism to emphasize banal

6
Fiction as History.
7
O. Perler, "Das vierte Makkabaerbuch, Ignatius von Antiochien und die alt-
esten Martyrerakten," Revista di archeologia cristiana, 25 (1949), 47-72.
8
Frend, Martyrdom.
9
T. Baumeister, Die Anfange der Theologie des Martyriwns (Miinster, 1980).

26
 The written record

coincidences in various narratives of resistance to authority

and heroic self-sacrifice as if every such episode constituted
martyrdom. By these critical procedures Baumeister and his
predecessors imagined that they could uncover a depend-
ence, on the part of the authors of martyr acts, upon Jewish
sources. But as an acute participant in a colloquium in 1984 on
Jewish martyrology observed, "In Christian martyr acts,
despite all the differences in form, the kernel is the authentic
documentation of the legal hearing. That is perhaps the real
difference from Jewish martyr acts, and accordingly the
concept of (idpiuc; should be understood as a typically Chris-
tian title."10
The documentary sources for some of the most important
early martyrdoms can be discovered in the surviving acts and
directly related to the historical world of the martyrs them-
selves. The written record as it has come down to us contains
essentially three forms of documentary account: 1) alleged
writings of the martyrs themselves from the days leading up
to their martyrdom (writings which, for obvious reasons, did
not include the actual moment of execution); 2) eyewitness
accounts, in which a sympathetic viewer has recorded his
impressions relatively soon after the martyrdom (these
accounts invariably supplement what the martyr was unable
to supply, notably the death scene); and 3) apparently official
transcripts of the proceedings in which the martyr was inter-
rogated before a Roman magistrate. Such transcripts would
normally include the judicial decision to punish and the char-
acter of the punishment but omit the execution itself. Several
of the most important martyrdoms, such as those of Pionios
and Perpetua, seem to include testimony from all three types
of documentary source. The fabrication of transcripts - or
rather the creation of interrogations in the form of an official
transcript - certainly cannot be ruled out in some cases, but a
10
J. W. den Boeft in J. W. van Henten, Die Entstehung der jiidischen Martyrologie
(Leiden, 1989), p. 221.

27
 Martyrdom and Rome

demonstrable fabrication of writings of the martyrs them-

selves or of eyewitness accounts in the first person is less
evident and may well not have taken place at all. In general,
the disengagement of these three forms of documents leads to
a reasonable assessment of the historical value of the Martyr
Acts and, in many cases, can be tested against the evidence of
inscriptions and papyri that treat of similar administrative
and social contexts.
The documentary evidence embedded within the written
record accordingly allows the historian to integrate the
martyrdoms within the larger fabric of society and administra-
tion in the Roman empire. What emerges strikingly from an
examination of this material is that the martyrdoms form a
cohesive part of the structure of the Roman empire - both
bureaucratic and social - and not simply a disconcerting
obstruction to the smooth functioning of the imperial govern-
ment. To put this in another way, Christianity owed its
martyrs to the mores and structure of the Roman empire, not
to the indigenous character of the Semitic Near East where
Christianity was born. The written record suggests that, like
the very word "martyr" itself, martyrdom had nothing to do
with Judaism or with Palestine. It had everything to do with
the Graeco-Roman world, its traditions, its language, and its
cultural tastes.
This point can best be demonstrated from a selective review
of the material in each of the three classes of documentary
evidence within the Acts of the martyrs. If, then, we turn first
to the texts supposedly left behind by martyrs themselves, we
find, in particular, three ample and famous records. These are
the memoire that Pionios is said to have written while in prison
awaiting execution at Smyrna, the journal kept by Perpetua
before her martyrdom at Carthage, and the concomitant diary
of a certain Saturus, also evidently composed at the time of the
martyrdom of Perpetua.
The first chapter of the surviving Martyrdom of Pionios tells

28
 The written record

us that Pionios left a auyypajana "for our instruction, so that

we might have it even now as a memorial of his teaching/'11 It
is generally assumed that this auyypa|i|ia constituted the basis
for the surviving account down to the moment at which
Pionios was sent to his death. The narrative, as we have it, is
written in the third person, and yet there seem to be one or
two moments in which the editor appears to have incorpo-
rated the actual references of Pionios to himself and his com-
rades in the first person plural. The most powerful example
concerns an apostate priest, Euctemon, used as an example by
the Roman authorities to persuade Pionios to sacrifice.
Euctemon tried to force "us," says the text, to eat of the meat
of a small lamb brought to the shrine of the two Nemeseis in
Smyrna.12 "Us" here may be the same first person plural that
makes an appearance earlier in the martyrdom, when another
apostate, a person by the name of Asclepiades, is referred to as
being "with us."13
It is probably not accidental that these two striking, even
surprising, references to Christian apostates who are prepared
to sacrifice to the emperor both occur in language that sug-
gests the original text of Pionios himself. Pionios in the third
century was clearly not averse to mentioning renegades from
his flock, whereas later martyrologists notoriously preferred
to suppress information of this kind. The translators of the
Martyrdom of Pionios into Armenian, Old Church Slavonic, and
Latin all, to a greater or lesser extent, cut back on this infor-
mation or eliminated it altogether.14
It is not only in the matter of apostasy that Pionios's account
takes us back to a recognizably imperial context. In both of the
great speeches that are assigned to him in the martyrdom
narrative, he addressed the Jews of Smyrna, a community we
11
Mart. Pionii 1.2. Cf. L. Robert, Le martyre de Pionios, ed. G. W. Bowersock and
C. P. Jones (Dumbarton Oaks, 1994), pp. 49-50.
12 13
Mart. Pionii 18.13. Mart. Pionii 10.5.
14
Cf. Robert Martyre, pp. 11-12.

29
 Martyrdom and Rome

know to have been substantial in the second and third cen-

turies.15 Pionios shows more than a trace of that anti-Semitism
so conspicuous in the account of the martyrdom of Polycarp,
but Pionios is more of a teacher and attempts to make his case
for Christianity in terms that his Jewish listeners would
understand. Like the sophists, to whom Pionios as an orator
may be compared for subtlety and eloquence, he turns the
taunts of Jewish critics back on themselves.
Who forced the Jews to sacrifice to Beelphagor, or partake of the
sacrifices offered to the dead, or to fornicate with the daughters of
foreigners, or to sacrifice their sons and daughters to idols, to
murmur against God, to slander Moses, to be ungrateful to their
benefactors, or in their hearts to return to Egypt, or, as Moses went
up to receive the law, to say to Aaron, "Make gods for us," and
then to make the calf - and all the other things they did, for they
are capable of deceiving you. Then let them read to you the Book
of Judges, Kings, or Exodus, or all the other passages which prove
them wrong.16

This is strong stuff. It is solidly grounded in the tradition of

anti-Jewish literature of the Christian Church. This is the
literature that is conventionally referred to today as adversus
ludaeos, but there it has a directness and intensity, as well as a
rhetorical brilliance, that anchors Pionios's speech securely in
the society of second- and third-century Smyrna.
In his second speech Pionios returns to the attack. He tells
the polytheists of Smyrna not to succumb to the proselytizing
efforts of Jews who invite them to their synagogues. "Do not
become with them rulers of Sodom and people of Gomorrah,
whose hands are tainted with blood. We did not slay our
prophets, nor did we betray Christ and crucify him."17 Pionios
says that Christ was a man and, according to the Jews, died a
violent (and therefore disgraceful) death, like a criminal, but,
15
Robert Martyr-e, pp. 54-5.
16
Mart. Pionii 4.11-12, with the commentary of Robert Martyre.
17
Mart. Pionii 13.2.

30
 The written record

he asks, "What other 'criminal' hasfilledthe entire world with

his disciples? What other 'criminal' has had his disciples and
others with them to die for the name of their master?"18 (I
shall return in the fourth chapter to the key word, Pio9avf|<;,
in this passage.) As for Jewish charges of Christian necro-
mancy, Pionios launches into a fervid account of Saul's Bib-
lical effort to bring up Samuel the Prophet through a woman
who specialized in necromancy. Indeed, according to the
Bible, the woman did succeed in bringing up Samuel to
answer a few questions.19
Both the substance and the rhetorical argument in Pionios's
speeches point to their being, in large part, drawn from the
auYYpawia that Pionios himself composed. The language
reinforces this inference. When Pionios is interrogated by the
vecoicopoq at Smyrna (a certain Polemon), the question put to
him after "Are you a Christian?" is "Of what church?" (Tioiac;
8KK^r|CTiag)20 Although Polemon may perhaps have used the
word 8KicA,r|ata, it is not very likely. A polytheist interrogating
a Christian was not likely to use the word eiacXriaia - as
opposed to a more neutral term - to distinguish one Christian
sect from another. Pionios, on the other hand, would have
given his transcription of the interrogation in a form that
would be readily comprehensible to the Christian readership
that he had in mind. The more neutral term 0pr|aK8ia appears
in the record of an interrogation later in this same martyrdom
when there is no question of the use of Pionios's a6yYPaW!a.21
So the earlier 8KK^r|aia is not likely to reflect the redactor's
vocabulary, but Pionios's own.
Apart from Christian terminology, Pionios's Greek shows
signs of the living language. The most conspicuous case is the
recurring use of vai simply to mean "yes" - a word that has
served the Greeks in their talk from Plato to the present. More
striking are certain words that appear here with a meaning
18 19
Mart. Pionii 13.4-5. Mart. Pionii 14.2-14, with Robert Martyre, ad loc.
20 21
Mart. Pionii 9.2. Mart. Pionii 19.4

31
 Martyrdom and Rome

that does not reappear again until the Byzantine Greek of a

later age. The most revealing diction occurs precisely in Pio-
nios's own account of life in the prison where he was actually
writing his auYYpa|i|ia. The bribes offered to the guards are
described here as auvf|0r|, a usage rarely attested in literary
texts and showing up next (in the form auvf|0eia) in provincial
inscriptions of some two centuries later.22 The guards' taking a
portion of the gifts sent to the prisoners as a kind of bribe for
good treatment is expressed by the participle 87U(|nA,av9pCD-
7C8i)6|i8VOi, a hapax with the prefix enx-P A particularly inter-
esting case in this context, because so rare, is the use of
c|)iXoA,OY£Tv to describe how the prisoners passed their time.
They had, we are told, leisure to indulge in (jn^o^oyetv. This
does not mean, as has normally been assumed, simple conver-
sation. It means, as Louis Robert has astutely demonstrated,
"to engage in dialectical argument," - a late Greek and Byzan-
tine usage.24
As for the narrative supposedly left by Perpetua before her
martyrdom at Carthage, it was E. R. Dodds, in his Wiles
Lectures of exactly thirty years ago (Pagan and Christian in an
Age of Anxiety), who rightly observed that a fundamental
document incorporated in the extant Greek and Latin ver-
sions of her martyrdom is "a sort of prison diary kept by
Perpetua while awaiting execution."25 This diary includes an
account of four dreams of remarkable character, redolent of
the social world to which Perpetua belonged. Dodds sensi-
tively and firmly distinguished the material in Perpetua's
journal from the writings of a redactor, who may well be the
same as the eyewitness of the climactic latter part of the
narrative. We have already observed how style and rhetoric

22
Mart. Pionii 11.5. Cf. OGIS 521.16 a n d SEG ix.365.16 ff. T h e w o r d auvf|er| h a s
been regularly misunderstood; cf. Robert Martyre, pp. 76-7.
23
Mart. Pionii 11.4. See R o b e r t Martyre, p . 76.
24
Mart. Pionii 11.7: R o b e r t Martyre, p . yy.
25
E. R. D o d d s , Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety ( C a m b r i d g e , 1965), p . 48.

32
 The written record

can distinguish the unique contribution of Pionios to the

account of his own martyrdom. Similarly, Dodds observes,
in the first place, Perpetua's simple style is very different from the
rhetorical cleverness of the redactor [whom many believe, with
good reason, to have been none other than Tertullian] ... And
while I take it as now pretty well established that the redactor's
original language was Latin, there are fairly strong reasons for
thinking that the diary was originally kept in Greek. Secondly, the
diary is entirely free from marvels, and the dreams it reports are
entirely dream-like.26

In a long and important article Louis Robert was able to anno-

tate the dreams of Perpetua, on the basis of the agonistic insti-
tutions of the age and the language that described it.27 Dodds,
from his unique perspective of psychoanalysis and his own
well-known personal exploration of the occult, was able with
equal authority to declare that the dreams of Perpetua could
reasonably represent the dreaming of the martyr herself.
In the case of Perpetua the text of the martyrdom not only
mentions Perpetua's journal, just as the text of the Pionios
martyrdom mentioned the auyYpanna of Pionios. The redac-
tor in this case explicitly says that the narrative is drawn from
her account: "The whole account of the martyrdom written in
her own hand and according to her own ideas [suo senso in
Latin, and TCD vot in Greek]."28 Later the narration includes
Perpetua's own words as she comes to the foreordained con-
clusion: "So much for what I did up until the eve of the public
spectacle. About what is going to happen at that spectacle, let
him write of it who will!"29 The Greek at this point is far more
26
D o d d s , Pagan and Christian, p p . 4 9 - 5 0 . For a different p e r s p e c t i v e , cf. B. D .
S h a w , " T h e P a s s i o n of P e r p e t u a , " Past and Present n o . 139 (1993), 3-45,
especially p . 28, n . 63.
27
L. Robert, " U n e v i s i o n d e Perpe'tue m a r t y r e a C a r t h a g e e n 2 0 3 , " Comptes
rendus de I'Acad. des Inscr. et Belles-Lettres (1982), 228-76.
28
Mart. Perpet. 2.3. Cf. 14.1
29
Mart. Perpet. 10.15: hoc usque in pridie muneris egi; ipsius autem muneris actum, si
auis voluerit, scribat.

33
 Martyrdom and Rome

precise than the Latin, and in my opinion it serves as a

guarantee that Perpetua did indeed write in Greek. "I have
written these things up until the eve of the cjntamniai."30 This
stunning use of a word that we normally associate with
ambition, benefaction, and high civic achievement is used by
Perpetua to describe her own torture and execution. But the
Latin equivalent for (jntamnia is munus, and rightly so. In
Greek of this period <|)iXoTi|aia denotes precisely a public
spectacle offered by a civic magistrate.31 When munus is again
repeated in the Latin version, however, as Perpetua observes
that anyone who wishes can write of what is going to happen,
the Greek is markedly more vivid, "what is going to happen in
the amphitheater" (id ev ico d|j,(|H0£&Tpq) yevriaoneva). The use
of c|)i^OTi|!ia and the variant naming the amphitheater, when
the Latin has munus both times, provide powerful support for
the view that Perpetua wrote her account in Greek.
Whether Perpetua's words, in whatever language, allow us
to hear an authentic and distinctive woman's voice, as two
scholars have independently claimed in the last few years,32 is
much more doubtful. How would we tell? The fuller and
idiomatic Greek belongs to its time but certainly not to one
sex, and the Latin is even less distinctive. As for Saturus,
whose vision is also recorded in the same martyrdom, there is
no clear indication whether he wrote his account in Greek.33
On the other hand, it is likely once again to be an authentic
document both from the simplicity of its narration and the
social context within which the action of the dream takes
place.
Eyewitness narrations serve, in the most substantial of the
Acts of the martyrs, to supplement the documentary evidence
30
Mart. Perpet. 10.15: xaOxa eax; npo \ixac, T<OV <()IXOTI^I©V eypa\|/a. i d £v T ©
d(a<|)i08dTpcp yevr|a6(i8va 6 Getaov <Ti)yypa\|/dTa>.
31
O n (tn^OTinia, see t h e references i n Robert, Martyre, p . 102.
32
P a u l i n e Schmitt-Pantel (ed.), A History of Women in the West, vol. 1 ( C a m b r i d g e ,
Mass., 1992), p. 473; B. D. Shaw, "The Passion of Perpetua/'
33
But he did write it with his own hand: Mart. Perpet. 11.1.

34
 The written record

from the martyrs themselves or from the Roman bureaucracy.

The redactor of the martyrdom of Polycarp says explicitly that
the entire story was transcribed by a certain otherwise
unknown Gaius from a document of Irenaeus, with whom
Polycarp had lived.34 The redactor identifies himself as a man
by the name of Socrates who worked at Corinth, and the text
we possess records that a certain Pionios subsequently tran-
scribed the whole narrative all over again after seeing Poly-
carp in a vision.35 Presumably the original version of the
martyrdom ended with Socrates's revelation of his identity. In
any case, Irenaeus is identified as the eyewitness.
As we have observed in the martyrdom of Pionios a century
later, the eyewitness seems to take over just after the martyr's
own reference to the apostate who had tried to force "us."
The text changes noticeably in style and substance at this
point with the words, "Later the proconsul came to Smyrna.
Pionios was brought before him on the twelfth of March and
gave testimony with the minutes being taken down by a
secretary."36 The interrogation that follows may perhaps be
taken from the official record or have been put down by the
eyewitness, who subsequently recorded the actual death of
the martyr. The proconsul's questioning in the interrogation is
distinctive. This is the point at which, instead of asking, as in
Pionios's version of an earlier protocol, "To which church do
you belong?", the proconsul asks, "What is the cult or sect to
which you belong?" (Iloiav 0pr|aK8iav f\ ai'peaiv exei?;) Here
presumably we hear the language regularly used in interroga-
tions of this kind, altered in the earlier instance by the martyr
himself. The eyewitness of the death of Pionios not only
describes the martyr's immolation but introduces it with a
most unusual illustration of the martyr's joy. Just after Pionios
has been nailed down, the executioner says to him helpfully,
"Change your mind and the nails will be taken out." Where-

34 35
Mart. Polycarpi 22.2. Mart. Polycarpi 22.3. ^ Mart. Pionii 19.1

35
 Martyrdom and Rome

upon Pionios replies with good-humored composure, "I feel

that they are in to stay."37
The spectacular demise of Perpetua and others in the
amphitheater at Carthage is, as Dodds observed, related in a
grandiose style that suggests a highly educated author. The
original language in this case appears to be Latin, and, as we
have noted, many have reasonably detected in this text the
Latinity of Tertullian. Whether Tertullian or not, the author
knows how to compose an operatic finale. Yet the circumstan-
tial detail leaves little doubt that this is an account of one who
was there. Perpetua's protest at being asked to put on the garb
of a priestess of Ceres carries real conviction, and the acqui-
escence of the military tribune provokes the author to an
epigram worthy of the great Tertullian, if not actually by him:
"Injustice acknowledged justice" (agnovit iniustitia iustitiam).38
Again, at a later stage in the proceedings when the women to
be martyred were stripped naked and put in nets to be taken
into the arena, the horror of the crowd before this clearly
inappropriate humiliation is registered by the narrator: horruit
populus.39
In many ways, the third category of documentation in the
written record of early martyrdoms is that of the formal
protocol of interrogations conducted by Roman magistrates.
The account of the martyrdom of Pionios includes two refer-
ences to stenographers present at the hearings.40 The
sequence of questioning there and in several other Martyr
Acts - most strikingly the Acts of Justin Martyr and the Scilli-
tan martyrs - suggests a protocol of the Roman bureaucracy.
In most cases the Roman magistrate tries his best to dissuade
the Christian defendant from going to martyrdom and urges
a resolution of the crisis by his simply acknowledging the
divinity of the Roman emperor, swearing by his genius, sacri-
37 38 39
Mart. Pionii 21.3-4. Mart. Perpet. 18.6. Mart. Perpet. 20.2.
40
Mart. Pionii 9.1 (YP&<|)OVTOC; xoC voxapiou rcavxa); cf. 19.1 (yevojievcov i)7i:o(ivr|-
II&TCOV xa>v imoxexaynevcov).

36
 The written record

firing to him, and offering prayers. It is clear that the give-and-

take of question and answer follows a form that is well docu-
mented in the papyri of the Roman imperial period.
The interrogations and the protocols connected with them
are particularly important in marking the great differences
between Christian martyrdoms and those episodes of cour-
ageous resistance that were later categorized among the Jews
as qiddus ha-shem (sanctification of the name). The important
collection of studies, assembled by J. W. van Henten under the
title The Origin of Jewish Martyrology, emphasizes the complete
lack of interrogation procedures in Jewish literature on this
subject.41 When the Jews finally acquired the idea of martyr-
dom in late antiquity, the Roman state had by then become a
Christian enterprise. Governors no longer quizzed Christians
about their willingness to sacrifice to the emperor. The Jewish
martyrs resemble far more the post-Constantinian Christian
martyrs than any of those of the earlier period. This consti-
tutes another strong reason for rejecting a Jewish tradition as
the source of the concept of martyr, and at the same time it
shows the uniquely Roman character of the early inquisitions.
To return to the Martyr Acts, in 1966 Revel A. Coles
published his important study of "Reports of Proceedings in
Papyri/' based largely on secular documents but including
brief comparisons with the martyr literature.42 He was able to
isolate the distinctive elements of the protocols. There were
normally four main parts: introductory formulae concerning
the interrogation, the actual question-and-answer process, the
decision on the part of the magistrate, and a concluding
section. Many, if not most, of the early Martyr Acts include
interrogations preceded by a record of the presiding magis-
trate and the interrogator, and sometimes reference to a sten-
ographer. Thus we can assume that we have a relatively close
41
v a n H e n t e n , Die Entstehung.
42
Revel A. Coles, Reports of Proceedings in Papyri, P a p y r o l o g i c a Bruxellensia 4
(Brussels, 1966).

37
 Martyrdom and Rome

transcript of what actually took place. In one instance the

minutes of a hearing were actually read out. These are called
by the Latin term acta in Greek and are mentioned in the
martyrdom of Apollonius.43 The Acts of Cyprian open, some-
what uncharacteristically, with a reference to a document
transmitted to the proconsul from the Emperors Valerian and
Gallienus.44
Although the minutes of the proceedings are sometimes
called aKia in the papyri, the more conventional term is
U7ro|ivr||iaxia|ioi, an expression which also finds a place in the
Martyr Acts at one point, in the form D7io(avf|(iaTa: i)7ro|ivf||iaTa
are said explicitly to be the basis of the account of the martyr-
doms of Agape, Eirene, and Chione at Salonike.45 There is also
an interesting instance of the Latin word for a stenographer,
voi&pioc;, appearing in the Martyrdom of Pionios in Greek.46
The word was simply taken over from Latin, notarius, just as it
is in some of the Greek papyri.
The written record for the early martyrdoms can thus be
seen in these many areas to incorporate a substantial amount
of authentic material that places the martyrdoms securely in
the context of the Roman empire. These texts, that responded
to the needs of readers in much the same way as fiction did,
are precious repositories of authentic historical material. As
both martyrology and hagiography developed in the cen-
turies after Constantine, the historical content of such narra-
tives shrank perceptibly, although it never disappeared alto-
gether, and the more surprising revelations of early
Christianity were in some cases altered, in others eliminated.
In the early Greek recension of the martyrdom of Carpus, a
woman standing by the burning pile of wood was so en-
raptured by the spectacle of Carpus's demise that she took off
43
Mart. Apollonii 11: dvayvG)a0f|xco xd dicta ' A T I O M A ** Mart. Cypr. 1.1.
45
Mart. Agap. et al. 2.3: id 8e rcpaxGevxa Tie pi aoxcov wiojivfmaxa £axiv xd

46
See n. 40 above.

38
 The written record

her clothes and threw herself on the pyre and was consumed
by the flames. But in the later Latin recension she is subjected
to an interrogation by the proconsul and formally sentenced
to death.47 Such rewriting of the story clearly reflects the later
Christian repudiation of voluntary martyrs.
We have already seen that the vivid and detailed accounts
of Christian apostates in the a6yypa|i|ia of Pionios were
largely excised from the text of the Martyrdom in the Armen-
ian, Slavonic, and Latin translations of the Byzantine and
early Renaissance periods. Similarly the parallel drawn
between Christ and Socrates in the speeches of both Pionios
and Apollonius, incorporated in the Martyr Acts of both these
figures, reflects a generous parallelism between saintly pagans
(Socrates, in particular) and saintly Christians, a parallelism
that the Church subsequently repudiated.48 It was a paral-
lelism in which Tertullian revelled, a parallelism that made a
good classical education so meaningful for an early Christian.
But Augustine deplored all this, and Socrates was transformed
from a proto-saint into a kind of polytheist Jesus, a hero of
Julian the Apostate.
The pre-Constantinian Martyr Acts are precious remnants
of a lost world. They contain authoritative documentary
material, and they allow us - indeed compel us - to search for
the roots of martyrdom in the second and third centuries of
the Roman empire. Above all, they shed a bright light on the
dark space between the Gospels and hagiography.

47
Mart. Carpi (Greek) 44, (Latin) 6.1-4.
48
See the first chapter above, with n. 25.

39
 Ill
The civic role of martyrs

T he early martyrdoms in the period down to Constantine

are a conspicuously urban affair. They do not occur in the
mountainous regions of Greece, or in the remote parts of
central Anatolia, or in the near eastern steppe, or on the
fringes of the Sahara in North Africa. For the most part, they
take place in the greatest cities of the Roman world, predom-
inantly in the eastern part of it. Apart from Justin at Rome and
the group of martyrs at Lyon in France, the early martyrdoms
provide a check-list of the most prosperous and important
cities of the eastern Roman empire: Pergamum, Smyrna,
Caesarea by the Sea, Carthage, Alexandria. In Greece, it is
Thessalonica that has its martyrs, not Athens, and this is a
proper reflection of the relative importance of the two places
at that time. It was only in the period just before Constantine
that there was a conspicuous deviation from this pattern of
urban martyrdoms.1
The spread of Christianity into the rank and file of the
Roman army (and perhaps also the increasing importance of
soldier-emperors in the third century) led to the first group of

1
For the locations of the various pre-Constantinian martyrdoms, see the
collected Ada in R. Knopf, G. Kruger, T. Ruhbach, Ausgewahlte Martyrerakten
(Tubingen, 1965), or in H. Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford, 1972)
- an unreliable work, which a new edition prepared by A. Birley will soon
replace. For the emergence of martyrdom as a spiritual ideal in rural Egypt in
the later third century, as shown in the Apocalypse of Elijah, see David
Frankfurter, "The Cult of Martyrs in Egypt before Constantine/7 Vigiliae Chris-
tianae 48 (1994), 25-47.
 Martyrdom and Rome

soldier-martyrs, as reflected in the martyrdom at Durostorum

on the Danube. To the Diocletianic age, on the eve of the
Christian empire, martyrological literature was to assign
many more soldier-martyrs, who would bring to reality the
traditional metaphor of fighting in the cause of Christ. But for
more than a century martyrdom had been an essentially
urban manifestation of Christian zeal.
From the Christian point of view, martyrdom in a city
provided the greatest possible visibility for the cause of the
nascent Church, and it simultaneously exposed the Roman
administrative machinery to the greatest possible embarrass-
ment. Obviously a martyrdom could not occur unless a
Roman magistrate chose to impose a death penalty on a
confessing Christian. This means that the apparatus of the
Roman court procedure in the provinces, the so-called cognitio
procedure, was a prerequisite for the infliction of the death
penalty.2 Although provincial governors regularly toured
their provinces in order to hold assizes in the principal rural
settlements and facilitate the administration of justice across
the region, the martyrs regularly showed up in the big cities. It
was hardly in the interest of advancing the case for Chris-
tianity to suffer martyrdom in a place where few could
witness it. The involvement of large crowds or even, as in the
case of Pionios, a substantial part of the whole local popu-
lation, was an important part of city life. Martyrs contributed
to the spectacles of blood sport in the amphitheater - con-
frontations with wild beasts and with gladiators, to say
nothing of spectacular immolations.3 They served to unite
non-Christian citizens in the expression of prejudice, most

2
See G. E. M. de Ste Croix, "Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?/' Past
and Present no. 26 (1963), 6-38. especially pp. 11-13 on cognitio extra ordinem.
3
D. Potter, "Martyrdom and Spectacle/7 in Theater and Society in the Classical
World, ed. R. Scodel (Ann Arbor, 1993), pp. 53-88.

42
 The civic role of martyrs

conspicuously in the combined hostility of Jews and poly-

theists toward the Christians.4
The Acts of Cyprian, recording the martyrdom of the North
African bishop in the third century, provide a good illustra-
tion of the centrality of the urban setting in the history of early
martyrs. At Carthage the proconsul informed Cyprian of a
document he had recently received from the Emperors Valeri-
an and Gallienus, instructing all those who did not adhere to
Roman religious beliefs at least to acknowledge Roman cere-
monial rites. Cyprian of course refused to oblige, and the
proconsul accordingly proposed that he be exiled to a town in
the country well outside of Carthage. This was a clever and
humane device, evidently designed to avoid the public drama
of a trial and the sensational spectacle of an execution. In
accepting the proconsul's proposal, Cyprian effectively
removed himself from martyrdom at that time. But the succes-
sor to that governor was more aggressive in his determination
to deal with the Christians and brought Cyprian back into
Carthage. Since it had already been revealed to the bishop
that he was to be martyred, he understood that this restor-
ation to the capital city meant the first step in procedures that
would end in his martyrdom. After the due process of interro-
gation before the new proconsul, Cyprian was condemned
and subsequently beheaded.
According to the Acts of Cyprian, a crowd from the bishop's
flock accompanied him to his death and cried out to be
executed along with him.5 Although voluntary martyrdom
was something that Cyprian himself had explicitly con-
demned, enthusiasm for it was clearly far from spent. The
presence of this crowd is reminiscent of similar scenes
throughout the early Martyr Acts and serves to emphasize the
4
Cf. M. Simon, Verus Israel: e'tude sur les relations entre Chretiens et Juifs dans
VEmpire romain (Paris, 1948; with supplement 1964).
5
Ada Cypriani 5.1: post eius sententiam populus fratrum dicebat: et nos cum eo
decollemur.
 Martyrdom and Rome

important role of the exemplary martyrs as teachers and

leaders of the Christian communities in the Roman provinces.
Men like Cyprian and Pionios in the third century and Poly-
carp in the second were the Christian equivalent of the
famous teachers and sophists who enlivened and adorned the
intellectual and social life of those two centuries. The sophists,
who had their own enthusiastic supporters, zealous in ways
not unlike that of the followers of Christ, were chronicled by
the third-century writer Philostratus and have been much
studied in the last thirty years.6 The parallel between them
and many of the more flamboyant leaders of the Christians in
this period was well drawn by Timothy Barnes at the end of
his book on Tertullian in a chapter entitled "The Christian
Sophist/'7 The age of the martyrs and the age of the sophists is
largely one and the same. The culture from which both groups
came and upon which both depended for their power of
communication was likewise the same. It was a Graeco-
Roman culture in which pagans and Christians alike could
share.
During the interrogation of Polycarp, after the herald pro-
claimed that the defendant had acknowledged that he was a
Christian, the entire crowd of pagans and Jews who lived in
Smyrna shouted out loud, "This is the teacher of Asia, the
father of the Christians, the destroyer of our gods."8 The
words "teacher" (8t5daKaA,O(;) and "father" (7caxf|p) were pre-
cisely the words that were used of the great sophists. These
terms suggest not only the broad influence of a leader such as
Polycarp but the passionate devotion that was felt for him.
The term "father" for a particularly respected teacher was
conspicuous in the age of the great sophists. (It has sometimes
even led, embarrassingly, to confusion in the construction of
genealogical tables.) Interpreting a community of teacher and
6
G. W. Bowersock, Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1969); G. Ander-
son, The Second Sophistic (London, 1993).
7 8
T. D. Barnes, Tertullian (Oxford, 1971), pp. 211-32. Mart. Polycarpi 12.2.

44
 The civic role of martyrs

disciples as a kind of spiritual family was characteristic of the

ancient philosophical and rhetorical schools, for which sub-
sequent generations constituted what was known as the
5ia5o%f| or "succession."9 The adaptation of this language by
the Christian Church was a reflection of that early phase of
Christianity, which Paul was the first to undermine, in which
spiritual bonds took precedence over family ties.10 Jesus's
doctrine that anyone who does the will of God, "the same is
my brother, and my sister, and my mother" (Mark 3.35), fit
easily into the pattern of allegiances created by leading poly-
theist philosophers and sophists. Finally, of course, it led to
the traditional use of "father," "sister," "brother," "son," and
"daughter" in clerical contexts. Neither the polytheists nor
the Christians, however, used more remote kinship termin-
ology for their spiritual relationship.
Christians regarded themselves as fellow students of their
master, and ultimately as all fellow students together of the
ultimate master, Jesus Christ. The word au|i|iaOr|Tai, "fellow
learners," is applied to the followers of Polycarp in the narra-
tive of his martyrdom.11 Even at the end of his life Polycarp's
work as a teacher is emphasized again in a way that puts his
paedagogic role on an equal level with his role as a martyr: ou
liovov 5i5daKa>-0(; yevoiaevoq £7ri<yr||ioc; dMd icai [xapxvq
e^oxoq: "he was not only an outstanding teacher but also an
eminent martyr."12 The au|i|ia0r|Tai who followed him all
considered themselves brothers - brothers in Christ to be sure,
but brothers in that narrower community of discipleship.
Similar language is used in the account of the interrogation
of the martyr Papylus at Pergamum. The proconsul asked,
"Do you have any children?" and Papylus replied, "Yes,
many, by God's grace" (Teicva zxsxc,', - Kai noXXa Sid xov
9
Cf. V. Nutton, "Herodes and Gordian," Latomus 29 (1970), 725, on the alleged
descent of Gordian from Herodes as opposed to a paedagogical succession.
10
See now E. Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York, 1988), pp. 15-20.
11 12
Mart. Polycarpi 17.3. Mart. Polycarpi 19.1.

45
 Martyrdom and Rome

Geov). It was left to one person in the attendant crowd, evi-

dently someone who was Christian, to provide an explanation
to the governor: "He means he has children by virtue of the
faith which the Christians repose in him" (icaid xr\v TUCTTIV
auxou TC5V Xpianavcav ^eyei Teicva e^eiv). That interpretation
led to an explosive reaction from the proconsul, who
demanded to know why Papylus lied in saying that he had
children. To this, in turn, Papylus declared, "May I inform you
that I am not lying but telling the truth. I have children in
every province and city Kaxct Geov [in the Lord]."13 The details
of this interrogation provide a vivid commentary on the
terminology found in the Acts of Polycarp.
An important setting for the final days of a martyr's teach-
ing was the local prison, in which the martyr was confined
pending interrogation and execution. There was usually a
captive audience of other Christians as well as police officers
and prison guards in the employ of the city. But others came
voluntarily, including pagans who wanted to dispute with the
master teacher. The scene is vividly described in the case of
the incarceration of Pionios and his followers: "Nevertheless
in the prison many of the pagans [noXXoi TCOV eGvcav] came,
wanting to persuade [the Christians], and yet upon hearing
them they were amazed at their replies."14
But it was in the agora under the open sky, in the central
part of the city, that a martyr could make his most powerful
impact. The role of the designated martyr as teacher is super-
bly illustrated in the two great speeches of Pionios that are
preserved in the account of his martyrdom. Since all material
in this text down to the final interrogation appears to have
been derived from the written record prepared in prison by
Pionios himself,15 we can have reasonable confidence that the
two speeches represent essentially what Pionios said to the
13 14
Ada Carpi et al. 27-32. Mart. Pionii 12.1.
15
See the previous chapter on "the written record/7 The two speeches come in 4
and 12-14 °ft n e Mart. Pionii.

46
 The civic role of martyrs

crowds. Their idiomatic language and subtle arguments imply

as much. With their eloquence, erudition, and complex evo-
cation of shared culture, these speeches can easily stand com-
parison with the work of any great sophist of the age, Aelius
Aristides, Polemo, and Herodes Atticus among the foremost.
The speeches were delivered in the agora of Smyrna, and in
the proximity of the temple of the two Nemesis goddesses
(the Nemeseis), at which Pionios was enjoined to sacrifice to
the emperor.
The martyrs' contribution to civic life and civic pride was
not unlike that of the sophists in holding a mirror up to the
inhabitants of the great cities. Pionios, addressing the poly-
theists of Smyrna, speaks to their pride in claiming Smyrna as
the birthplace of Homer. He likewise speaks to their pride,
well documented in inscriptions and on coins, in the beauty of
the city. He invokes the text of Homer himself, whom he
names as their teacher (TG> 5t5acncdtap ujicov eO|af|p(p), that it is
not right to gloat over those who die.16
With similar aptness Pionios also addresses the Jews of
Smyrna, who constituted an important community in that city
and perhaps a particularly large part of the crowd that was
listening to him. Already in the early second century, Ignatius,
writing in Smyrna, commented several times on the strained
relations between Jews and Christians.17 As we saw in the
previous chapter, Pionios quotes lavishly from the Old Testa-
ment, citing pertinent examples from the stories of Moses and
of Solomon. He invokes Beelphagor, Sodom and Gomorrah,
and the golden calf, and he makes reference to the Books of
Judges, Kings, and Exodus. In a particularly brilliant expo-
sition of truly sophistic subtlety, Pionios recounts the famous
16
For these allusions, see Mart. Pionii 4.2-4, with the commentary by L. Robert,
Le martyre de Pionios, ed. G. W. Bowersock and C. P. Jones (Dumbarton Oaks,
1994)-
17
Ignatius, Epist. ad Smyrn. 4-5, especially 4.1: npofyvXaaGG) 5e t>\idq and T<BV
0r|picov xd)v dv0pco7ro|K)p<t>cov. Cf. Epist ad Magnes. 10.3: axonov £<xnv, 5Ir|ao0v
Xpiaiov A,aA,eiv Kai ioi)5ai£eiv.

47
 Martyrdom and Rome

story of the witch of Endor and the feat of necromancy by

which Samuel was brought back from the dead. This story of
necromancy, says Pionios, was something that he had heard
discussed by Jews since he was a child.18 This in itself is a
remarkable testimony to the interaction of Jews and Chris-
tians in third-century Asia and to the significance of the
Jewish population that knew Pionios. In a sense, in his two
final speeches, Pionios stands as a teacher of the Jews and of
the polytheists as much as a teacher of the Christians. His
intellectual role in the city is not unlike that of Aelius
Aristides.
The fame of the martyrs is manifest from the crowds that
attended them. The Martyr Acts abound in references to the
uproar of crowds. The Roman governors must have given
careful thought to the time at which the formal interrogations
as well as the executions would take place. There are simply
too many examples of martyrdoms on major holidays to be
accidental. The martyrdoms of both Polycarp and Pionios are
ascribed to the Great Sabbath (the Msya Edppaiov), a festival
still not conclusively identified but obviously one on which
pagans and Jews alike were free to stay away from work.19
They could listen to the proceedings all day and watch the
spectacle unfold. The martyrdom of Perpetua was scheduled
on no less an occasion than the birthday of the Emperor
Geta.20
Sanguinary entertainments on the emperor's birthday had
a long history. Well before there were any Christian martyrs,
the Jews had been subjected to similar persecution in Alex-
andria. The Jewish philosopher Philo had protested vigor-
ously.

18 19
Mart. Pionii 14.1. See Robert, Martyrx, p. 50.
20
Ada Perpet. 7.9 (natale tune Getae Caesaris) and 16.3. Cf. T. D. Barnes, "Pre-
Decian Ada Martyrum," journal of Theological Studies 19 (1968), 509-31, par-
ticularly pp. 522-3.

48
 The civic role of martyrs

For rulers who administer a state upon sound principles are

accustomed not to punish condemned persons until these glorious
birthdays and festivals of the glorious Augusti have passed. But
Flaccus on the occasion of these very festivities was committing
outrage and inflicting penalty upon men who were guiltless of
any crime ... I know of instances before now of persons who had
been impaled when a holiday of this kind was at hand ... Flaccus
ordered, not persons who had died upon crosses to be taken
down, but living persons to be impaled, to whom the season
offered not entire remission, but amnesty ... The spectacle was
divided into acts, the first shows lasting from dawn until the third
or fourth hour were these: Jews being scourged, hanged, turned
on the wheel, maltreated, led away through the midst of the
orchestra the way to death, while the shows that followed this
splendid exhibition were performances of dancers, mimes, flute-
players, and all the other favorites of theatrical contests.21

The crowd could be aggressive and cruel, but it could also

show compassion. The Martyr Acts reflect with apparent pre-
cision the shifting moods of the city populace and the interest-
ing counterpoint of the martyr's interaction with it. Polycarp
was no friend of the Smyrnaeans, who made a great noise
(06pu(3o(; fjv [isyaq) when he was brought into the amphi-
theater.22 He looked at them and shook his fist. Then he
groaned, gazed heavenwards, and cried out, "Away with the
godless ones!" The governor on the scene was therefore
exceedingly cunning when he answered Polycarp's offer to
give him a private lecture on Christianity. "Persuade the
people," he said. To this injunction Polycarp shot back, "I
consider you worthy of a speech ..., but I do not think that
they deserve to have an accounting from me."23
By contrast Pionios won a measure of sympathy from the
spectators in the agora at Smyrna. "You know," said Pionios
to the crowd, "what it is to suffer famine and death and other
21
Philo, in Flacc. 81-5 (from t h e t r a n s l a t i o n b y H . Box).
22
Mart. Poly carpi 9.1.
23
Mart. Polycarpi 10.2.

49
 Martyrdom and Rome

calamities." And someone said in reply, "You went hungry

with us."24 Pionios had shared in their famine; he was part of
their city. In a similar tone the martyr Papylus declared
proudly to the proconsul at Pergamum that he was a citizen
(noXuriq) of the city of Thyatira.25
If the fame of the martyrs in life was not unlike that of the
sophists, in the manner of their dying their fame was far closer
to that of the great athletes and gladiators. It is not only that
the dying martyrs are constantly compared in the literature to
athletes, although we should not lose sight of the fact that
they are.26 In one notable case, the martyr Maturus at Lyon
actually was an athlete.27 More important is the fact that the
killing of the martyrs often took the form of spectacle in the
city amphitheater. Some were burned there, some were given
to the beasts for bloody dismemberment, and some were
nailed up to hang.
Spectacle was an important element in martyrdom in the
early Church. By trying to set an example, the Roman magis-
trates provided an entertainment. No early martyr was taken
aside discreetly and executed out of sight, just as no interroga-
tions were conducted in small towns. In a recent important
paper, David Potter has examined the phenomenon of
martyrdom from the sociological perspective of spectacle, and
he has brought together the many examples of public enter-
tainment in which martyrs were the principal players.28 But
what needs to be stressed here is that the martyrdom spec-
tacles did not import something altogether new in the urban
life of those spectacles in the amphitheater that were well
established and much appreciated. In other words, such spec-
tacles fit within a pre-existing social order that shaped them,
just as the role of martyr as teacher and sophist similarly fits

24 25
Mart. Pionii 10.7-8. Ada Carpi et al. 26-7.
26
See Robert, Martyre, p p . 56 and 120.
27
Mflrt. Lugdun. 17. 28 See Potter, "Martyrdom and Spectacle/'
 The civic role of martyrs

within a pre-existing social order that enabled philosophy and

rhetoric to have so powerful an influence.
The vision of Perpetua in which she anticipates her own
martyrdom in the amphitheater is, as Louis Robert has so
conclusively shown, built up entirely from elements of the
traditional presentation of munera (<|>iA,OTiinai) in Carthage.29
Perpetua sees herself in the amphitheater with a man of
enormous height, whose head rises above the very top of the
amphitheater itself, and whose clothes show purple garments
not only falling from his two shoulders but also spread over
his chest. This huge figure has shoes embroidered in gold and
silver, and he carries a wand like the judge at an athletic
competition or a display of gladiators.30 The figure is thus
identifiably clad in the attire of an dycovoOeTriq, the person
who gives the spectacles (the munera). He wears the appro-
priate garb of that generous office. In Perpetua's case, she sees
this oversized person as presenting her in the amphitheater
for her own death in the cause of Christianity. Robert has
recognized that the dya>vo6eTr|<; in Perpetua's dream must be
understood to be none other than Christ himself - Christ the
giver of competitions, Christ the provider of spectacles that
serve the will of God.31 Tertullian had written in his address to
prospective martyrs (martyres designati), "You are going to
submit to a good dyobv [bonum agonem subituri estis] in which
the living God is the agonothete, the £i)<xcdpxr|<; is the Holy
Spirit ..., and the president of the dyobv is Christ." 32 The
language - dyo)vo08Tr|<;, ^ixxrdpxric;, and president or eni-
axdTT|<; - is the language of the Greek dycoveq. Here the
relationship of God and Christ is distributed among these
three parts.
29
L. Robert, " U n e v i s i o n d e Perpe'tue martyre a Carthage e n 2 0 3 / ' Comptes
rendus de VAcad. des Inscr. et Belles-Lettres (1982), 228-76.
30 31
Mart. Perpet. 10.8. Robert, " U n e v i s i o n / ' p p . 257-66.
32
Tertull., ad mart. 3: bonum agonem subituri estis in quo agonothetes Deus vivus est,
xystarches Spiritus sanctus ... itaque epistates vester Christus Iesus. See Robert,
"Une vision/' p. 265.

51
 Martyrdom and Rome

All this means that the role of the martyrs in dying is

conceived as a kind of public entertainment offered by God to
the communities where it takes place as some kind of far more
edifying transmutation of the traditional games. It also means
that the early martyrs see God or Christ himself as the agent of
their martyrdom, rather than the various governors that
decree their deaths. This is, in other words, a performance
orchestrated by God. It must have been a comforting thought.
The Roman magistrates have been assigned their roles so that
the performance could take place, and so that by this means
the martyrs could bear their witness.
The whole drama unfolded in the conspicuous places of a
city. The martyr was moved from prison to tribunal, usually in
the agora and close by the temple at which sacrifice to the
emperor would be enjoined. The final scene was normally set
in the amphitheater, and any exception strikingly confirms
the rule. The legate (and praeses, or governor) of Numidia had
removed Marianus and Jacobus from Cirta to the military
camp at Lambaesis, described ironically in the surviving acta
as the only hostelry provided by the pagans for the just {sola
apud gentiles hospitia iustorum).33 The martyrs were led back for
their glorious end, not, to be sure, in an amphitheater but in
the river valley that surrounded the plateau of Cirta on the
north and northeast.34 Yet the deep valley itself with its high
banks served as an appropriate setting (spectaculo erat excelsa
utrimque aggeris altitudo). In the presence of the river the
martyrdom could become literally, as it often was metaphoric-
ally, a second baptism.35 The martyrs were arranged in rows
and executed, theatrically and, to judge by the acta, in public
view.
We have observed earlier that the first Martyr Acts some-
times even allow us to glimpse the tensions and backsliding of
33 M
Acta Mar. et Iacob. 9.5. Acta Mar. et Iacob. 9-10.
35
Ibid.: nee deerat utriusque sacramenti genus, cum et baptizarentur suo sanguine et
lavarentur influmine.

52
 The civic role of martyrs

weaker Christian brethren among all the ceremonial magni-

ficence and public pressure of the citizenry. Although redac-
tors and copyists must have excised many details of this kind,
the Greek version (and only the Greek version) of the martyr-
dom of Pionios documents the high emotion and human
frailty that accompanied the interrogation of martyrs at
Smyrna.
A certain Euctemon, who was a leader of the Christian
community in the city, finally yielded to the authorities and
sacrificed at the altar of the Nemeseis goddesses beside the
agora. Pionios was thrust in front of him just as he was
standing worshipfully at the altar. According to the narrative,
which was probably (as we have argued) composed by
Pionios himself, Euctemon had brought a small lamb to the
temple, had it roasted, and then intended to take most of it
back home once a piece had been offered in sacrifice. "He had
become ridiculous," says the narrative, "because of his false
oath and swearing by the emperor's fortune and the
Nemeseis goddesses."36 This is the real world of martyrs in the
second century.
The most sordid contribution of the martyrs to the civic life
of eastern Roman cities was undoubtedly the enforced prosti-
tution of females. As Sabina, the consort of Pionios, was told at
Smyrna when she surprised her interrogators by laughing in
the eternal joy of Christ, "women who do not sacrifice are put
into a brothel."37 This was the fate of Irene, whom the prefect
at Thessalonica sentenced to be exposed naked in the local
whorehouse.38 But we are told that no man dared to approach
her or even to revile her. We may recall that the shock of the
spectators at Carthage upon seeing the naked bodies of some
of Perpetua's fellow-martyrs led the authorities to clothe
those young women.39 Similarly the meager evidence for
36 37
Mart. Pionii 18.14. Mart. Pionii 7.6. Cf. Robert, Martyre, p p . 68-9.
38
Ada Agap. et al. 5.8.
39
Ada Perpet. 20.2-3.

53
 Martyrdom and Rome

punishment by prostitution suggests that the civic interest in

such exploitation of female martyrs may have been less than
Roman officials anticipated. Revulsion on the part of specta-
tors and clients may have even worked to the Christians'
advantage in promoting their cause. So the civic setting could
obviously be more than simple stage for the enactment of
martyrdom.
Martyrdom was thus solidly anchored in the civic life of the
Graeco-Roman world of the Roman empire. It ran its course in
the great urban spaces of the agora and the amphitheater, the
principal settings for public discourse and for public spectacle.
It depended upon the urban rituals of the imperial cult and
the interrogation protocols of local and provincial magistrates.
The prisons and brothels of the cities gave further opportuni-
ties for the display of a martyr's faith.
The urban character of martyrdom meant that Christians
who chose not to be martyred in a persecution had the option
of leaving their city. They could invoke Matthew 10.23,
"When they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another."
Tertullian wrestled throughout his career with the impli-
cations of this command and addressed them at length in his
De Fuga in persecutione. He condemned flight, as we should
expect of a man with a Montanist background. Clement of
Alexandria, on the other hand, did not, and indeed he acted
on his principle. The debate over flight is striking in its funda-
mental assumption that escape - as opposed to apostasy -
might be a possible alternative for a Christian. And that escape
would invariably be from a city.
Christians understandably drew their inspiration from the
death of Jesus Christ himself as well as from some early
internecine struggles with heretical Christians and conflicts
with the traditional Jews of Palestine. But from the point at
which martyrdom emerges in the historical record as a recog-
nizable Christian institution, it has both its sophistic and
agonistic components, solidly placed in Graeco-Roman urban

54
 The civic role of martyrs

space. It may be suggested that without these components

martyrdom as Christians understood it in the history of their
early Church simply could not have existed. Martyrdom
served as a catalyst of the intellectual and social rituals of the
city by holding a mirror to the traditional functions of the
agora and the amphitheater as well as to the urban environ-
ment to which they belonged - prison, temple, and brothel.
Furthermore, crowds were an essential part of the martyr-
doms, and these could only be mustered in sufficient numbers
in the big cities.
Later, when the first soldier-martyrs appear, the military
context provided an appropriate analogue to the civic one.
Once again, what took place was anchored in a social and
ceremonial context that involved a reworking of the tradi-
tional institutional forms. These were the cognitio procedure of
trial and the condemnation to death as an athlete of God. The
army provided the necessary community (in place of an urban
citizenry), and the army's discipline the necessary ritual
organization (in place of a city's cults). Early martyrdom abso-
lutely presupposed self-sacrifice within some kind of a com-
munity.
In addition, although there would have been no martyrdom
without persecution, the dream of Perpetua in which God
himself appears as an actual producer or manager of the
games in which the martyrs died symbolizes a belief evidently
held by many, perhaps even most Christians, namely that the
ultimate initiative for what happened in these bloody celebra-
tions came from God himself. And, if this is not consonant
with the theology of martyrdom as expounded by Clement in
the fourth book of his Stromateis, an important text to which
we shall return in the next chapter, it is entirely consistent
with the view of Tertullian in his celebrated address known as
the Sconpiace, where he declares explicitly that God contrived
to make martyrdom possible precisely by his prohibition of
idolatry. If he had not forbidden Christians to commit idol-

55
 Martyrdom and Rome

atry, there would have been no martyrdoms at all (aliter enim

martyria non evenerint). It was Tertullian's understanding that
God fully intended the executions to provide the sanguinary
witness of His martyrs. God's will made a locus martyriis, as
Tertullian explained it, from the injunctions against idolatry
(ex praeceptis prohibitae semper . . . idololatriae).40
The problem here is that God's will could actually have
been subverted, had the Romans chosen to allow the Chris-
tians not to practice idolatry, just as, indeed, they allowed the
Jews. But it was precisely the Christians' vigorous participa-
tion in the civic life and intellectual traditions of the Graeco-
Roman world that grounded their martyrdoms in the life of
their great cities. The Jews, by contrast, had conspicuously
chosen a different path by remaining altogether separate in
their conduct of life, except, of course, on those public occa-
sions when the Christian martyrs united them with the poly-
theists in giving expression to a common hostility. But we find
no Jewish rabbis teaching the people of Smyrna or Pergamum
or Carthage, as Polycarp, Papylus, and Cyprian did.
It may be said that the form of the early martyrdoms was
conditioned and nurtured by the traditional pagan institu-
tions of Graeco-Roman urban life, and that it was inconceiv-
able without it. That, it may be suggested, is why Christian
martyrdom as we know it arose first in Asia Minor and not in
the part of Palestine where Christianity was born. Early Chris-
tian sacrifice through martyrdom was very different from the
sacrifice and bloodless witnessing (or confession) of late anti-
quity: anchorites in the desert, pillar saints in their aerial
isolation, holy men in remote and less remote places, ascetics
of all kinds. These were displays of piety that were better
suited to a Christian empire. The first martyrs, by contrast,
achieved their renown in a polytheist world. Their witnessing

40
TertulL, Scorp. 4.

56
 The civic role of martyrs

presupposed that they espoused a religio illicita that was

subject to the peculiar dynamics of persecution. Thus the
Lives of the Saints differed inevitably from the Acts of the
Martyrs. The urban stage was no longer necessary.

57
 IV
Martyrdom and suicide

A mong the most memorable scenes in the history of

I l R o m a n persecution of the early Church is that crowd
of zealous Christians pleading with Arrius Antoninus, a pro-
consul of Asia in the second century, to put them to death as
martyrs.1 His bemused and anguished response directed these
eager souls to the nearest available ropes and cliffs. Similar
enthusiasm for martyrdom was no less apparent among some
who, when condemned to die, betrayed impatience in waiting
for their ultimate dissolution. In the narrative of the Martyr-
dom of Polycarp, we hear of the most noble Germanicus, who,
when condemned to fight with wild beasts, rebuked the
emperor who tried to dissuade him from self-destruction by
dragging an animal directly on top of himself.2 In this way,
says the writer, the noble Germanicus chose to be liberated all
the more quickly from an unjust and lawless life. In an early
version of the Martyrdom ofAgathonike, the martyr takes off her
clothes and throws herself voluntarily upon the pyre.3
Such enthusiasm for martyrdom is mirrored in the frequent
reports of radiant joy, smiles, and even laughter among the
Christians on their way to a martyr's death. During the inter-
rogation of Pionios, his companion Sabina smiled when
Pionios said that it was far worse to burn after death than to be
burned alive. The vecoicopoc; (temple warden) was astonished
by his reaction and asked incredulously, "You are laughing?"
1 2
See the beginning of chapter i above. Mart. Polycarpi 3.1.
3
Mart. Carpi et al. 44 (Agathonike).

59
 Martyrdom and Rome

Whereupon she replied confidently, "If God so wills, yes. We

are Christians, and those who believe in Christ will laugh
unhesitatingly in everlasting joy."4 Pionios himself, who was
normally of a conspicuously pale complexion, turned posi-
tively ruddy with joy as he approached his own martyrdom.5
When Pamphylus was nailed to a stake, he was seen to look
happy and smiling, and in response to a question he
answered, "I saw the glory of my God, and I rejoiced that I
was free."6 The Carthaginian martyr Perpetua declared, in her
account of her condemnation, that, when she and her com-
panions were sentenced to death, they returned to the prison
in high spirits: in the Latin text, hilares descendimus ad carcerem.7
Her good cheer continued as she went to her death: "Per-
petua went with a shining countenance and calm step."8
Eagerness for martyrdom - what is described in the Acts of
the Martyrs of Lyon as xfjc; (aapiupiaq sniQ\)\iia9 - not only
maintained the martyrs in good spirits. It could make them
laugh, to the great discomfort of governors. The martyrs could
even be moved to make jokes. Prudentius, in his lyric verses
on the crowns of martyrdom, tells the famous story of Law-
rence, who addressed his judge from the grill on which he
was being roasted: "This part of my body has been burned
long enough," he announced. "Turn it round, and try what
your hot god of fire has done." When the prefect then has the
martyr turned over, he is reported to have said, "It is done
[coctum est]. Eat it up and try whether it is better raw or
roasted."10 Prudentius acknowledges that these words were
spoken in jest (ludibundus). But after they were uttered Law-
rence looked up to heaven and reverently prayed.
The desire for death on the part of martyrs and would-be

4
Mart. Pionii 7.5.
5
Mart. Pionii 10.2: n&q dei %Xa>pdq a>v vuv rcoppdv sxei TO TcpoacoTcov.
6 7 8
Mart. Carpi et al. 4.3. Mart. Perpet. 6.6. Mart. Perpet. 18.1-2.
9
Mart. Lugdun. 29.
10
Prudent., Peristeph. 11.401-8.

60
 Martyrdom and suicide

martyrs was attentively observed by the pagans and must

have been a constant source of wonder to them. Even the
Christians at Rome might have been surprised in the time of
Trajan to receive Ignatius's impassioned plea to them not to
block his death among the wild animals.11 (He obviously
thought that his co-religionists could - and would - have
interceded on his behalf.) The second-century satirist Lucian
well reflects the situation in his account of the Christian phase
of the flamboyant charlatan Peregrinus. Lucian tells us that as
a Christian Peregrinus felt a great longing to die; and, in what
is almost a parody of a scene from a Martyr Act, the satirist
describes the imprisonment of Peregrinus, the visitations to
the would-be martyr from the faithful, and the eagerness with
which many volunteered to go to their death along with
him.12 On the other hand, the governor of Syria, who was
presiding over this case, realized that the most effective
penalty he could impose on such a person was simply to
release him. And so, cannily, he set Peregrinus free precisely
because he wanted to die.13 This is Lucian's pungent and
possibly historical version of the old joke that has the maso-
chist say to the sadist, "Hit me," and the sadist replying, "No."
All these scenes suggest that for many, if not most, martyrs
and would-be martyrs, their enthusiasm for death comes very
close to a desire to commit suicide - a suicide to be arranged
by an external agent but with the clear complicity of the
victim. The last moments of Perpetua in the amphitheater at
Carthage, as described by the Latin narrator, illustrate this
well: "She took the trembling hand of the gladiator and
guided it to her throat. Perhaps so great a woman could not
have been killed ... if she herself had not wanted it."14 Per-
11
Ignatius, Epist. ad Rom. 4.1:rcapaicaA,©ona;, \ir\ euvoia dicaipoc; yevT|a0e |ioi.
d<|>£T8 \is Gripicov elvai Popdv . . .
12
Lucian, Peregr. 12-13. Th e great charlatan was even hailed as a "new Socrates/'
13
Lucian, Peregr. 14.
14
Mart. Perpet. 21.9-10, concluding: fortasse tanta fetnina non aliter non potuisset
occidi, quae ab immundo spiritu timebatur, nisi ipsa voluisset.

6l
 Martyrdom and Rome

petua, although not strictly a voluntary martyr, is being cast in

that role.
This aspect of martyrdom caused considerable discussion
among Christian theologians in the pre-Augustinian period,
and we have already seen that Cyprian and others publicly
and repeatedly condemned voluntary martyrdom. "Let no
one give himself up to the pagans on his own initiative," said
Cyprian.15 But even he went to his own death with conspicu-
ous enthusiasm and a sense of the dramatic potential of what
was coming. He refused to confess and be condemned in
Utica because he belonged in his own episcopal city of
Carthage, and his death could be more efficacious there:
The honor belonging to our illustrious church will be vitiated if it
is in Utica that I should receive sentence upon making my confess-
ion (whereas I have been appointed as bishop over another
church), and if it is from Utica that I should go forth as a martyred
lord. For it is in your midst that I ought to be making my confess-
ion, it is there I ought to suffer.16

In his recent book entitled From Autothanasia to Suicide:

Self-Killing in Classical Antiquity,17 Anton van Hooff devotes a
brief final section to martyrs, but greater attention might well
have been accorded to the representation and evaluation of
martyrdom in the general context of "self-killing." Van Hooff
accepts Durckheim's famous definition of suicide as "any case
of death which results, directly or indirectly, from an act,
positive or negative, accomplished by the victim himself and
in the knowledge that it would necessarily produce this
result."18 This definition necessarily comprehends martyrdom
as well as suicide. The confusion of these categories provoked
15
Cyprian, Epist. 81.1,4.
16
Cyprian, Epist. 81.1.2 (translation by G. W. Clarke in his edition of the Letters,
vol. 4 [New York, 1989], pp. 105-6).
17
A. van Hooff, From Autothanasia to Suicide: Self-Killing in Classical Antiquity
(London, 1990).
18
van Hooff, Autothanasia, p. 6, quoting E. Durckheim, he suicide, 3rd edn (Paris,
1930), p. 5.

62
 Martyrdom and suicide

such vehement debate among the early Christians who saw

mounting enthusiasm for voluntary martyrdom that August-
ine and other theologians ultimately moved to denounce
suicide as incompatible with martyrdom.
The relation of these two forms of killing is made explicit
and unavoidable in the works of Tertullian. If he is in fact the
author of the Latin narrative on Perpetua's death the inter-
pretation of it there would fit perfectly within the larger frame
of Tertullian's thought. Both in his address to martyrs-
designate and in his own Apology, he invokes as important
parallels the noble suicides of the great pagans of the past. His
examples include Heraclitus, Empedocles, Lucretia, Mucius
Scaevola, Dido, Cleopatra, and even Peregrinus (who, long
after he had given up Christianity, immolated himself at
Olympia).19 Tertullian's argument is a simple one: If these
courageous people destroyed themselves for a false way of
life, should Christians not do the same for the true way? "We
want to suffer," says Tertullian, "just as a soldier wants to
fight."20 It is the profession of a Christian to suffer. It is the
work of a Christian to be taken to court. By being conquered
or subdued in the Roman persecutions, in Tertullian's view,
the Christians are victorious. The paradox is that in defeat lies
victory. This is a paradox not unlike Tertullian's view that
peace can only be found in prison among the martyrs.
In other words, peace comes in struggling and in dying for a
better cause than the pagans had. Suicide is understood as an
honorable course in defense of one's own ideals. Tertullian's
words, embedded in his sinewy Latin prose, constitute a
magnificent reprise of both the language and the thought of
Cicero in the Tusculan Disputations and of Seneca in his letters
on the virtues of bearing pain in defense of one's principles. In
suffering lay the anticipation of a greater good to come.
Tertullian's position is that of an old Roman pagan. His

19 20
TertulL, ad mart. 4. Tertull., Apol. 50.

63
 Martyrdom and Rome

position converted Lucretia into a model for Christians in his

Exhortation to Chastity.21 It is the position of Cato the Younger,
who took his own life upon the defeat of the republic. It is the
position of Seneca, committing suicide in his bath when he
realized that he would be unable to control the excesses of
Nero. It is the position of other courageous philosophers of
the Neronian and Flavian periods, who drew their strength
from Stoic doctrines, just as Seneca had. Antisthenes,
Diogenes, and other Cynics had preached a similar indiffer-
ence to pain and acceptance of suicide in the cause of truth
and integrity.22 There is something distinctively Roman in
TertuUian's attitude to martyrdom. If this attitude derives, as it
probably does, from the so-called Montanist period of Tertull-
ian's thought, the confluence of Roman values in an East
Greek context becomes visible once again.23 For Montanism
itself was a product of Phrygia in Asia Minor.
However much some leaders of the Church attempted to
dissuade volunteers for death in the Christian cause, the
example of Arrius Antoninus's tribunal and the many refer-
ences in the Martyr Acts to eager postulants for martyrdom
show that the message simply did not get through. With
orators like Tertullian, it is hardly surprising that the suicidal
aspect of martyrdom remained at the forefront. Intellectuals
schooled in the Latin classics would naturally have adopted a
view of martyrdom that presupposed the admiration of noble
suicides implicit in the tales of Lucretia, Scaevola, Dido, and
others.
But the polytheist world as a whole was by no means united
in its admiration of such noble suicides. An old and strong
21
TertulL, de exhort, cast. 13.
22
For Stoics a n d C y n i c s o n s u i c i d e , see v a n Hooff, Autothanasia, p p . 188-92. A l s o
R. H i r z e l , " D e r S e l b s t m o r d , " Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft 11 (1908), 417-76.
For s u i c i d e as a t r a d i t i o n at R o m e , see Y. Grise, he suicide dans la Rome antique
( M o n t r e a l / P a r i s , 1983). For Seneca in p a r t i c u l a r , M . T. Griffin, Seneca: A Philoso-
pher in Politics (Oxford, 1976), p p . 367-88 ( " M o r s d i u m e d i t a t a " ) .
23
Cf. T. D . Barnes, Tertullian (Oxford, 1971), p . 218.

64
 Martyrdom and suicide

prejudice, which had deep roots in Platonic philosophy, ran

directly counter to the tradition so eloquently represented by
Seneca and Tertullian. Plutarch, a contemporary of Ignatius of
Antioch, memorably reflects the sensibilities of his fellow-
Greeks in the early second century in his treatise on the
virtues of women. There he tells of the mysterious affliction of
the women of Miletus, who were given to hanging themselves
for no evident reason. It was thought that polluted air had
deranged their minds. Finally a law was proposed that all
women who hanged themselves should be carried naked
through the agora of the city on the way to burial. This
immediately produced the desired result of stopping the sui-
cides, and Plutarch could commend the women for staying
alive in order to safeguard their modesty.24
Plato had been unambiguously opposed to self-destruction,
and the Platonists of the Roman period, the so-called Middle
Platonists, not only adopted this position but maintained it
against Stoics and other political dissidents.25 Neoplatonism,
as represented by Plotinus and his successors, was emphati-
cally opposed to any form of violence to oneself. Plotinus
himself addressed the issue in a work on rational suicide, now
lost, which presumably responded to the Stoic contention that
one could decide reasonably to do away with oneself.26
Not surprisingly those Christian writers that were most
conspicuously inspired by Plato - in particular Clement of
Alexandria and Origen - took the same strong position
against suicide.27 Accordingly, when Augustine later formula-
ted what was to become the standard Christian abhorrence of
suicide, he had behind him both Platonic Christianity and
24
Plut., de mul. virtut. 11, w i t h t h e analysis of P. A . Stadter, Plutarch's Historical
Methods ( C a m b r i d g e , Mass., 1965), p p . 76-7.
25
Cf. J. M . Dillon, The Middle Platonists ( L o n d o n , 1977), p . 198: " W e h e a r of n o
'Platonic Opposition7 to the Principate to match the Stoic Opposition/'
26
Cf. P l o t i n u s , Enn. 1.9, w i t h v a n Hooff, Autothanasia, p p . 192-3.
27
See Dietmar Wyrwa, Die christliche Platonaneignung in den Stromateis des
Clemens von Alexandrien (Berlin, 1983).

65
 Martyrdom and Rome

polytheist Neoplatonism of the preceding centuries. But

during those pre-Augustinian centuries the situation was by
no means so clear as Augustine wanted it to be, and as it
subsequently became. In the early third century, the time of
both Tertullian and Clement, the issue of suicide was, as we
have seen, central to the practice and the acceptance of
martyrdom.28 Tertullian represented, in sonorous and tradi-
tional Latinity, the old Roman point of view. Clement, by
contrast, had absorbed the philosophy of Plato and addressed
the subject, in his reflective and sometimes dense Greek prose,
much more profoundly and less rhetorically than his eloquent
contemporary.
In the fourth book of the miscellaneous writings that we
know as Stromateis, Clement addressed the problem of
martyrdom in detail. His thinking on this matter is so central
to the perception of martyrs as suicides that it deserves our
careful attention. Through Clement we can track the most
important divisions of opinion in the early Christian Church
before Augustine concerning a phenomenon that must be
reckoned the single most visible manifestation of Christianity
in the pagan Roman world. It was probably through martyr-
dom that many pagans became aware of Christianity in the
first place during the second and third centuries. We have
only to think of Lucian and his Peregrinus or of Antoninus the
proconsul. The life and death of a Christian martyr was, as we
have already discovered, something the pagans could readily
comprehend through the quasi-sophistic role of a martyr
when living and his part in agonistic festivals when dying.
Besides, the Graeco-Roman world had always taken a lively
interest in freakish behavior. A brahman from India who
burned himself up in Athens in the time of Augustus attracted
considerable notice,29 and Peregrinus, removing himself in
28
W y r w a , Platonaneignung, ch. 6, p p . 225-60: " S e e l s o r g e a n g e s i c h t s d e s M a r -
tyriums."
29
Cass. D i o 54.9.10 ( Z a r m a r u s - Tiopi £ai)xdv ^Govia 8^S5COK6V).

66
 Martyrdom and suicide

exactly the same way in the second century, attracted no less.

Such events were as interesting in the Roman empire as
dwarfs, humans with only one arm, hermaphrodites, and
giraffes - all of which are known to have excited great interest.
Connoisseurs of the period will not forget that one of the most
popular sophists, Favorinus of Aries, had undescended testi-
cles - a condition that caused a feminine appearance and a
high-pitched voice that evidently only added to his personal
magnetism.30
Clement's analysis of martyrdom returned prudently to the
original sense of the word: "'Martyrdom' or |iapTUpia,
'bearing witness [jiapTupia],' is a confession of faith in God,
and every soul that is purely constituted in recognition of
God, obeying His orders, is a martyr [n-apxix;], both in deed
and in word."31 The point is important for Clement because
he wants to establish that martyrdom in the true sense does
not necessarily involve death at all. It is rather an expression
of one's commitment to the Christian God. The parallel he
draws between iiapiopia and ojaoXoyia ("confession") pro-
vides the foundation for an important distinction that was
later to be elaborated in the Church as it continued to wrestle
with the problem of sanguinary martyrdom. 6|ioA,oyia in the
Byzantine period was to be a form of bloodless martyrdom to
which the pious could aspire without bringing on their own
self-destruction.32
Having established the relation between confession and
martyrdom, Clement then opens up the debate by presenting
discordant arguments heard among Christians of his time.
Some of the heretics who misapprehend the Lord are both
impious and cowardly in their desire to stay alive, and that is why
they call the only true martyrdom the recognition of the true God.

30
See L. H o l f o r d - S t r e v e n s , Aulus Gellius ( L o n d o n , 1988), p p . 7 2 - 3 , o n t h e evi-
d e n c e of Polemo's Physiognomonica.
31
C l e m e n t , Strom, iv.4; 15.3.
32
Cf. H . D e l e h a y e , " M a r t y r et confesseur," Analecta Bollandiana 39 (1921), 20-49.

67
 Martyrdom and Rome

Now this is a point in which we likewise agree. But these heretics

maintain that one who makes his confession through death is a
murderer of himself and a suicide. And they bring forward into
the discussion other clever devices for covering up their own
cowardice.33
Clement here explicitly acknowledges that the problem of
suicide had indeed been raised by certain Christian sects in
their discussions of martyrdom. He is happy to acknowledge
that the recognition of the true God does constitute a form of
martyrdom. In fact, he had just said as much in the previous
chapter that we have already cited. But here he ascribes the
argument against suicide as one of many clever arguments
(ao^iajiaxa) to cover up cowardice, to conceal the fact that
these people are not actually prepared to die for their faith.
Courage and cowardice are matters that Clement judges
important in this debate, but he says here that he will deal
with them later. He wants to affirm that his position is funda-
mentally different from that of the cowardly heretics, as he
calls them. This is a necessary point for Clement to make
before going on to say that he too is opposed to self-
destruction and the encompassing of one's own death: "For
we too condemn those who have leapt into death [xovq
87ii7ir|5f|aavTa(; TG> Bavdxq)]. People who throw themselves in
harm's way are not really Christians," says Clement,
"although they share the Christian name."34 This is strong
language, and it is only the beginning.
"We say that these people are committing suicide without
gaining martyrdom," says Clement, and here he uses a fami-
liar periphrasis for suicide in later Greek: "to lead oneself out
[e^&yeiv eauiov]." This is an expression which seems to have
been coined by Antisthenes, founder of Cynic philosophy, but
it eventually passed into common use and became a standard
designation of suicide from the Hellenistic period onward.35
33
Clement, Strom, iv.4; 16.3. ^ Ibid.
35
See van Hooff, Autothanasia, pp. 140-1,188.

68
 Martyrdom and suicide

And that is exactly what those Christians who provoke their

own death are doing, according to Clement. They do it
djiapTUpax; - "without securing martyrdom" or "without
bearing witness." The condemnation is intensified when
Clement adds, "This is the case even if these people are
publicly condemned [icav 5r||ioaig Ko^&^covxai]." In other
words, securing a condemnation from a Roman magistrate is
not a palliative for this kind of enthusiastic self-destruction.
"They give themselves over to an empty death [Oavdicp KSVG)],
just as the gymnosophists of the Indians gave themselves in
vain to the fire."36 The allusion here to the Roman world's
knowledge of self-immolation among the Indians directly
connects the episodes of the brahman at Athens and Peregri-
nus at Olympia with the scenes of martyrdom. In addition the
phrase "empty death" implicitly compares this ineffectual act
with the K8vo8o^ia - the empty or false opinion - of preten-
tious teachers and sophists.37
Clement is obviously not only trying to detach martyrdom
from suicide, with which he has plainly acknowledged it was
connected in his own day. He is trying to turn the very word
back into its original sense of "bearing witness." As Clement
was writing in Greek he could make his argument turn on the
very words iidpTix; and jiapTopia themselves. This would not
have been possible in Latin, the official language of the
Roman government. Only a century or so after Clement (in all
probability), the author of the Latin Acts of Marianus and
Jacobus had to employ two quite different words to convey
the senses of martyr and witness: beati martyres plures Dei
testes, dum ipsi ad martyrium parantur, adquirunt ("While they
were themselves readied for martyrdom, the blessed martyrs
[martyres] recruited more witnesses [testes] of God").38
36
C l e m e n t , Strom, iv.4; 16.3.
37
See t h e d i s c u s s i o n of KevoSo^ia in L. Robert, Le martyre de Pionios, e d . G. W.
Bowersock and C. P. Jones (Dumbarton Oaks, 1994), pp. 97-8.
38
Mort. Marian, et Jacob. 9.4. Cf. also 3.5 (Dei testibus / martyrio glorioso).

69
 Martyrdom and Rome

Clement's insistence on martyrdom as bearing witness

meant granting that a distinctly non-voluntary and imposed
death at the hand of a Roman magistrate would constitute
only one way of achieving martyrdom, and perhaps not even
the most important way. Bearing witness could be achieved
by confessing the faith in a far less sanguinary manner.
Clement, like Origen, who was equally steeped in Platonic
philosophy, defended the original sense of martyrdom by
invoking the Gospel of Luke, chapter 12, where Clement
claims that Christ himself defined martyrdom.39 Yet the word
"martyr" is not actually used in that passage at all, even
though Clement believes that it isrcepiTOU napiupioi), "about
martyrdom." Christ says in verse 8, "Whoever shall confess
me before men, him shall the son of man also confess before
the angels of God." The central word here is 6|J,OA,OYT|CJ£I.
"Confession" or 6[ioXoyia thus becomes once again the
business of bearing witness. Having reiterated this important
point, Clement goes on to observe that some Christians who
have not confessed by their life nonetheless do so in the courts
by their voice and under torment up to the point of death
(Korea c()covf|v ... ev 8iKacrcr|pioi<; Kai |i£%pi Oavdiou Paaavi-
^Ojievoix;).40 This is a subset of the confessors.
"It will be given to some," says Clement, "to make an
&7coA,OYia in order to strengthen others, in order that every-
one may be helped both through martyrdom and through
confession."41 Clearly, Clement is not defining two separate
means of help, but rather two aspects of the same thing,
confession and bearing witness. 6|ioA,oyia is the element that
distinguishes those who are tormented or go to their death in
making their confession and bearing their witness. The &7to-
Xoyia is Clement's distinctive contribution to this discussion.
"It is necessary for everyone," he says, "to confess, for this lies
in our own hands, but it is not necessary for everyone to make

39 40 41
Clement, Strom, w.g; 70.1. Clement, Strom, iv.9; 73.1. Ibid.

70
 Martyrdom and suicide

an dTCoA-oyia [d7ioA,oyeia9ai], for this is not a matter that lies in

our own hands." Clement could hardly be clearer in stating
that violent martyrdom should under no circumstances repre-
sent an initiative on the part of the martyr. He is particularly
eloquent in emphasizing the d7toA,oyia rather than the violent
death itself. The dTco^oyia is the inspiring statement, the
eloquent confession of faith that moves others and glorifies
God. That is where Clement places his emphasis. In the fol-
lowing chapter he strengthens his point by saying that those
who offer themselves to persecuting magistrates incur the
guilt of making the persecutors themselves sin by imposing
their penalty. Thus the voluntary martyr becomes an accom-
plice in sin and a collaborator with the persecutor. Provo-
cation produces guilt, and the would-be martyr who incites
the persecution and calls for wild beasts is a completely guilty
person (ieA,eiov ai'xioc;).42
These are harsh words, and the fact that Clement found it
necessary to devote so much time to a discussion of this issue
in the early third century is in itself telling. He leaves no doubt
that he has recognized among some Christians an enthusiasm
for suicide that was directly inspired by the possibility of
martyrdom in its bloody sense. In advocating a restoration of
the original sense of "bearing witness," Clement is clearly
rejecting the Roman glorification of suicide that Tertullian
represents. He is rejecting the value of violent death, except
when imposed on a Christian who had not sought it. In both
these matters he is reflecting an essentially Greek point of
view as opposed to a Roman one.
The Greek word, PioOavf|<;, for a person who suffered a
violent death (often a criminal) carried, in the imperial period,
a meaning virtually equivalent to suicide.43 As Pionios recog-
nized, one of the accusations levelled against the Christians
was that their own founder, Jesus Christ himself, had suffered
42
Clement, Strom, iv.io; 76-7.
43
See t h e analysis b y Robert in Martyre, p p . 84-5.

71
 Martyrdom and Rome

a violent death, and was therefore characterized as Pio8avf|<;

in the literal sense of the word (dying by violence, Picuo-
Gdvaxoq, as the longer form shows clearly). But the martyr
countered this argument by observing that the Jews failed to
recognize that a Pio9avf|<; is in fact one "who leads himself
out of life by his own choice," in other words a suicide
(expressed by the standard periphrasis).44 Pionios invokes the
current rather than the etymological meaning. So Christ must
not be judged a pio0avf|c; in what was by then its customary
sense, a sense confirmed by numerous other late Greek texts
as well.
Among the Jews, as opposed to the polytheists, a person
who died a violent death was understood to be in hell and
could be used for nefarious magical purposes in working evil
on other people.45 An aura of the unnatural, the inhuman,
and the diabolical attached to the victim of violent death. This
point of view was, of course, utterly inconsistent with martyr-
dom as it subsequently developed, with its many violent
deaths and quasi-suicides, but it remained perfectly consistent
with martyrdom in its original sense of bearing witness.
Pionios implicitly and Clement explicitly dissociated suicide
from Christian sacrifice, and their opinion was therefore
wholly compatible with the views of polytheists and Jews
alike. The transformation of Greek Pio0avf|<; into a word for a
suicide not only reflected a deep-seated Greek abhorrence of
self-destruction: it reflected an era that saw, for the first time, a
proliferation of apparent suicides by violent death. The re-
definition of pioOavf|(; occurred within the same chrono-
logical frame as the redefinition of (idp-cuc;. And it may be
suggested that this was no accident.
Without the glorification of suicide in the Roman tradition,
the development of martyrdom in the second and third cen-
turies would have been unthinkable. The hordes of voluntary
44
Mart. Pionii 13.3-7.
45
For Jews and necromancy, see the references in Robert, Martyr-e, pp. 85-6.

72
 Martyrdom and suicide

martyrs would never have existed. Both Greek and Jewish

traditions stood against them. Without Rome, a iidpiug
would have remained what he had always been, a "witness"
and no more. But the spread of the Roman imperium brought
with it the glorification of Lucretia and Scaevola in legend and
the heroic suicides of Stoic philosophers in recent memory.
Tertullian, the greatest Christian disciple of Rome's culture
and language, found himself naturally cast in the role of
apologist for all those who sought martyrdom. His African
compatriot of the next generation, Cyprian, was less of a
rhetorician and more of a thinker. The awkward Latin in
which he tried to deplore the ambitions of voluntary martyrs
perhaps reflects the hard problem of rooting out of Roman
culture an element that was so uncongenial to the Jewish and
Greek worlds in which Christianity arose.
It was not until Augustine that the Church had a clear,
forceful, and definitive injunction against suicide. The
seriousness and detail of Augustine's treatment of the issue in
the first book of the City of God shows that the debate about
suicide was still lively, especially in the Latin West. The
heretical Donatists continued to display the spirit of Ter-
tullian. Writing in Latin, Augustine took as his prime example
the case of Lucretia, presumably because it was still as com-
pelling to many brought up in the Latin rhetorical schools as it
had been to Tertullian two centuries before. Doubtless in
response to such a readership Augustine actually includes an
excerpt from a Latin declamation on Lucretia in the first of his
chapters on her suicide. He cites with approval the paradox
duo fuerunt et adulterium unus admisit ("There were two, and
only one committed adultery").46
For Augustine the point is that Lucretia was innocent in the
rape and therefore did not merit the death penalty. Even in
the unlikely event that she had secretly enjoyed her encoun-
46
Aug., de Civ. Dei 1.19. Cf. I. Donaldson, The Rapes of Lucretia: A Myth and its
Transformation (Oxford, 1982).

73
 Martyrdom and Rome

ter with Tarquin, she should still not have killed herself when
she could have practiced penance instead. For Augustine it is
wrong to add to the crime of another, such as rape, the crime
of murdering a person, namely oneself. The commandment,
"Thou shalt not kill," applies to any human being. As August-
ine put it with epigrammatic force, neque enim qui se occidit
aliud quam hominem occidit ("For he who kills himself kills no
other than a man").47
This ringing denunciation of suicide brought Christianity
firmly in line with the ethics of Graeco-Judaic philosophy. It
constituted a formal and final repudiation of the old Roman
way to a glorious death. In doing so it closed the door once
and for all on voluntary martyrs, and from this time onward
the 6|ioA,oyr|Tf|<; or confessor represented an aspirant to
martyrdom who was precluded from shedding his own blood.
The old pre-Constantinian martyrs, the earliest in the
Church's history, had responded to Roman ethical values and
civic institutions that, by the time of Augustine, had already
vanished in the Byzantine empire and were slowly fading in
the Latin West. But in the Graeco-Roman world of the late first
and second centuries the metamorphosis of traditional terms
for witness and witnessing into an ideology of death to
promote a cause had served as a powerful symbol of Greek
culture adapted to the Roman empire. With the ultimate
exclusion of suicide from that ideology Christian martyrdom
was deprived of its most militant, its most Roman feature. But
ironically it was that very feature that was conspicuously to
survive in Islam, when the heirs of the prophet Muhammad
ruled in the land where Jesus was crucified.

47
Aug., de Civ. Dei 1.20, ad fin.

74
 Appendix 1
Protomartyr

Stephen is traditionally designated the first martyr, 7ipcoxo-

jidpiDq. But in the earliest centuries of the Church this was
by no means the case. In the account of the martyrs of Lyon in
AD 177, as preserved by Eusebius in what is arguably an
authentic document (see Appendix iv below), the first to
advance to their deaths in the persecution are simply and
plausibly called 7tpcoxo|idpxi)p£<; (HE 5.1.11). There is no sug-
gestion that the singular of the noun might describe the first of
all martyrs in the history of Christianity.
The word does not appear in the New Testament. In the
detailed narrative of Acts 7 on the stoning of Stephen those
who witness the event are called oi (idpxopec; (7.58). At Acts
22.20 comes the notorious description of Stephen himself as a
jidpxuq: 6x8 8^ex6vvexo xo al|ia Zxec|)dvoi) xoC jidpxopoc;
aou. The aoo here refers to the Lord. Apart from the frequent
and consistent use of pidpxoq in the New Testament in its
usual sense of witness (and, in particular, at Acts 7.58), what
Stephen actually did witness before he was stoned is obvi-
ously pertinent: etc; xov oupavov e!8ev 86£av @eou Kai 9Ir|aoCv
eaxooxa SK 88^icov xoC ©eoC. He saw God with Jesus at His
right hand. The most reasonable reading of xou ndpxupoq aoo
in Acts 22.20 is therefore "witness of the Lord." Nothing in the
New Testament implies that the word for witness meant
martyr when those texts were written. The description of Jesus
himself by John in Apoc. 1.5 and 3.14 as 6 jidpxix; 6 niGxoq
must be - and usually is - understood as "faithful witness."

75
 Appendix 1

The earliest instances of Stephen as 7tpa>TO|i&pTi)c;, meaning

"first of all martyrs," appear in texts of the fourth century:
Gregory of Nyssa, Steph. 2 (46.725B - misprinted C - Migne)
and Epiphanius, Pan. 1.2, Haer. 25 (41.321A Migne); Pan. 3.1,
Haer. 70.6 (42.348C Migne). But in this transitional and, it must
be said, creative period others are also equipped with the title
of protomartyr. The legendary Thecla is so characterized in
the opening of her Ada and elsewhere (Isidore of Pelusium,
ep. 1.160 [78.289C] and Evagrius, HE 3.8 [86.2612B Migne]).
Jesus himself, who has a much better claim, is called TcpcoTO-
li&pTOc; by Gelasius of Cyzicus in the fifth century in his HE
2.19.26 (85.1280D Migne).
The word 7rpcoTO|i&pTO<; evidently did not appear until
ji&pTix; had already acquired the meaning of martyr. The
Lyon martyrium implies that it was originally used to single
out those courageous souls who went to their deaths first in a
particular persecution. The recognition that someone in the
early decades of the Church had to have been the first martyr
of all seems to have been part of post-Constantinian theology,
and for at least a century or so there was uncertainty as to who
that person was - Stephen, Thecla, or Jesus himself.

76
 Appendix 2
Ignatius and iv Maccabees

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Ignatius of Antioch,

as we know him from his letters, is that his zeal for death at
the hands of the Roman authorities is wholly untouched by
the language of martyrdom. As Charles Munier recently
observed, "Ignace ne connait pas encore les acceptions tech-
niques des termes (idpiuq, (lapxupiov, pour designer le tem-
oignage sanglant; bien mieux, il ne connait aucun terme
reserve a cette signification/'1 Ignatius's career is assigned by
Eusebius to the early second century (HE 3.36.2-4), and his
sanguinary demise at Rome is put, not perhaps with complete
accuracy, in AD 107 (Chron.). If [lapxvq had meant martyr at
that time, Ignatius would undoubtedly have availed himself
of the word.
Instead the bishop expresses the act of self-sacrifice in the
Christian cause as an aspect of simply being a Christian (Xpia-
Tiavoq), of striving to imitate Jesus (ninr|TT|<;), and of being a
student of Jesus (\iaQr\xr\q). These, as K. Bommes has shown,2
are the periphrases by which Ignatius describes what was
1
On the whole subject of Ignatius's enthusiasm for suffering, see K. Bommes,
Weizen Gottes. Untersuchungen zur Theologie des Martyriums bei Ignatius von
Antiochien (Cologne-Bonn, 1976); H. J. Vogt, "Ignatius von Antiochien. Das
Leiden als Zeugnis und Heilsweg," in Der Mensch in Grenzsituation, ed.
E. Olshausen (Stuggart, 1984), pp. 49-71. For a full and useful survey of opin-
ions and publications, see Charles Munier, "Ou en est la question d'Ignace
d'Antioche? Bilan d'un siecle de recherches 1870-1988," Aufstieg und Niedergang
der romischen Welt n 27.1 (1993), pp. 359-484, especially pp. 455-63. The citation
from Munier is taken from p. 456.
2
Bommes, Weizen Gottes.

77
 Appendix 2

later to be called a martyr. It is evident that none of these

terms has that meaning as such. The sacrifice, of which Igna-
tius is enamoured, is not even a necessary aspect of those
three categories, except perhaps for him.
Ignatius is often more comfortable and more explicit when
he writes in metaphors. Among these the extraordinary
formulations in his letter to the Romans (4-5) are the most
celebrated - the food of beasts (0r|picov Popd), the wheat of
God (aixoq GeoC) to be ground up by the teeth of animals so
that he can become the pure bread of Christ (icaOapdc; apxoq
xoC XpiaxoC). In this amazing passage, anticipating the
deadly work of the animals at Rome, Ignatius calmly declares,
NCv dpxo|iai |xa9r|Tf|<; eivai - a true student at last.
Some of Ignatius's metaphors are more prosaic. These have
afforded scholars an opportunity to draw parallels with other
texts. Othmar Perler was particularly diligent in looking for
words that Ignatius shared with the author of the Fourth Book
of Maccabees.3 He cast his net so wide that he included a word
(evXoyoq) that does not appear in iv Mace, at all, and he gave
unwarranted emphasis to words of relative frequency and
even banality in Greek of the imperial age (Ka^oKdyaOia,
dKoXouGoc;, euvoia, Kaxakvaiq). Perler dilated on the imagery
of the athlete and competitive sport, as though this bound
Ignatius with the author of iv Mace, instead of revealing both
as children of their age.4 And when Ignatius's use of the
leopard as metaphor in Rom. 5.1 is compared with allusions to
wild beasts in iv Mace, (even though no leopards are men-
tioned), Perler hears an echo of a Syrian homeland.5
Although later patristic writers, such as Ambrose, John
3
O. Perler, "Das vierte Makkabaerbuch, Ignatius von Antiochien, und die alt-
esten Martyrerberichte," Revista di archeologia cristiana 25 (1949), 47-72.
4
Perler, "Das vierte Makkabaerbuch," pp. 49-51.
5
Perler, "Das vierte Makkabaerbuch," p. 55: "Man ist versucht, die Quelle
wiederum im 4 Makk. zu vermuten, umso mehr als das Bild bei Ignatius
(ibertrieben scheint; galten doch die Leoparde, haufig aus Syrien stammend,
als besonders grausam und wild."

78
 Ignatius and IV Maccabees

Chrysostom, and Gregory of Nyssa, showed themselves, as

Perler knew, well acquainted with iv Mace, there was little
point in his stressing words from that Jewish document that
are not to be found in the New Testament. When it was
written iv Mace, reflected Hellenistic Judaism but hardly
Christianity. Despite Perler's efforts, the work can neither be
assigned to a date before Ignatius nor have provided a reper-
torium for the bishop's vocabulary. Already before Perler,
Andre Dupont-Sommer had made an important case for a late
Trajanic or Hadrianic date for iv Mace.,6 and now van Henten
has plausibly anchored the work a little later in the time of the
earliest Christian martyrological texts.7
What the language of Ignatius and rv Mace, seems clearly to
reflect is a common origin for both in the imperial Greek of
Asia Minor.8 This is not surprising for Ignatius, who wrote his
letters there, but it is of greater interest for a Jewish narrative
that has not normally been assigned a local habitation. Since
Asia Minor, as I have argued in the foregoing chapters, was
the homeland of the whole phenomenon of Christian martyr-
dom, these texts - one Christian and one Jewish - may be seen
as repositories of enthusiasm for the subject before it was
articulated in terms of "witnessing" (napiupiov).
One interesting and unusual lection that is common to both
Ignatius and iv Mace, may help us to understand better the
conceptualization of self-sacrifice on the eve of martyrdom as
6
A. Dupont-Sommer, Le quatrieme livre des Machabtes (Paris, 1939).
7
J. W. van Henten, "Datierung und Herkunft des vierten Makkabaerbuches," in
Tradition and Reinterpretation in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, Essays in
Honour of J. C. H. Lebram, ed. van Henten and de Jonge (Leiden, 1986),
pp. 136-49.
8
See the excellent discussion of rv Mace, in J. W. van Henten, "The Martyrs as
Heroes of the Christian People. Some remarks on the continuity between
Jewish and Christian martyrology, with pagan analogies/' to appear in a
volume on early Christian martyrdom, ed. Lamderigts, in the BETL series at
Louvain. I am very grateful to the author for showing me (through the kind
intercession of Peter Schafer) a typescript of his valuable article in advance of
publication. Particularly telling are van Henten's observations on the verb
Kr|8e6co in iv Mace, in relation to pagan epitaphs in Phrygia and Lycia.

79
 Appendix 2

such. Ignatius makes reference four times to the idea of substi-

tuting one life for another as a justification for sacrificing
oneself:
Eph. 21.1: 'AVTII|/I)%OV Djicav eycb Kai d)v £7T£|i\|/ax£ eiq @eoo
xi}if|v sic, E|i6pvav.
Smyrn. 10.2: 'Avxiij/oxov UJICOV xo 7ivei)|id jiou Kai id 8£a|id |iou.
Polyc. 2.3: Korea rcdvxa aou dvxii|/i)xov eyeb Kai id 5ea|id |iou.
Polyc. 6.1: 'AVTI\|A)XOV eyd) xa>v wtoxaaaoiievoov xca £7uaK67rco,
Tipeapuiepoit;,
Although the word dvxi\|/i)x°? is n ° t often found, its two
appearances in iv Mace, do not suffice to prove that Ignatius
was drawing on those passages,9 nor indeed that the author of
iv Mace, was drawing on Ignatius:
iv Mace. 6.29: dvTi\|/i)xov auxcov A,dpe xf|v enf|v \|/6xr|v.
iv Mace. 17.22: cocneep dviivj/uxov yeyovoxag xfjq TOD

Before the Christian literature of the fourth century (Euse-

bius and Athanasius),10 dvii\j/uxo? appears only twice outside
the letters of Ignatius and the text of iv Mace, both times in
pagan texts written by authors from Asia Minor. Lucian, from
Samosata on the Euphrates, uses the word in the mid-second
century in Lexiph. 10: coaxe ev 8ea|ioT<; a>v vne^8\)XXt xe 6
KaKo5ai|icov vno xou Stove, Kai nopdaXsoq fjv Kai xp%<*xa
avxi\\t\)%a 58§6vai f\QeXev.n Cassius Dio, from Nicaea in
Bithynia, wrote in the third century in his Roman History
(59.8.3) about a man who offered to give up his life and
another who offered to fight as a gladiator if only Caligula
would recover from an illness: dvxi ydp xaiv xpTll^dxcov a
9
It is regrettable that Munier, in his survey published in 1993 (cited above, n. i),
can still assert (p. 461), "Ignace exprime la meme idee [d'un sacrifice expia-
toire] au moyen du terme dvTivj/Dxoi;, qu'il emprunte vraisemblablement au
ive Livre des Maccabees."
10
Euseb., Dem. Ev. 1.10; Athan., de incarn. 9 (25.112B Migne).
11
Macleod's OCT edition reads 8v5eano(; and

80
 Ignatius and IV Maccabees

flAjci^ov 7iap' auxou (bg Kai dviivj/uxoi oi d7to0avetv £0eA/fjaav-

xeq >-f|\|/ea0ai, drcoSoCvai xf|v X)n6o%EGiv f| vayKda0r|aav, iva |if|

In Lucian the terrified prisoner wanted to pay

dviivj/uxa if someone would take his place. In Dio the two
hapless Romans thought that they would receive money by
offering to die (and were cruelly obliged to carry through on
their pledge when the emperor recovered). In both cases what
is at stake is payment to liberate another from impending
death. The allusion to the prisoner's chains in Lucian reminds
one of Ignatius in two of the places cited above, where he
conjoined id 8ea|id |aou with his own person as part of the
exchange. The metaphor in Ignatius becomes perfectly clear
in the light of Lucian and Dio: he will free the Christians by
assuming their bondage and death. Ignatius is accepting
%pf||iaTa dvxivj/Dxet in spiritual coin.
Since this metaphor for substitution occurs, on present
evidence, only in the second and third centuries and only in
Asia Minor, it would appear to be another suggestive item in
the dossier for the emergence of martyrdom in that part of the
world. The testimony of Ignatius and Lucian together implies
that the social context for this metaphor (and the word dvii-
i|/i)%o<;) was a local penal system in which a prisoner with
money could pay another to take his place.

81
 Appendix 3
Great Sabbath

Two of the earliest martyr narratives, both of which appear to

be substantially authentic, place their martyrdoms in Smyrna
at a time described as "Great Sabbath":
Mart. Polycarpi:
8.1: 6VTO<; aapp&xoi) neydXou
21: aappdxcp neydXcp (dated 23 February)
Mart. Pionii:
2: 8viaia[i8voi) aapp&xoi) neydXoo (dated 23 February)
3.6: 6y6|iia9r| jcdaa f\ dyopd Kai at urcepcpai axoai
e
EAAf|va>v i s Kai 5Iou5ai(Dv Kai yuvaiKcav
yap 5id TO elvai

The interpretation of this festal date has long been a subject

of controversy, as can be readily discerned from two recent
and important discussions: W. Rordorf, "Zum Problem des
Grofien Sabbats im Polykarp- und Pioniosmartyrium," in
Pietas: Festschrift fiir Bernhard Kotting, Jahrb. f. Ant. u. Christ.
Erganzungsbd. 8 (Miinster, 1980), pp. 245-9; a n ^ P. Devos,
"Meya Edppaxov chez Saint Epiphane," Anal. Bolland. 108
(1990), 293-306.
The reference has usually been taken to be to the Christian
Sabbath, i.e. Sunday. Cf. L. Robert, Le martyre de Pionios, ed.
G. W. Bowersock and C. P. Jones (Dumbarton Oaks, 1994),
p. 50. But the earliest certain use of the expression in this sense
is Epiphanius in the fourth century: De exp. fid. 24 (42.829C-D
Migne), comparing the Jewish Sabbath (uiKpdv
8iava7iau8Tai ev TCQ iieydtap aappdico dvxi xoC jiiKpoC

82
 Great Sabbath

TOD. In Chron. Pasch. 211 (92.516B Migne) Sunday (icupiaKf|) is

distinguished from adppaxov: fijiepa Seuxepa TOO aaPP&TOU
("the next day after the Sabbath"). For John Chrysostom, Horn,
in Ps. 145,2 (5.525D Migne), TO jieya E&PPCITOV is precisely the
day before Easter. This remains the meaning of "Great
Sabbath" today in both the Greek Orthodox and Russian
Orthodox liturgies: jaeya I&PP(XTOV / dem. \ieyaXo IaPP&TO
and velikaya Subbota, extending from sundown on Friday until
Saturday at midnight before Easter.
The crowds that attend the martyrdoms of Polycarp and
Pionios at Smyrna imply that Greek pagans and Jews were on
holiday at that time, and eax6A,a£ov in Mart. Pionii 3.6
explicitly confirms this. Hence one must identify a period of
time in which the whole community would be at leisure. Only
the Roman authorities seem to be at work. The date of 23
February in both martyrdoms appears to be too early for the
day before Easter. If it is accurate in both instances this must
have been a time that the Roman government found useful
for such cautionary proceedings. Some coincidence of Chris-
tian and Jewish holidays with a local one appears likely
(Rordorf thought of the Terminalia). It is possible that Great
Sabbath designated a festival season rather than a day. Cer-
tainly the Paschal sense of Great Sabbath extends well over a
single day. The word adppaTOV had, as early as Clement
(Strom. 4.3), a metaphorical meaning of repose and self-
restraint. It is this meaning which Devos finds in an extended
form in Epiphanius ("le Christ en personne, considere comme
nous 'faisant repos' des fautes"). He promises a study of the
expression in the martyrdoms of Polycarp and Pionios, to
which we must look forward eagerly.
If Great Sabbath were more than a day and came soon to be
associated with Easter (as it was to be later in its more restric-
ted sense), perhaps Lent is at issue here - in conjunction with
a local festival. The first definite indication of the celebration
of Lent does not occur until a letter of Athanasius in 330, but

S3
 Appendix 3

the Byzantine expression "Great Lent," in contradistinction to

other lesser Lents (before the Nativity, for example), suggests
the possibility of a similar sense of iieya X&PPaiov before the
fourth century. For the history of Lent, the Oxford Dictionary of
Byzantium (1991), vol. 2, pp. 1025-6, provides the basic facts.

84
 Appendix 4
Asia, Aphrodisias, and the
Lyon Martyrium

Nearly two decades ago I queried the extraordinary prescript

of the great letter, preserved by Eusebius, concerning the
martyrdom at Lyon in the year AD 177.1 The letter, clearly full
of many authentic details concerning the martyrdom, begins
with a prescript containing a striking formulation of the home
territory of the recipients: oi ev Bi8vvt| Kai Aouy5o6vcp xf\q
TaXAiac;rcapoiKouvTec;5oCXot Xpiaiou xoi<; Kaxd xf|v 'Aaiav
Kai <J>pi)yiav if|v aircf|v xfjc; anoXmptiKJECOC, f||iTv 7cianv Kai
eAjiiSa exooaiv dSeX-^oiq. The conjunction of Asia and Phrygia
seemed odd, inasmuch as Phrygia was an integral part of Asia
in normal second-century usage, although a few texts of
apparently later date displayed such phrasing as "Asia and
Phrygia," "Asia and Lydia," or "Asia and Caria." Such formu-
lations appeared to reflect the time of Eusebius himself and
the provincial organization instituted under the Tetrarchy,
when regions such as Phrygia or Caria became independent
provinces. The prescript seemed therefore less likely to be
authentic than most of the body of the letter. But it is now
evident, in the light of the materials assembled here, that this
apparent anomaly is, on the contrary, a striking guarantee of
the authenticity of the prescript. We are, after all, in the reign
of Marcus Aurelius, and the martyrium joins its brethren
among the earliest Martyr Acts, notably the accounts of Poly-

1
Euseb., HE 5.1. See G. W. Bowersock, Les martyrs de Lyon, colloques inter-
nationaux du CNRS - no. yj$ (Paris, 1978), pp. 249-56.

85
 Appendix 4

carp, Perpetua, and Pionios, as a substantially contemporary

document.
The issue must, however, be approached by a circuitous
route through the tangled history of rival claims of the cities of
western Asia Minor for preeminence and glory. The ample
testimony of inscriptions and coins from the cities of Asia has
long since illustrated this enthusiasm for what has seemed to
modern scholars (and indeed to the Romans themselves)
petty and vainglorious titles. As T. R. S. Broughton wrote in
his contribution of 1938: "Rivalry among several of the larger
and more ambitious cities became intense, led to a great deal
of wasteful display, and by the end of the second century
resulted in a general increase in honorific titles until they bore
little relation to the relative station and importance of the city.
The virus spread into smaller cities."2 Even at the end of the
first century AD the Greek orator and philosopher, Dio Chry-
sostom, chided the citizens of Nicomedia in Bithynia for their
excessive interest in honorific titles, which, he said, were
known in the Roman world as "the failings of the Greeks"
(eEA,A,r|viKd d|iapxf|[xaTa).3 It is easy for modern scholars to
adopt the supercilious tone of the Romans; and yet, as Simon
Price pointed out in his book on the imperial cult, to do so
would seriously damage our understanding of the social and
economic dynamics of Asia Minor.4
The report of Dio Chrysostom should not lead us to believe
that the Roman administration considered these honorific
titles of no importance. Inscriptions of the period can leave us
in no doubt that a long and complex diplomatic procedure
2
T. R. S. Broughton, "Roman Asia/' in vol. 4 of An Economic Survey of Ancient
Rome, ed. Tenney Frank (Baltimore, 1938), pp. 741-4. Much of the argument in
this appendix was presented in 1990 in the inaugural Broughton Lecture at
the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), in the presence of Professor
Broughton.
3
L. Robert, "La titulature de Nice'e et de Nicome'die: la gloire et la haine," HSCP
81 (1977), 1-39 [Opera Minora Selecta, hereafter OMS, 6.211-49].
4
S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cam-
bridge, 1984).

86
 Asia, Aphrodisias, and the Lyon Martyrium

was required of any city that wished to be considered for a

special title. No title could be assumed on the coinage or in the
epigraphy of a city without the formal authorization of the
Roman government. This meant that an ambitious city had to
send a group of citizens on an embassy to the Roman authori-
ties of the province and then, perhaps, even to Rome in order
to persuade the senate and the emperor of its merits. Nicaea,
for example, proudly proclaimed itself on its city gate as a
metropolis Kaxd id Kpiiiaia TCOV auxoKpaxopcov Kai ifj<; iepdq
auvK^f|xoi).5 At Sardis a similar phrase is found when it boasts
that it has two temples of the imperial cult in the city Korea id
Soyiiaxa xfjc; tepac; ai)VKA,f|iou.6 The titles that were the object
of this extensive diplomatic activity were essentially three in
number: "metropolis," "first city" (7cp6ir| TCOA^IC;), and veooico-
poq (or "temple guardian"). The last category designated
those cities with a temple of the imperial cult, and those with
more than one were entitled to declare themselves vecoicopog
twice or even thrice.
It is obvious on the face of it that being a metropolis and
being a first city are rather similar distinctions, but they were
not altogether trivial since they indicated the placement of
city representatives in ceremonial events where the cities of
the province were on display. The orator Aelius Aristides
alludes to the phenomenon of Tcpooieta in memorable lines:
Come let me describe those cities which now vie for first place and
which are the greatest source of strife, no more through their fault,
as I should say, than through that of all the other people who have
taken sides with them. For everyone wishes to revile the other
cities as much as he can on behalf of the city to which he happens
to be favorably disposed.7
5
Sencer §ahin, Bithynische Studien/Bithynia Incelemeleri (Cologne, 1978), pp. 18-19
and 85-6.
6
Sardis vn.i, no. 63:rcpa)xr|<;'EXXadoq Kai |ir|xpo7i6A,£C0(; xfjc; 'Aaia<; Kai Au5ia<;
d7iaar|<; Kai 5ig vecoKopou x©v EsPaaxcov Kaxd xd b6y\iaxa xf\q iepdq
xoo. For the formulae, see also nos. 64 and 67-70.
7
Aristid., Orat. 23.12 (Keil).

87
 Appendix 4

Metropolis was the more exclusive category, and Dio

Chrysostom even tried to resolve the differences between
Nicomedia and Nicaea by suggesting that, although only one
could be a metropolis in the late first century AD, both could
enjoy the title of first city or 7cp6xr| TTO^K;.8 The controversies
over titles became even more intense and complex in the
generations after Dio Chrysostom, as can be seen in a famous
letter of Antoninus Pius in which the emperor attempted to
mediate the not inconsiderable claims of Ephesus, Pergamum,
and Smyrna at the same time. Pius's letter was obviously of
such general interest that no less than three copies of it have
turned up amid the remains of Roman Ephesus.9
One reason, insufficiently appreciated, for the alarming
growth in the competition for titles in the second century AD
was the apparently deliberate change in Roman policy toward
the status of metropolis. The word meant, of course, simply
"mother city," and unofficially it could be used by any place
that had dispatched colonies abroad. Tyre in Phoenicia could
boast of its glorious past in colonizing the West by proclaim-
ing itself a mother city.10 Similarly, Miletus, which was never
an official metropolis recognized by the Roman government,
could nonetheless call itself the "metropolis of many and
great cities in Pontus and Egypt and many other places in the
inhabited world."11 But the official title metropolis, as it
appeared on coins and in the formal titulature of a city, was
strictly controlled by the Roman government. In the first
century AD it was evidently limited, after petition through
diplomatic channels, to one city in a province. That would
naturally be the principal or capital city. Dio Chrysostom, in
his attempt to mediate between Nicomedia and Nicaea,

8
Dio Chrys., Orat. 38.39.
9
Inschr. Kleinasiens, hereafter IK, Eph. 1489,1489A, 1490 (SIG3 849).
10
Inschr. Didyma, ed. Rehm, no. 151.
11
CIG 2878, Le Bas-Waddington, Inscr. grecques et latines recueillies en Asie Mineure,

88
 Asia, Aphrodisias, and the Lyon Martyrium

reflected this restriction when he made his paradoxical sug-

gestion that, although only one city could be metropolis, two
might perhaps befirst.As late as the reign of Nerva, the city of
Beroea in Macedonia achieved by diplomacy the right to
maintain sole possession of the title of metropolis against the
claims of another, rival city, presumably Pella. An inscription
refers to the privilege of displaying the title as TO xfjc; |ir|Tpo-
noXscoq &^ico|xa ("the distinction of metropolis").12
There is, in fact, no certain violation of the principle of one
official metropolis per province in the Roman empire before
the reign of Hadrian. From that reign onward multiple metro-
polises begin to appear in the various provinces of the eastern
empire. A curious notice in the biography of Hadrian in the
Augustan History seems to reflect the emperor's interest in
distributing the title of metropolis more widely. There it is
reported that Hadrian contemplated at one stage separating
Syria from Phoenice so that Antioch would no longer be the
metropolis of so many cities. In other words, what seems to
underlie this proposal is the old principle of one metropolis
per province, which would compel the separation of a single
province into two in order to create two metropolises in place
of one. But Hadrian, as the epigraphic material proves, obvi-
ously and wisely preferred to lift the restriction rather than to
carve up the eastern provinces into increasingly smaller units
in order to honor more cities.13
In many cases it seems clear that Hadrian did, however,
take into account the natural regional divisions of the
provinces, divisions which themselves could be represented
in Greek unofficially by the word STtapxeuxi. In an inscription
of AD 119-20 at Jerash, at the beginning of Hadrian's reign,
Antioch could be called the metropolis of the four Syrian
87iapx£iai, which we might translate loosely as "provincial
12
SEG 17.315 (Bull. epig. 1971.400).
13
G. W. Bowersock, "Hadrian and Metropolis/' Bonner Historia-Augusta-
Colloquium 1982/1983 (Bonn, 1985), pp. 75-88, with reference to HA, Hadr. 14.1.

89
 Appendix 4

regions."14 Not much later, when additional metropolises are

established in Syria, the new cities with the title seem to
represent those very ercapxeiai over which Antioch had for-
merly presided. These are Samosata in Commagene, Tyre in
Phoenice, and Damascus in Coele Syria, all in addition to
Antioch itself with its dominant role in the limestone massif of
the Belus. We have thus four metropolises for the four

By the reign of Antoninus Pius the transformation that took

place under Hadrian becomes fully documented in several
eastern provinces.15 In Asia both Ephesus and Pergamum are
now metropolises, in Bithynia both Nicaea and Nicomedia, in
Pontus the cities of Amaseia, Neo-Caesarea, and Nicopolis;
and in Lycia no fewer than five cities enjoyed the title of
metropolis. These are Xanthos, Patara, Tlos, Myra, and Tel-
messos. By the end of the century even some tribal units have
their own metropolises, such as the Moccadenoi of Asia.
Antoninus Pius's letter implies that the new liberality of the
second century in bestowing the title of metropolis had been
expected to ease the tensions between cities, although it had
obviously not always achieved that objective. In Asia in par-
ticular, the quarrels among Ephesus, Pergamum, and Smyrna
left completely out of account the claims of the great regional
divisions of the province, such as Lydia, Phrygia, and Caria.
This concentration on the problems of the coastal cities of Asia
at the expense of the interior was bound to cause problems
sooner or later. As things turned out, it was sooner.
A remarkable new title "first metropolis of Caria" turned up
on two inscriptions from the facade of the temple of Apollo at
Klaros. Jeanne and Louis Robert discovered these texts among
the many hundreds of inscriptions along the Sacred Way at
Klaros during the course of their excavations there in the early
14
C. B. Welles, in C. M. Kraehling, Gerasa: City of the Decapolis (New Haven, 1938),
p. 399, no. 53,11. 4-5 [also SEG 7.847].
15
See documentation provided in Bowersock, "Hadrian and Metropolis."
 Asia, Aphrodisias, and the Lyon Martyrium

1950s. In an article in 1957 Louis Robert made reference to the

phrase "first metropolis of Caria" in an inscription recording a
delegation to Apollo of Klaros from the city of Aphrodisias:
'Ac^poSeiaicov ifjq np&xr\q \ir\TponoXE(oq xr\q Kapiaq.16 Inas-
much as the hundreds of texts recording delegations to the
oracle mention magistrates at the shrine, whose dates can be
determined within a range of one or two years, it was possible
to fix the designation of Aphrodisias to the decade of 170 to
180. I can report here, through the courtesy of Mme Robert,
that his own notes on one of the two texts deduce a more
precise date of 171-172. The title is utterly unexampled and
unexpected.
Several texts from Aphrodisias much later - in the fourth
century AD - show the city as a metropolis of Caria at the time
when there was a Diocletianic province that bore the name
Caria.17 In the previous century, the third century AD, we now
know, thanks to the excellent researches of Charlotte Roueche
on the new inscriptions from Aphrodisias, that, as early as the
time of Philip the Arab in the middle of the century, a new
province of Phrygia and Caria had come into existence,
carved out of the old province of Asia.18 But during the
lifetime of the province of Phrygia and Caria, Aphrodisias is
not yet actually attested as a metropolis (although it is more
than likely to have been one). For the decade of the 170s,
when it has always been assumed that the province of Asia
was of the size that had been traditional since the beginning of
the empire, a title such as first metropolis of Caria is par-
ticularly surprising.
16
REG 70 (1957), 370, n. 4, = OMS 3.1487, n. 4. In this reference L. Robert cites
only one of the two inscriptions of Aphrodisias as "metropolis of Caria." Both
are unpublished.
17
C. Roueche, Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity (London, 1989), p. 45, no. 23 and p. 56,
no. 32.
18
C. Roueche\ "Rome, Asia and Aphrodisias in the Third Century," JRS 71 (1981),
103-20 (esp. 118, n. 99). Cf. Images of Authority, Papers presented to Joyce
Reynolds, Suppl. vol. 16 of Cambridge Philological Society (Cambridge, 1989),
p. 218 and n. 99 (on pp. 226-7).
 Appendix 4

For one thing, Aphrodisias lies at the very northern edge of

Caria; and, while it might seem a suitable metropolis for a
province of Phrygia and Caria together, it would appear to be
somewhat oddly situated for a metropolis in Caria alone. For
those few scholars who have reflected on the institutional
organization of Caria in this period, Stratonicea further south
seemed a much better candidate. It is more centrally located,
and there is one inscription in which it is named simply
"metropolis of Caria."19 It was to this evidence that Charlotte
Roueche had recourse when she faced the problem in a
footnote to her excellent article on the third-century province
of Phrygia and Caria. She noted that the title metropolis was
used of Aphrodisias at Klaros in the 170s and then did not
appear again until the fourth century. "Stratonicea," she
wrote, "is more widely attested as metropolis" - although it
must be said it is attested only once, which is scarcely more
widely - and "had played a more important part in the history
of Caria, and is more centrally located in the province."20 This
inscription from Stratonicea requires a closer look.
The text is a decree of the people in honor of a priest of the
imperial cult and his wife. In the second line the city is called
autochthonous and metropolis of Caria, xfj<; aoioxOovoc; Kai
|ir|Tpo7r6>,ecGc; ifjq Kapia<;. The original editor, Hatzfeld,
working from a copy of Cousin, had deduced a date for this
text in the latter part of the first century AD entirely on the
basis of the family names. Hatzfeld suggested a genealogy of
families attested in inscriptions of the city, although he recog-
nized perfectly well that this was the most fragile of recon-
structions. What we now know about restrictions on the title
metropolis in the first century AD would naturally make such a
dating suspect in any case. But, fortunately, archaeologists
who have reexamined the temple of the imperial cult at
Stratonicea have concluded that it cannot be dated with any
19
IK, Stratonikeia no. 15 (SEG 4.262).
20
Roueche, "Rome, Asia and Aphrodisias/' p. 118, n. 99.

92
 Asia, Aphrodisias, and the Lyon Martyrium

probability before the reign of Hadrian. This means that the

inscription in honor of priests of the cult must certainly be
after that date.
Apart from the text at Klaros, there is no other attestation of
the title metropolis for the region of Caria in either the second
or the third centuries AD. Since Aphrodisias calls itself the first
metropolis, and Stratonicea is simply a metropolis, we must
naturally ask whether or not these two inscriptions are
actually contemporaneous. In fact, the editor of the inscrip-
tions of Stratonicea in the Cologne corpus of inscriptions of
Asia Minor, £etin §ahin, has now proposed a new stemma for
the family of the priests in the inscription we are considering.
Without regard to the problem of the title of metropolis, he
has created a series of four generations from the time in which
these priests received the family name of Flavius.21 Hence the
priests would be pretty squarely located in the period of
Marcus Aurelius, exactly the period indicated by the date on
the Klaros text. Accordingly there are converging reasons for
removing the Stratonicea text from the first century AD and
placing it, in all probability, in the 160s or 170s.
Our attention is thus directed to the time before, during,
and just after the Parthian wars of Lucius Verus. This would
appear to be the time of the separation of the territory of Caria
into an independently recognized unit with its own metro-
polis. Such a reorganization at this date can hardly be an
accident, and it can be satisfactorily integrated into a pattern
of administrative changes that reflect the imperial arrange-
ments for conduct of the war. In about 165, on the eve of
Lucius Verus's expedition, the province of Bithynia-Pontus,
through which lay an important communication route with
the East, was removed from the control of the senate. Since
the days of Augustus, Bithynia-Pontus had been administered
by a praetorian proconsul in the apportionment of provinces

21
See (Jetin §ahin in IK, Stratonikeia, on no. 15.

93
 Appendix 4

allotted to the senate as opposed to those in the power of the

emperor. Obviously in order to ensure a tighter control of the
area because of its strategic importance, Marcus Aurelius
brought the province into the orbit of his own imperial
provinces, and he repaid the senate by transferring from the
imperial administration the province of Lycia-Pamphylia,
which now became a senatorial possession. This trade, which
is clearly reflected in the epigraphic evidence for the gover-
nors of the two areas, was also recorded by Cassius Dio,
although it has been transmitted to us in a miserable and
misplaced Byzantine excerpt.22 Nonetheless, it is clear that
Dio recognized that the emperor intended to maintain the
balance between senatorial and imperial provinces when he
took over Bithynia-Pontus. Other rearrangements in Asia
Minor at this time may also be expected in connection with
the Parthian campaign. The sudden emergence of Caria as
some kind of distinct administrative unit can best be
explained in this way.
A number of supporting documents tend to reinforce the
notion that the interior of Asia was reorganized so as to give
new prominence to the traditional ethnic regions of Anatolia.
Let us now consider several problematic cases that have never
been brought together for comparison before. In the light of
what we have deduced about Caria, they acquire an unexpec-
ted significance.
First an inscription from Hierapolis in Asia, not far away
from Aphrodisias but already on the borders of Phrygia: the
text honors a certain Publius Aelius Zeuxidemus Aristus Zeno,
whose father had been a high priest of Asia and whose son
was to be the celebrated sophist Aelius Antipater.23 Since the
father probably received his Roman citizenship at the hands
22
D . M a g i e , Roman Rule in Asia Minor (Princeton, 1950), 1.663 a n ( i n - 1 5 3 3 ( b u t cf.
PIR2, L 231 o n Licinius Priscus).
23
IGR rv 819, ai)vf|yopo[v x]oC £v <J>poyi[qi xa(i]i8iou [icai] TOO £V 9 Aa[ia]. Cf.
H.-G. Pflaum, Les carrieres procuratoriennes tquestres 1 (i960), p. 550, n o . 205.

94
 Asia, Aphrodisias, and the Lyon Martyrium

of Hadrian and the son was among the most important intel-
lectuals of the time of Septimius Severus, it is apparent that
the career of Zeuxidemus Aristus Zeno must fall roughly in
the time of Marcus Aurelius. The inscription from Hierapolis
records that he was an advocatusfisciin both Phrygia and Asia.
This is a surprising item, since hitherto any post in Phrygia
would have constituted employment within the province of
Asia. The correlation of the two in conjunction can only mean,
as Pflaum observed, that at this time, under the reign of
Marcus Aurelius, there must have been two distinct treasuries
in the province of Asia - one for Phrygia and one for Asia
proper.
Next let us turn to the testimony in three inscriptions for the
procuratorial career of one Q. Cosconius Fronto who, among
a mass of financial posts in the empire, is recorded to have
administered the five per cent tax on inheritances per Asiam,
Lyciam, Phrygiam, Galatiam.24 Once again we have the curious
phenomenon of Phrygia's being registered separately and in
parallel with Asia, even though one would have thought that
Phrygia was inside of Asia. Cosconius Fronto concluded his
busy career with an equestrian governorship of Sardinia, a
province which was entrusted to the equestrians in the time of
Commodus. To determine how soon after the reassignment of
Sardinia to equestrians Fronto undertook this responsibility,
we can have recourse to his prior procuratorial service, identi-
fied as service under Augusti, that is to say joint emperors.
Pflaum opted for Septimius Severus and Caracalla, but
equally possible, and I now believe more probable, are Marcus
Aurelius and Lucius Verus. We would thus have another
example of Phrygia as a procuratorial unit independent from
Asia.
Another remarkable text is an inscription from Phrygia itself
24
CIL x, 7583 (Sardinia), 7584 (Cagliari, where Pamphyliam appears in the place
of Asiam), 7860 (Sardinia). See, on these texts, H.-G. Pflaum, Les carrieres
procuratoriennes tquestres 2 (i960), p. 706, no. 264.

95
 Appendix 4

that records the procuratorial career of a freedman of the

emperor, a certain M. Aurelius Marcio.25 Among his various
financial posts is the surprising procuratorship of provincia
Phrygia. The only clue we have to the date of this man's career
is his name, Marcus Aurelius Augusti libertus Marcio, but that
is good enough in the context of the other evidence we are
deploying here. Yet again we clearly have an independent
procuratorial district of Phrygia in, it would appear, the days
of Marcus Aurelius.
From Sardis come several epigraphic attestations of an
extraordinary title for that city at a date that has convention-
ally been assumed, after the judgment of the original editors,
to be in the third century.26 The city is called 7tptf)Tr|<;
'EXkaboc, Kai |ir|Tpo7i6^ecD<; xfjc; 'Aaiaq Kai AuStac; anaa^q
Kai Sic; vecoicopou xcav EePaaicov icaid id Soyjiaia xfjc; iepaq
ai)VK^f|xou. Here too we find the same curious phenomenon
of an ethnically defined territory, namely Lydia, separated out
from Asia, even though it is part of the province of Asia as we
know it. The third-century date of the inscription was entirely
based on the belief that Sardis did not receive its second
neocorate, which is recorded in this text, until the very end of
the second century. (It first appears on coins in the time of
Clodius Albinus.) But thirty-six years ago, in a revelation
typical of this ever growing field, an inscription turned up in
the Sardis excavations that completely overthrew this dating
of Sardis's second neocorate. On a statue base in honor of
none other than Lucius Verus himself the city proudly dis-
plays its second neocorate: AoxoKpdiopa Kaiaapa Aup.
'AvTOOvivov Oufjpov SePaaxov f| p' vecoicopo? Zap8iavc5v
noXxq.27 Hence already in the 160s Sardis possessed that
honor and perhaps even received it from that emperor. The
implications of this discovery for the title of the city as
25 26
ILS 1477. Sardis vn.i, no. 63.
27
Bull. epig. 1962.290 [G. M. A. Hanfmann, Archaeology 12 (1959), pp. 57-8; BASOR
1960, pp. 7-10], found in 1958.

96
 Asia, Aphrodisias, and the Lyon Martyrium

reflected in inscriptions that had long since been known have

never been drawn. They mean quite unambiguously that this
title of neokoros for the second time must no longer be reserved
to the third century. It is precisely a title of the time of Marcus
and Lucius. In other words we are once more in the period of
the Parthian wars, when we find again the separation of Asia
from a part of itself. In this case we have Asia and Lydia.
When all these documents are taken together, we are com-
pelled to acknowledge that in the fifteen years or so between
165 and 180, when Marcus died, the interior parts of the
province of Asia were reorganized and given a separate
identity according to their traditional ethnic character. Caria,
Lydia, and Phrygia are all individually recognizable. They can
be seen to be administered, at least within the procuratorial
system, by administrators who are distinct from those in other
parts of Asia. This arrangement undoubtedly permitted a
much closer control over the movement of supplies, funds,
and even troops through the Anatolian high roads to the east
by way of the Maeander Valley, through the borders of Caria
and Phrygia as well as by way of Sardis further north. There is
no reason to think that these regions were made totally
independent provinces; but, if Phrygia could be called a prov-
incia, as it is in the inscription of the freedman Marcio, it is not
unlikely that Caria, Lydia, and Phrygia felt themselves equally
distinct (rather like Quebec in Canada). Hence we may now
understand the appearance of metropolises for at least one of
these regions. By a fortunate accident of survival we can see
that there were even two metropolises in Caria, Stratonicea
and Aphrodisias, and that Aphrodisias had the precedence by
being named the first metropolis of Caria. That latter city may
have been farther from the heartland of Caria, but it was much
nearer to the main road to the east.
What is so extraordinary in the arrangements that come
gradually into view, as we try to understand the Klaros
inscription that attests this first metropolis of Caria, is the

97
 Appendix 4

parallel between the tentative arrangements of Lucius Verus

and Marcus Aurelius and the actual provincial arrangements
that took shape in the third century and later under Dio-
cletian and the Tetrarchs. We can observe already in the
second century, for good prudential reasons, the breaking up
of larger provinces into smaller units, and the Roman govern-
ment's exploitation of the system of honorific titles in the
stabilizing of the newly fragmented systems. The creation of
smaller local units of administration allowed for the natural
proliferation of local pride and, at the same time, the expres-
sion of regional autonomies that had been forcibly suppressed
in the old traditional province of Asia.
That Marcus and Lucius should have anticipated all this
and provided a kind of trial run for the province of Caria and
Phrygia that subsequently took shape in the mid third
century, to say nothing of the fragmented Asia Minor that
emerged later still under the Tetrarchs, is a tribute to their
astuteness and originality. So when we look again at the
prescript to the martyrium of Lyon, it is amply revealed as a
precious document of its time, AD 177. What once appeared to
be a reflection of the work of the Tetrarchs and the age of
Eusebius, who preserved the document, emerges as another
proof of a prescient anticipation of those later arrangements in
the epoch of the Antonines.
 Select bibliography

Anderson, G., The Second Sophistic (London, 1993)

Barnes, T. D., "Pre-Decian Ada Martyrum," Journal of Theological Studies
19 (1968), 509-31
Tertullian (Oxford, 1971)
Bauer, W. K. and B. Aland, Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament, 6th edn
(Berlin, 1988)
Baumeister, T., Die Anfange der Theologie des Martyriums (Munster, 1980)
Bommes, K., Weizen Gottes. Untersuchungen zur Theologie des Martyriums
bei Ignatius von Antiochien (Cologne-Bonn, 1976)
Bowersock, G. W., Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1969)
"Les e'glises de Lyon et de Vienne: relations avec l'Asie," Les martyrs de
Lyon, colloques internationaux du CNRS - no. yj^ (Paris, 1978),
PP- 249-56
"Hadrian and Metropolis/' Bonner Historia-Augusta-Colloquium 1982/
1983 (Bonns, 1985), pp. 75-88
Fiction as History: Nero to Julian, Sather Lectures (California, 1994)
Broughton, T. R. S., "Roman Asia," An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome,
ed. Tenney Frank, vol. 4 (Baltimore, 1938)
Brox, Norbert, Zeuge und Martyrer: Untersuchungen zur friihchristlichen
Zeugnis-Terminologie (Munich, 1961)
Cartledge, P., P. Millett, and S. Todd (eds.), Nomos: Essays in Athenian
Law, Politics and Society (Cambridge, 1990)
Clarke, G. W., The Octavius of Marcus Minucius Felix (New York, 1974)
The Letters of St. Cyprian, vol. 1 (New York, 1984); vol. 4 (1989)
Coleman, Kathleen M., "Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as
Mythological Enactments," JRS 80 (1990), 44-73
Coles, Revel A., Reports of Proceedings in Papyri, Papyrologica Bruxellensia
4 (Brussels, 1966)

99
 Select bibliography

Dehandschutter, Boudewijn, "The Martyrium Polycarpi: A Century of

Research/' Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt n.27.1 (1993),
pp. 485-522
Delehaye, H., "Martyr et confesseur," Analecta Bollandiana 39 (1921),
20-49
Les passions des martyrs et les genres litteraires (Brussels, 1921)
de Ste Croix, G. E. M., "Why Were the Early Christians Persecuted?/'
Past and Present no. 26 (1963), 6-38
Devos, P., "Meya E&ppaxov chez Saint fipiphane," Analecta Bollandiana
108 (1990), 293-306
Dillon, J. M., The Middle Platonists (London, 1977)
Dodds, E. R., Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge, 1965)
Donaldson, I., The Rapes ofLucretia: A Myth and its Transformation (Oxford,
1982)
Doring, K., Exemplum Socratis (Wiesbaden, 1979)
Doughty, C , Travels in Arabia Deserta, 3rd edn (New York, 1921)
Dupont-Sommer, A., he quatrieme livre des Machabees (Paris, 1939)
Durckheim, E., he suicide, 3rd edn (Paris, 1930)
Frankfurter, David, "The Cult of the Martyrs in Egypt before Con-
stantine," Vigiliae Christianae 48 (1994), 25-47
Frend, W. H. C , Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Blackwell,
1965)
Griffin, M. T., Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics (Oxford, 1976)
Grise, Y., he suicide dans la Rome antique (Montreal/Paris, 1983)
Habicht, Chr., 2. Makkabaerbuch, Judische Schriften aus hellenistisch-
romischer Zeit, vol. 1 (Giitersloh, 1976)
Hanfmann, G. M. A., "Socrates and Christ," Harvard Studies in Classical
Philology 60 (1951), 205-33
Hirzel, R., "Der Selbstmord," Archiv fiir Religionswissenschaft 11 (1908),
75-104, 243-84, 417-76 (reprinted Darmstadt, 1966)
Holford-Strevens, L., Aulus Gellius (London, 1988)
Knopf, R., G. Kriiger and T. Ruhbach, Ausgewahlte Martyrerakten
(Tubingen, 1965)
Kraehling, C. M., Geresa: City of the Decapolis (New Haven, 1938)
Lane, E. W., An Arabic-English Lexicon (London, 1872)
Lane Fox, Robin, Pagans and Christians (New York, 1987)
Magie, D., Roman Rule in Asia Minor (Princeton, 1950)
McManners, J. (ed.), Oxford History of Christianity (Oxford, 1990)

100
 Select bibliography

Murder, Charles, "Ou en est la question d'Ignace d'Antioche? Bilan d'un

siecle de recherches 1870-1988," Aufstieg und Niedergang der romisch-
en Welt n.27.1 (1993), pp. 359-484
Musurillo, H., Acts of the Pagan Martyrs (Oxford, 1954)
Nutton, V., "Herodes and Gordian," Latomus 29 (1970), 725
Pagels, E., Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York, 1988)
Perler, O., "Das vierte Makkabaerbuch, Ignatius von Antiochien, und
die altesten Martyrerberichte," Revista di archeologia cristiana 25
(1949), 47-72
Potter, D., "Martyrdom and Spectacle," in Theater and Society in the
Classical World, ed. R. Scodel (Ann Arbor, 1993)
Price, S. R. F., Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor
(Cambridge, 1984)
Robert, Louis, Les gladiateurs dans VOrient grec (Paris, 1940)
"La titulature de Nic£e et de Nicomedie: la gloire et la haine," HSCP 81
(1977)/1-39 [ = Opera Minora Selecta, 6.211-49]
"Une vision de Perpdtue martyre a Carthage en 203," Comptes rendus
de VAcad. des Inscr. et Belles-Lettres (1982), 228-76 [ = Opera Minora
Selecta, 5.791-839]
Le martyre de Pionios, ed. G. W. Bowersock, and C. P. Jones (Dumbarton
Oaks, 1994)
Rordorf, W., "Zum Problem des Grofien Sabbats im Polykarp- und
Pioniosmartyrium," Pietas: Festschrift fiir Bernhard Kotting, Jahrb. f.
Ant. u. Christ. Erganzungsbd. 8 (Miinster, 1980), pp. 245-9
Roueche, C, "Rome, Asia and Aphrodisias in the Third Century," JRS 71
(1981), 103-20
Aphrodisias in Late Antiquity (London, 1989)
"Floreat Perge," Images of Authority, Papers presented to Joyce
Reynolds, Suppl. vol. 16 of Cambridge Philological Society (Cam-
bridge, 1989), pp. 205-28
Safrai, S., "Martyrdom in the Teachings of the Tannaim," in T. C. de
Kruijf and H.v.d. Sandt, Sjaloom (Arnhem, 1983), pp. 145-64
§ahin, Sencer, Bithynische Studien/Bithynia Incelemeleri (Cologne, 1978)
Schmitt-Pantel, Pauline (ed.), A History of Women in the West, vol. 1
(Cambridge, Mass., 1992)
Shaw, B. D., "The Passion of Perpetua," Past and Present no. 139 (1993),
3-45

101
 Select bibliography

Simon, M , Verus Israel: etude sur les relations entre Chretiens et Juifs dans
VEmpire romain (Paris, 1948; with supplement 1964)
Stadter, P. A., Plutarch's Historical Methods (Cambridge, Mass., 1965)
Thomasson, B., Laterculi Praesidum 1 (Goteborg, 1984)
van Henten, J. W. (ed.), Die Entstehung derjudischen Martyrologie (Leiden,
1989)
"Datierung und Herkunft des vierten Makkabaerbuches," Tradition
and Reinterpretation in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, Essays in
Honour of J. C. H. Lebram, ed. van Henten and de Jonge (Leiden,
1986), pp. 136-49
"The Martyrs as Heroes of the Christian People. Some remarks on the
continuity between Jewish and Christian martyrology, with pagan
analogies" (forthcoming in a volume on early Christian martyrdom,
ed. Lamderigts, in the BETL series, Louvain)
van Hooff, A., From Autothanasia to Suicide: Self-Killing in Classical Anti-
quity (London, 1990)
Vogt, H. J., "Ignatius von Antiochien. Das Leiden als Zeugnis und
Heilsweg," DerMensch in Grenzsituation, ed. E. Olshausen (Stuttgart,
1984), pp. 49-71
von Campenhausen, H., Die Idee des MartyHums in der alten Kirche
(Gottingen, 1936)
Wirszubski, Ch., Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic
and Early Principate (Cambridge, i960)
Wyrwa, Dietmar, Die christliche Platonaneignung in den Stromateis des
Clemens von Alexandrien (Berlin, 1983)

102
 Index

acta, 38 Aurelius Marcio, M., 96-7

Acts, of the Apostles, 14
Aelius Antipater, 94 Barnes, Timothy, 44
Aelius Aristides, 47-8, 87 Baumeister, T., 26-7
Africa, North, 2,18, 26, 41, 43 beasts, wild, 50, 59
Agape, martyr, 38 Beelphagor, 47
Agathonike, martyr, 59 Belus, 90
agdnothetis, 51 Beroea, in Macedonia, 89
Akiva, Rabbi, 9 biothanes, 31, 71-2
Alexandria, in Egypt, 41, 48-9 Bithynia, 80, 86, 90
Amaseia, 90 Bithynia-Pontus, province, 93-4
Ambrose, St., 78 Bommes, K., yj
amphitheater, 34, 36, 42, 50-2, 54-5, 61 Bonhoffer, Dietrich, 20-1
Antioch, in Syria, 6, 89 brahman, 69
Antiochus IV, 10 bribes, 32
Antipas, in the Apocalypse, 14,15,16 Broughton, T. R. S., 86
antipsuchos, 80 Byzantium, 25
Anti-Semitism, 30
Antisthenes, Cynic, 64, 68 Caesarea Maritima, 41
Antoninus Pius, emperor, 88, 90 Caligula (Gaius), emperor, 80
Aphrodisias, in Caria, 91-4 Campenhausen, von, H., 8
Apocalypse, Book of Revelation, 14 Caracalla, emperor, 95
Apocrypha, of the Bible, 10,11 Caria, 85, 90, 91-4, 97
Apollo, 9, 20, 90-1 Carpus, martyr, 38
Apollonius, martyr, 9, 38, 39 Carthage, 2, 28, 32, 36, 41, 43, 51, 53,
Apollonius, of Tyana, 16 56, 61, 62
apologia, 70-1 Cassius Dio, 80-1, 94
Arabs, 19 Cato, younger, 64
Armenian, 29, 39 Celsus, anti-Christian author, 3, 4
Arrius Antoninus, proconsul, in., 59, Ceres, 36
64,66 Chione, martyr, 38
Asia, province, 1, 2, 44, 48, 85-98 Christ, see Jesus Christ
passim Cicero, 63
Asia Minor, 2, 6,13,17,18, 26, 56, 64, Cirta, 52
79. 81, 93 Clement, of Alexandria, 4,10,12, 54-5,
Athanasius, St., 80, 83 65-71
Athens, 69 Clementine Recognitions, 24
athletes, 50, 33 Cleopatra, 63
Auden, W. H., 21 Clodius Albinus, 96
Augustine, St., 39, 63, 65-6, 73-4 cognitio, 42, 33
Augustus, emperor, 93 Coles, Revel A., 37

103
 Index

Commodus, emperor, 1, 95 Hadrian, emperor, 89, 90, 93, 94

Constantine, emperor, 38, 41 Hatzfeld, J., 92
Corinth, 35 Heliodorus, novelist, 24
Cosconius Fronto, Q., 95 Henten, J. W. van, 37, 79
Cynics, 64, 68 Heraclitus, 63
Cyprian, 18, 38, 43, 44, 62, 73 hermaphrodites, 67
Herodes Atticus, 47
Damascus, 90 Hierapolis, in Asia, 94-5
Danube, 42 Homer, 47
Delehaye, H., 8 homologia (confession), 67, 70, 74
Delphi, 9 Hooff, Anton van, 62
Dido, 63, 64
Dio Chrysostom, 86, 88 Ignatius, of Antioch, 6, 7,12,15,16,17,
Diocletian, emperor, 42, 91, 98 61, 65, 77-81
Diogenes, Cynic, 64 Irenaeus, 35
Dodds, E. R., 32-3, 36 Islam, 19
Domitian, emperor, 16
Donatists, 73 Jacobus, martyr, 52, 69
Doughty, Charles, 20 Jerash, 89
Dupont-Sommer, Andre', 79 Jerusalem, temple at, 10-11
Durckheim, Emile, 62 Jesus Christ, 13,14,16, 30, 39, 44, 52,
Durostorum, 42 53, 54, 71-2, 74, 75-6, 77, 78
Jews, 5, 8,10-13, 29-31, 37, 44, 45,
Easter, 83 47-8, 54, 56, 72, 83
Egypt, 3, 88 John, St., 14
Eirene (Irene), martyr, 38, 53 John Chrysostom, 78-9
Eleazar, in Maccabees, 11-12 Judaism, 26, 28
Empedocles, 63 Julian, apostate emperor, 24, 39
Endor, witch of, 48 Justin Martyr, 36, 41
Ephesus, 88, 90
Epictetus, 16-17 kenodoxia, 69
Epiphanius, 83 Klaros, 90-4, 97
Euctemon, 29, 53
Euplus, martyr, 3 Lactantius, 4
Eusebius, church historian, 3, 75, 80, Lambaesis, 52
98 Lane Fox, Robin, 6
Lawrence, martyr, 60
Favorinus, of Aries, 67 Lent, 83-4
fiction, 24-5 Lucian, satirist and essayist, 61, 66,
Flossenburg, 20-1 80-1
Frend, W. H. C, 26 Lucretia, 63, 64, 73-4
Lycia, 90
Gaius, transcriber, 35 Lycia-Pamphylia, province, 94
Galen, i8n. Lydia, 85, 90, 96-7
Gallienus, emperor, 38, 43 Lyon, and its martyrs, 17, 41, 50, 60,
Gelasius, of Cyzicus, 76 75, 85, 98
Germanicus, martyr, 59
Geta, emperor, 48 Maccabees, 7, 9; Books of the
Gibbon, Edward, 4-6 Maccabees, 9-13,17, 77-81
giraffes, 67 Macedonia, 89
gladiators, 42, 51 Maeander, valley of, 97
Gomorrah, 47 Marcus Aurelius, emperor, 1-3, 85,
Gospels, 26 93-8
Greece, 26, 41 Marianus, martyr, 52, 69
Gregory, of Nyssa, 76, 79 Masada, 9

104
 Index

Maturus, martyr, 50 Plato, 8, 65, 66, 70

Metropolis, significance and Plotinus, 65
distribution of title, 88-93 Plutarch, 65
Miletus, 65, 88 Polemo, sophist, 47
Moccadenoi, 90 Polycarp, martyr, 13,17, 30, 35, 44, 45,
Montanus, heretic and Montanism, 2, 46, 48, 49, 59, 83, 85-6
18, 54, 64 polytheists, see pagans
Moses, 47 Pontus, 88, 90
Mucius Scaevola, 63, 64 Price, Simon, 86
Muhammad, 74 prostitution, 53-4
Munier, Charles, jy prdteia, 87
munus, 34, 51 protocols, of interrogation, 35-8, 54
Myra, 90 Prudentius, 23-4, 60
Pythagoreans, 16
nakedness, 36, 53
Nebuchadnezzar, 5 qidduS ha-shem, 9, 37
necromancy, 31, 48 Quebec, 97
Nemeseis, 29, 47, 53
Neo-Caesarea, 90 Revelation, Book of, see Apocalypse
Neoplatonism, 65, 66 Robert, Jeanne, 90-1
Nero, emperor, 64 Robert, Louis, 32-3, 51, 90
Nerva, emperor, 89 Rome, 41, 61
New Testament, 12-16, 75, 79 Roueche", Charlotte, 91-2
Nicaea, 80, 87, 88, 90
Nicomedia, 86, 88, 90 Sabbath, Great, 48, 82-4
Nicopolis, in Pontus, 90 Sabina, consort of Pionios, 53, 59-60
notarius, 38 Sahara, 41
novels, ancient, 24-5 §ahin, £etin, 93
Numidia, 52 Salonike (Thessalonica), 38, 41, 53
Samosata, 80, 90
Olympia, 63, 69 Samuel, prophet, 31, 48
Origen, Christian apologist, 3, 4, 65, 70 Sardinia, 95
Sardis, 87, 96-7
pagans, 44, 46, 61, 62-4, 66, 80, 83 Saturus, 34
Palestine, 28, 54, 56 Saul, 31
Pamphylus, martyr, 60 Scillitan martyrs, 36
Papylus, martyr, 45-6, 50, 56 Seleucids, 10
Patara, 90 Seneca, younger, 63, 64, 65
Paul, St., 15, 45 Septimius Severus, emperor, 95
Pella, in Macedonia, 89 shahid, plur. shuMd, 19-20
Peregrinus (Proteus), 61, 63, 66, 69 Sicily, 3
Pergamum, 41, 45, 50, 56, 88, 90 Sigismund, 6
Perler, O., 26, 78-9 Slavonic, Old Church, 29, 39
Perpetua, martyr, 28, 32-4, 36, 48, 51, Smyrna, 6, 28-31, 35, 41, 47, 49, 53, 56,
53, 60-3, 86 83, 88, 90
Pflaum, H.-G., 95 Socrates, 5, 7, 8-9, 20, 35, 39
Philip, the Arab, emperor, 91 Sodom, 47
Philo, philosopher, 48-9 Solomon, 47
Philostratus, biographer, 44 stenographers, 36, 38
philotimia, 34, 51 Stephen, protomartyr, 15,16, 75-6
Phrygia, 17, 64, 85, 90, 91, 94-7 Stoics, 2,16, 64, 65, 73
Pindar, 14 Stratonicea, 92-3, 97
Pionios, martyr, 9,17, 27, 28-32, 35, 36, suggrama, 31-3, 39
38, 39, 42, 44, 46-8, 49-50, 53, 59-60, suicide, 59-74 passim
71-2, 83, 86 Sulpicius Severus, 4

105
 Index

Syria, 61, 78, 89 Tyre, in Phoenicia, 88, 90

Tarquin, 74 Utica, 62
Telmessos, 90
Terminalia, 83 Valerian, emperor, 38, 43
Tertullian, 2,17,18, 20, 36, 39, 54-6, 63, Verus, Lucius, emperor, 93, 95, 96-8
64, 65, 66, 73
testis, 19, 69 Xanthos, 90
Thecla, 76 xustarches, 51
Thessalonica, see Salonike
Thyatira, 50 Zeus, 16
Tlos, 90 Zeuxidemus Aristus Zeno, P. Aelius,
Trajan, emperor, 61 94-5

106