apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

IGNATIUS THE MARTYR.
This favourable estimate of Trajan culminates in medieval legend.
impii, turpes, quos et ipsi damnare consuestis...Ceterum
de tot exinde principibus
ad hodiernum divinum humanumque
sapientibus edite aliquem debellatorem
Christianorum...Quales ergo leges istae
quas adversus nos soli exercent impii,
injusti, turpes, truces, vani, dementes
quas Trajanus ex parte frustratus est
vetando inquiri Christianos, quas nullus
Hadrianus, quamquam omnium curiositatum
explorator, nullus Vespasianus,
quamquam Judaeorum debellator, nullus
Pius, nullus Verus, impressit.' Lactantius
{de Mart. Persec. 3, 4) passes on
from Domitian to Decius, omitting all
the intermediate persecutions, as if thcM
had never taken place. The passage is
quoted below, p. 8, note. Eusebius
— {H.E. iii. 31 33) studiously exculpates
the memory of Trajan himself. He
cannot ignore the persecutions which
took place in this emperor's reign, but
he says that they were partial and local
(c. 31 /J-epiKus Kal Kara irdXeis, c. 33
fiepiKoiis Kar' ewapxi^o-v), and were brought
about either by an uprising of the
people or by the hostility of individual
magistrates (c. 316^ iwavaL. p. 165) the second
clause is restored verbatim from the
text of Tertullian himself, 'inquirendos
non esse, oblatos vero puniri oportere';
but Sulpicius Severus seems here to have
had the original of the Chronicon before
him (comp. Bernays Ueber die Chronik
des Sulpic. Sever, p. 46) and to have
known nothing of the qualifying antithetical
clause.
This favourable view of Trajan however,
though it predominates, more especially
in writers of reputation, is by
no means universal. As Uhlhorn remarks
{Conflict of Christianity with
Heathenistn p. 158), 'His edict was by
one party viewed as a sword, by the
other as a shield. In truth it was both.'
The authors who represent Trajan in an
unfavourable light are chiefly martyrologists
and legend-mongers, to whom this
dark shadow was necessary to give effect
to the picture. Thus in the Acts of
the Roman Acts
Ignatius, more especially
and in the Acts of Sharbil and his companions
preserved in Syriac (Moesinger
Act. Syr. Sarbel. p. 4 ;
see below p. 66),
he appears as a brutal persecutor, at
least until the receipt of Pliny's letter.
So too in the spurious letter of Tiberianus
the governor of Palestine, preserved
by John Malalas {Chron. xi. p.
•273, ed. Bonn.), and in the narrative of
John Malalas himself (p. 276 sq). Simi-
I— 2