apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

41 6 EPISTLES OF S. IGNATIUS.
as I have remarked elsewhere (p. 9 sq), precludes the supposition that
Tacitus is infusing into the reign of Nero the experiences and the
language of his own day. The word ' vulgus the
', common-folk, moreover
shows that the name was not only known at that time, but was in
all mouths. Tacitus is
supported by Suetonius. Suetonius {Nero 16)
describes the Neronian persecution in the words, ' afiflicti suppliciis
Christiani'. Whence came this agreement in using a term first coined
many years after the events recorded, when both writers had grown or
were growing up to manhood Moreover Pliny, writing under Trajan
(a.d. 112), betrays no knowledge that it was a recent creation. He uses
the word again and again ;
he speaks of the ' judicial investigations
respecting the Christians' (cognitionibus de Christianis), as if they had
been going on for a long period he mentions
;
persons who had ceased
to be Christians more than twenty years; and he asks whether the
'name itself, even though no crimes are proved against a person, is
sufficient ground for condemnation'.
The
(ii) testimony of the historians is confirmed from a wholly
different quarter. A graffito has been found at Pompeii, which, if rightly
deciphered and interpreted, must be regarded as decisive. This inscription
is
given in the Corpus Inscriptiomwi Latinantm iv. 679", with
all particulars respecting the decipherment. It cannot reasonably be
questioned that the traces of the letters give hristian, and the only
word of which these letters can have formed part is 'Christianus' or
some oblique case of the same. It has been suggested indeed that
this may have been a proper name Christianus or Chrestianus ;
but no
such proper name is known to have existed, or indeed is
probable in
itself, prior to the use of the word to designate ' a follower of Christ '.
Before — a.d. 79 therefore the year in which Pompeii was destroyed— the
name was sufficiently common to be scratched on the wall of an edifice
in a small provincial town by some passer by.
I have left to the last the evidence of
(iii)
early Christian writings,
not because I entertain any doubt of the validity of this evidence, but
because it has been contested by others. No critical result relating to
1
See above, p. 50; 'nomen ipsum,
si
^
gee also Friedlander Sittengeschkhte
flagitiis careat, an flagitia cohaerentia Roms in. p. 529. The interpretations
nomini puniantur'. Pliny had treated which de Rossi and others have put on
the name alone as a sufficient ground and the context, and on other inscriptions
Trajan approved (seep. 14 sq, p. 56). found in the same house, are too shadowy
Comp. Clem. Alex. Strom, iv. 1 1 (p. 598) and fanciful to command assent. See on
5iJ}Kova-LToivvuT]fj.a.s, oiiKadLKOVs dvai Kara- this subject an article by V. Schultze
Xa^oures dXX' avrip ^ibvi^i rq} Xpiariavovs Christcninschrifl in Pompeii in Zeilschr.
e'lvai rhv^lov adiK£7v inroXa/x^dvovTes k.t.X. f. Kirchengesch. IV. p. 1-25 sq (1881).