apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

POLYCARP THE ELDER. 455
birth, as an act of piety towards those athletes who had fought and
conquered in the past, and an incentive and training for those who
should hereafter contend in the same lists.
With the death of Polycarp the sufferings of the Christians for a
time ceased. He thus, as it
were, set his seal to the persecution by his
martyrdom.
The narrative of these incidents is contained in a letter written not
long after by the Smyrnsean Church to the Christians of PhilomeHum.
The Philomelians had requested a detailed account of the events. This
letter is offered by the writers as a summary statement, such as the
circumstances allowed. With regard to Polycarp's last hours however
it is full
enough and
; any amplification, which might have been
expected or contemplated,
must have dealt with the fate of the other
sufferers. It is sent by the hands of one Marcianus ;
and as Irengeus,
who was connected with Polycarp and the Smyrngeans in early life,
is found addressing a treatise to one bearing this name, it is not unreasonable
to surmise that the same person
is meant'. The PhilomeHans
are charged to circulate the letter among
communities.
the more distant Christian
It is related by Dion Cassius that, on the day and hour when the
dagger of Stephanus ridded the world of the tyrant Domitian, Apollonius
of Tyana, then residing in Asia Minor, mounted a lofty rock, and gathering
the multitude about him, cried; 'Well done, Stephanus; excellent,
Stephanus smite the blood-stained wretch ; ;
thou hast struck, thou
hast wounded, thou hast slain'. 'This did so happen', adds the
historian gravely, 'though one disbelieve it ten thousand times over'
(tovto fxkv OUTOJS iyev€TO, Kav /xnpia/cis tis ".
aTrtoTifcrr/)
A somewhat similar
story is told of Polycarp's death. Irenaeus, then sojourning in Rome,
at the precise hour when Polycarp suffered, heard a voice as of a
trumpet saying, 'Polycarp has been martyred'. This was related, we
are told, in Irenaeus' own writings ^ The analogies of authenticated
records of apparitions seen and voices heard at a distance at the
moment of death have been too frequent in all ages to allow us to dismiss
the story at once as a pure fiction*. The statement indeed is not
^
See III. p. 398. Psychical Research, April 1883, p. 123 sq.
-
Dion Cass. Ixvii. 18. See also Phi- Other illustrations will be found in R. D.
lostr. Apoll. viii. 26. Owen's Footfalls on the Boundary of
' See the concluding paragraph of the Another World, Philadelphia i860. As
Letter of the Sv^yrna:ans%^^va.\}[\t'^o'!,- this sheet is passing through the press,
cow MS (ill. p. 402). an article on Visible Apparitions has ap-
* .Some recent examples are brought to- peared in the Nineteenth Century, July
gether in 'Ca.^ Proceedings of the Societyfor 1884, p. 68 sq, giving other curious in-