apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

HADRIAN. PIUS, AND MARCUS. 499
The Eastern war was not ended in a.d. 198. A fierce war too was waged in Britain
from A.D. •jo;
— no, which demanded the emperor's own presence, and he died at
York early in the next year (a.d. 21 1). This war could not have been overlooked or
ignored. Meanwhile the Christians suffered severely, as the Acts of Perpetua and
Felicitas show. The alternative is the period which was roughly coextensive with the
reign of Commodus (a.d. 180 — 192); and I agree with Hilgenfeld [Ketzergeschichte
p. l^h^, Keim {Rom. u. das Christenthum p. 638 sq), Volter (Zeitschr.f. IViss. Theol,
XXVII. 1883, p. 27), and Gorres (Jahrb. f. Protest. TJieol. 1884, pp. 234, 424 sq), in
regarding this as a far more probable solution. After the first year or two of this reign
the Christians had almost continuous quiet. The empire also was at peace. There
were indeed insignificant conflicts in a.d. 184, and the struggle in Britain afforded the
emperor an excuse for assuming the name Britannicus, but it was wholly incomparable
in magnitude or duration ^\-ith the British war of Severus. The Antimontanist
treatise therefore ^^nth which we are concerned would be written about the close of
the reign of Commodus ;
and this must be somewhere about the date which Eusebius
assigns to from it, the place which it occupies in his narrative. In this treatise the
writer addresses Avircius Marcellus as a person of authority, and states that A\-ircius
had urged him a very long time ago (e/c irXeiffTov oaov Kal lKav(j}TaTov xpofov) to write
on the subject. The mode of address is quite consistent with his being a bishop,
though he is not so st}'led.
Thus A\-ircius Marcellus would have flourished during the
reign of M. Aurelius, and might well have gone to Rome about the time (a.d. 163)
mentioned by the legend.
But when was this Life of Abercius written It assumes the existence of two
provinces of Phrj'gia, the Greater and the Lesser, distinct from Asia; or in other words
it
presupposes the redistribution of the pro%nnces under Diocletian, until whose time
Phrj'gia hal been under the jurisdiction of the proconsul of Asia. Moreover the
description of the post roads, as Ramsay has shown, points to a time after Byzantium
had become the capital of the world. Lastly ;
there is a distinct reference to certain
unjust doings of the emperor Julian.
It must therefore have been written after his
death (a.d. 363^. See Ramsay in Joiirn. of Hell. Stud. 1887, viii. p. 468 sq.
On the other hand there is no allusion to the later names of the two provinces of
Phr^-gia, as Pacatiana and Salutaris respectively. These names however appear first
at the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century. This therefore seems
to be the latest probable date. Moreover Phrygia Parva is represented as governed
by a praeses {rjyefitiv) in the Life, as it was still
governed at the date of the N'otitia
Dignitaium, but when Hierocles wrote (before A.D. 535) its governor was a cottsularis.
For these reasons Ramsay in his earlier paper ( Tlie Tale of Saint Abercius p. 347)
placed the date of the Life between a.d. 363 and a.d. 385. But in his later paper
{Cities atid Bishoprics of Phrygia p. 425 sq) he calls attention to the erasure of
IlaPXo;' in the inscription, and suggests that the word was obliterated from hatred of
the Paulician heresy about the end of the seventh century. The erasure however was
certainly made before the Life was written ;
and on this ground he abandons the
theor)' of the date propounded in his earlier paper.
But is it so certain that this erasure was a protest against the Paulicians Might
it not be aimed at the Marcionites who exalted S. Paul not less than the Paulicians
did, and whom the Life represents Abercius as confounding by his preaching Or
might not the erasure, if intentional, be due to the orthodox zeal of some one who
supposed that this companion of Abercius was the heretic Paul of Samosata It
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