apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

500 EPISTLE OF S. POLYCARP.
appears to me that there is still much to be said for the latter half of the fourth century
(say about a.d. 380), as the date of the Life. This same period apparently gave birth
to the spurious Life of Polycarp, which is equally lavish in the miraculous ;
and I am
disposed provisionally to attribute this biography of Abercius, if not to the same pen, at
least to the same school of hagiologers, intent on glorifying the early local saints of
these parts. But it has doubtless undergone literary revision at the hands of the
Metaphrast, like the Lives of Ignatius, so that the original style has been obliterated.
A Life of Abercius, containing the same matter as the Metaphrast's in all essential
respects, was in the hands of Clement the Hymnologer in the earlier part of the
ninth century (see Atial. Solesm. 11. p. 180 sq).
But Ramsay considers the Letter to Euxenianus to belong to an earlier date than
the Life in which it is embedded. Euxenianus resides at Hieropolis. He is an
official of high rank.
Yet he is represented as having assisted the emperor M. Aurelius
in the relief of Smyrna after the great earthquake (which really occurred A.D. 180, but
which this story places earlier than Abercius' visit to Rome, a.d. 163). Moreover
mention is made of his procurator Caecilius^. 'The letter must therefore have been
composed at a time when Phrygia and Asia were under the same governor', and
consequently before Diocletian's redistribution of the provinces A.D. 297. The writer
of the Life has '
rather slurred over the official character of Euxenianus, who must have
been proconsul of Asia. He and his procurator Cselius [Crecilius] are officers of the
Roman Empire ;
the rest of the machinery in the tale belongs to the Byzantine Empire'
{Tale of Abercius pp. 248, 249). I am not satisfied with this argument. There is no
reason at all why a person, usually resident at Hieropolis and enjoying great influence
there, should not at one time or other have been proconsul of Asia, whether the
biographer did or did not suppose Hieropolis to lie within the limits of proconsular
Asia. Moreover the term magisiriaiii seems to point to a time subsequent to the rearrangement
of offices under Diocletian and Constantine (see Ducange Gloss. Med, et
Inf. Latin, s.v., Sophocles Lexicon s.v.). At least I have not succeeded in finding
any use till considerably later; for Palladius, Hist. Laus. c. 149, can hardly be quoting
the exact words of Hippolytus. The magistriani were officers under the
who Magister
Officio7-uin, among his other manifold and important duties had the regulation of
the public posts. And lastly the
;
letter is intimately bound up with the main fiction
of the Life— the summons to Rome by the emperor ]\L Aurelius and the miraculous
cure of his daughter Lucilla ensuing thereupon and it is ; highly improbable that such
a fiction should have been put forward within a century of the time when the saint
lived, and while paganism was still the religion of the State and of the emperor.
It should be added that, though the writer of the Life is fairly well informed as to
the incidents of the reign of M. Aurelius, e.g. the circumstances connected with the
Eastern campaign of L. Verus and his marriage with Lucilla, the great earthquake at
Smyrna, the disturbances on the Rhenish frontier, etc., yet his chronology is altogether
at fault. The blunder which places the earthquake at Smyrna before the campaigns
of L. Verus against Vologesus has been already noticed. So again, he antedates the
expedition of M. Aurelius against the Germans, making it coincident with the sojourn
of L. Verus in the East, though it actually took place some years later. The
Cornelianus mentioned in the Life may perhaps be identified with Atidius Cornelianus
of whom Capitolinus speaks {Marctis 8), or with Sulpicius Cornelianus whose name
^
The name is correctly
written Cae- not Caelius.
cilius (see Anal. Solesm. 11. p. 166),