apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

IGNATIUS THE MARTYR. 37
Phil. i). Of these others two are especially mentioned by name, Zosimus
and Rufus {ib. 9).
Whether the persons thus named had any direct
connexion with Ignatius, or whether they were Bithynian Christians who
had joined his escort at Philippi, having been sent to Rome by Pliny
the proprcCtor, and were conducted from that point onward under
custody of the same 'ten leopards', or what may
have been their
history, we can only speculate.
Ignatius charged the Philippians, as he had charged other churches,
to send a letter to the brethren of Antioch (Polyc. Phil. 13). They had
accordingly written to Polycarp, requesting that their letter might be
conveyed to Antioch by the same messenger who should be entrusted
with the letter from Smyrna. It is from Polycarp's extant reply to the
Philippians that we learn the few scanty facts respecting the martyr's
sojourn at Philippi which are here given. The Philippians had also
accompanied this request with another. They desired Polycarp to send
them copies of the letters that Ignatius had addressed to himself or to
his church (see the note on § 13 ras £7rto-ToXas,..Tas Treyu^^etcras lyV'^v)
together with any other letters of the martyr which he might have by
him. With this request he complied. It is not improbably to this circumstance
that we owe the preservation of the seven letters of Ignatius.
Here the curtain drops on the career of the martyr. When Polycarp
writes in reply to the Philippians, he knows nothing about the subsequent
movements of Ignatius and his companions, though he suspects
that the Philippians, as lying some stages nearer to Rome, may have later
news i^Phil. 9). If Polycarp obtained the information which he sought,
it has not been preserved to us. On everything which happened after
this point history is silent, though legend, as usual, is busy and loquacious.
He would naturally follow the great Egnatian road from Philippi
to Dyrrhachium. Whether, when he arrived at the shores of the
Hadriatic, he crossed over direct to Beneventum and travelled to Rome
by the Appian way, or took the longer sea voyage through the straits of
Messina, whether in the latter case he landed in the bay of Naples, hke
S. Paul, or at the mouth of the Tiber, as represented in one of his Martyrologies
{Mart. Ign. Ant. 6), it is idle to enquire. Rome was at length
reached. In the huge pile, erected for the colossal display of these inhuman
sports by the good emperors of the Flavian dynasty, Ignatius the
captain of martyrs fell a victim under the good emperor Trajan.
Tragic facts these, on which it is wholesome to reflect.
So fought and so conquered this brave general
officer in the noble
army of martyrs. After S. Stephen, the leader of the band, no martyr-