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LETTER OF THE SMYRN.^ANS. 641
his 'endurance on the pyre', and his death (§ 21). All these incidents
appear in the extant Acts. The document was included by Eusebius, as
he himself tells us, in his own Collection of Ancient Martyrdoms, to which
he refers his readers for fuller information. This work of Eusebius, as
I have already stated, seems to have been compiled during the Diocletian
persecution, and therefore about fifty years after the martyrdom
occurred.
But Eusebius falls into a serious error with regard to its date. In
the chronological notice appended to the document, as we have seen,
the martyrdom is stated to have taken place under Decius (a.d. 250);
and internal evidence points to this epoch. But Eusebius apparently
makes it
nearly synchronous with Polycarp's martyrdom, and therefore
under the Antonines. There can, I think, be little question
that this
is his meaning. For, though the expression viro ttjv avTyv TreptoSov tov
Xpovov might in itself mean ' at the same recurring season of the year
'
(and so interpreted it would be consistent with the facts), yet the
sequence of his narrative will not admit this interpretation. Having
thus mentioned consecutively the martyrdoms of Polycarp and Pionius,
he goes on to speak of accounts of other martyrs as being given '
next
in order' (e^^s.-.^eperat), obviously in the volume which he has
mentioned previously. He gives the names of these other martyrs,
'
'
Carpus and Papylus and a certain woman Agathonice {Kapirov Kal
HaTrv\ov Kol '
ywatKos Aya6ovLKr]s), and he says that they suffered in
Pergamon dying 'gloriously after many magnificent (StaTrpcTrets) confessions.'
He then proceeds (iv. 16) ; 'Contemporary with these (Kara
a little before... is crowned with a
TovTovs) Justin, of whom we spoke
glorious martyrdom' (Oclw KaraKoa-ixelTat /Aaprvptw). But Justin certainly
perished under the Antonines.
In fact Eusebius seems to have been misled by the opening notice
of these Acts, in which it is stated that Pionius was celebrating 'the
at the conclusion that he
birth-day of Polycarp and to have jumped ',
was a contemporary of Polycarp's. He may, or may not, have had in
his copy the chronological notice at the close, which we have. If he
had, it is strange
that he should have overlooked the name of the
emperor Decius. If however the word ' imperator ' was wanting and
the name was given in his copy, as it is in some of ours, C. Messio
Quinto Trajano Decio, this would be quite possible. I am disposed to
think also, that in the heading of the Acts in his copy something was
said about tJ avrq TreptoSos tov xpo'vov (for the expression is noticeable),
and that he understood it to mean 'the same epoch' instead of 'the
same recurring season of the year
'.
IGN. I. 41