apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

DATE OF THE MARTYRDOM. 65 1
previously. Lastly the identification of ' '
the sophist with Quadratus
seems to be a mistake. The person intended is
probably Glabrio, who
had been mentioned just before (p. 530).
Pearson in his posthumous work Dissert, de Serie Prim. Romae
Episc. ii. c. 17 {Mitior Theological Works, 11. p. 538 sq) controverts the
position of Valesius, but on grounds not altogether satisfactory. He
takes the Quadratus of Aristides to be not Statins Quadratus, but
T. Numidius [more correctly M. Ummidius] Quadratus, who was consul
A.D. 167, and (as he supposes) proconsul of Asia a.d. 170. As Statius
Quadratus held the consulate a.d. 142, and the general rule imposed
an interval of five years '
before a person succeeded to the proconsulate
of Asia, he would hold this latter office a.d. 147 (pp. 536, 541). Pearson
finds a confirmation of this view in the statement of the chronographer
already quoted (see above, p. 650), that Polycarp suffered under
Antoninus Pius. Pearson's date is
adopted also by Dodwell {Diss.
Cypr. iv. § 4), and others. It can now be shown to be wrong. The
proconsul of Asia in February a.d. 147 was not Statius Quadratus, but
Atilius Maximus, as appears from the inscription C. I. 6^. 3176; see
below, note on p. 658, and comp. Waddington Pastes Asiatiques, p.
212 sq.
Card. Noris {De Anno Maced. i. 2, p. 30) refutes Valesius, but does
not mention Pearson, of whose investigations he is
apparently ignorant.
He himself decides in favour of a.d. 166, rather than 167, because in
the former year Feb. 23 fell on a Saturday.
It was reserved for Masson to treat the chronology of Aristides with
thoroughness, and thereby to establish an authority, which was deferentially
followed by nearly all succeeding writers till quite recently.
This work he accomplished in his Collectanea Historica ad Vitam
Aristidis, first published with Jebb's edition of Aristides (Oxon. 1722)
and reprinted a century later in Dindorf's edition of this same author
(Lips. 1829). From this latter edition my references are taken, both
for the text of Aristides and for Masson's dissertation.
The following are the main points in his construction of the Aristidean
chronology.
(i)
As Polycarp was martyred under Quadratus, and as Eusebius
places the martyrdom in a.d. 166, it follows that Quadratus must have
held the proconsulship from the summer of a.d. 165 to the summer of
A.D. 166,
^
A mmimttJ/i interval of five years the average interval being
twelve or
was fixed by Augustus (see below, p. 656) ;
thirteen years,
but it was largely exceeded at this time,