Testimony of Clement agrees with Tacitus I hardly need add that the narrative of Tacitus is frank, straightforward, and in keeping with all we know or can infer in regard to Christianity in that epoch. Mr. E. G. Hardy, in his valuable book Christianity and the Roman Government (London, 1894, p. 70), has pointed out that “the mode of punishment was that prescribed for those convicted of magic,” and that Suetonius uses the term malefica of the new religion—a term which has this special sense. Magicians, moreover, in the code of Justinian, which here as often reflects a much earlier age, are declared to be “enemies of the human race.” Nor is it true that Nero’s persecution as recorded in Tacitus is mentioned by no writer before Melito. It is practically certain that Clement, writing about A.D. 95, refers to it. He records that a πολὺ πλῆθος, or vast multitude of Christians, the ingens multitudo of Tacitus, perished in connection with the martyrdom of Peter and Paul. He speaks of the manifold insults and torments of men, the terrible and unholy outrages upon women, in terms that answer exactly to the two phrases of Tacitus: pereuntibus addita ludibria and quaesitissimae poenae. Women, he implies, were, “like Dirce, fastened on the horns of bulls, or, after figuring as Danaides in the arena, were exposed to the attacks of wild beasts” (Hardy, op. cit., p. 72). Drews on Poggio’s interpolations of TacitusHowever, Drews is not content with merely ousting the passage from Tacitus, but undertakes to explain to his readers how it got there. It was, he conjectures, made up out of a similar passage read in the Chronicle of Sulpicius Severus (written about 407) by some clever forger, probably Poggio, who smuggled it into the text of Tacitus, “a writer whose text is full of interpolations.” It is hardly necessary to inform an educated reader, firstly, that the text of Tacitus is recognized by all competent Latin scholars to be remarkably free from interpolations; secondly, that Severus merely abridged his account of Nero’s persecution from the narrative he found in Tacitus, an author whom he frequently copied and imitated; thirdly, that Poggio, the supposed interpolator, lived in the fifteenth century, whereas our oldest MS. of this part of Tacitus is of the eleventh century; it is now in the Laurentian Library. I should advise Dr. Drews to stick to his javelin-man story, and not to venture on incursions into the field of classical philology.
Pliny’s letter to Trajan Having dispatched Josephus and Tacitus, and printed over their pages in capitals the titles The Silence of Josephus and The Silence of Tacitus, these authors, needless to say, have no difficulty with Pliny and Suetonius. The former, in his letter (No. 96) to Trajan, gives some particulars of the Christians of Bithynia, probably obtained from renegades. They asserted that the gist of their offence or error was that they were accustomed on a regularly recurring day to meet before dawn, and repeat in alternating chant among themselves a hymn to Christ as to a God; they also bound themselves by a holy oath not to commit any crime, neither theft, nor brigandage, nor adultery, and not to betray their word or deny a deposit when it was demanded. After this rite was over they had had the custom to break up their meeting, and to come together afresh later in the day to partake of a meal, which, however, was of an ordinary and innocent kind.
In this repast we recognize the early eucharist at which Christians were commonly accused of devouring human flesh, as the Jews are accused by besotted fanatics of doing in Russia to-day, and by Mr. Robertson in ancient Jerusalem. Hence Pliny’s proviso that the food they partook of was ordinary and innocent. The passage also shows that this eucharistic meal was not the earliest rite of the day, like the fasting communion of the modern Ritualist, but was held later in the day. Lastly, the qualification that they sang hymns to Christ as to a God, though to Pliny it conveyed no more than the phrase “as if to Apollo,” or “as if to Aesculapius,” clearly signifies that the person so honoured was or had been a human being. Had he been a Sun-god Saviour, the phrase would be hopelessly inept. This letter and Trajan’s answer to it were penned about 110 A.D.
Of this letter Professor W. B. Smith writes (p. 252) that in it “there is no implication, not even the slightest, touching the purely human reality of the Christ or Jesus.” Let us suppose the letter had referred to the cult of Augustus Cæsar, and that we read in it of people who, by way of honouring his memory, met on certain days and sang a hymn to Augustus quasi deo, “as to a God.” We know that the members of a college of Augustals did so meet in most cities of the Roman Empire. Well, would Mr. Smith contend in such a case that the letter carried no implication, not even the slightest, touching the purely human reality of the Augustus or Cæsar? Of course he would not. If this letter were the sole record in existence of early Christianity, we might perhaps hesitate about its implications; but it is in the characteristic Latin which no one, so far as we know, ever wrote, except the younger Pliny, and is accompanied by Trajan’s answer, couched in an equally characteristic style. It is, moreover, but one link in a long chain, which as a whole attests and presupposes the reality of Jesus. Mr. Smith, however, does not seem quite sure of his ground, for in the next sentence he hints that after all Pliny’s letter is not genuine. These writers are not the first to whom this letter has proved a pons asinorum. Semler began the attack on its genuineness in 1784; and others, who desired to eliminate all references to Christianity in early heathen writers, have, as J. B. Lightfoot has remarked (Apostolic Fathers, Pt. II, vol. i, p. 55), followed in his wake. Their objections do not merit serious refutation.
Evidence of Suetonius There remains Suetonius, who in ch. xxv of his life of Claudius speaks of Messianic disturbances at Rome impulsore Chresto. Claudius reigned from 41–54, and the passage may possibly be an echo of the conflict, clearly delineated in Acts and Paulines between the Jews and the followers of the new Messiah.[3] Itacism or interchange of “e” and “i” being the commonest of corruptions in Greek and Latin MSS., we may fairly conjecture Christo in the source used by Suetonius, who wrote about the year 120. Christo, which means Messiah, is intelligible in relation to Jews, but not Chresto; and the two words were identical in pronunciation. Drews of course upholds Chresto, and in Tacitus would substitute for Christiani Chrestiani; for this there is indeed manuscript support, but it is gratuitous to argue as he does that the allusion is to Serapis or Osiris, who were called Chrestos “the good” by their votaries. He does not condescend to adduce any evidence to show that in that age or any other Chrestos, used absolutely, signified Osiris or Serapis; and there is no reason to suppose it ever had such a significance. He is on still more precarious ground when he surmises that Nero’s victims at Rome were not followers of Christ, but of Serapis, and were called Chrestiani by the mob ironically, because of their vices. Here we begin to suspect that he is joking. Why should worshippers of Serapis have been regarded as specially vicious by the Roman mob? Jews and Christians were no doubt detested, because they could not join in any popular festivities or thanksgivings. But there was nothing to prevent votaries of Serapis or Osiris from doing so, nor is there any record of their being unpopular as a class.
In his life of Nero, Suetonius, amid a number of brief notices, apparently taken from some annalistic work, includes the following: “The Christians were visited with condign punishments—a race of men professing a new and malefic superstition.” On this passage I have commented above (p. 161).
Origin of the name “Christian” Characteristically enough, Dr. Drews assumes, without a shadow of argument, that the famous text in Acts which says that the followers of Jesus were first called Christians in Antioch is an interpolation. It stands in the way of his new thesis that the Roman people called the followers of Serapis—who was Chrestos or “good”—Chrestiani, because they were precisely the contrary.[4] Tacitus does not say that Nero’s victims were so called because of their vices. That is a gloss put on the text by Drews. We only learn (a) that they were hated by the mob for their vices, and (b) that the mob at that time called them Chrestiani. His use of the imperfect tense appellabat indicates that in his own day the same sect had come to be known under their proper appellation as Christiani. In A.D. 64, he implies, a Roman mob knew no better.
[1] The passage in which Josephus mentions John the Baptist runs as follows: “To some of the Jews it seemed that Herod had had his army destroyed by God, and that it was a just retribution on him for his severity towards John called the Baptist. For it was indeed Herod who slew him, though a good man, and one who bade the Jews in the practise of virtue and in the use of justice one to another and of piety towards God to walk together in baptism. For this was the condition under which baptism would present itself to God as acceptable, if they availed themselves of it, not by way of winning pardon for certain sins, but after attaining personal holiness, on account of the soul having been cleansed beforehand by righteousness. Because men flocked to him, for they took the greatest pleasure in listening to his words, Herod took fright and apprehended that his vast influence over people would lead to some outbreak of rebellion. For it looked as if they would follow his advice in all they did, and he came to the conclusion that far the best course was, before any revolution was started by him, to anticipate it by destroying him: otherwise the upheaval would come, and plunge him into trouble and remorse. So John fell a victim to Herod’s suspicions, was bound and sent to the fortress of Machaerus, of which I have above spoken, and there murdered. But the Jews were convinced that the loss of his army was by way of retribution for the treatment of John, and that it was God who willed the undoing of Herod.” [↑]
[2] The suspect passage in which Josephus refers to Jesus runs thus, Ant. xviii, 3, 3: “Now about this time came Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one may call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive what is true with pleasure, and he attracted many Jews and many of the Greeks. This was the ‘Christ.’ And when on the accusation of the principal men amongst us Pilate had condemned him to the cross, they did not desist who had formerly loved him, for he appeared to them on the third day alive again; the divine Prophets having foretold both this and a myriad other wonderful things about him; and even now the race of those called Christians after him has not died out.”