[335]. Suet. Tib. 36. The mathematici are strictly the astrologers whose science was called μάθησις. Cf. the title of Firmicus Maternus, Matheseos libri. The governmental attempt to suppress the mathematici was a total failure, but the law’s attitude toward them may be seen from the rescript of Diocletian (294 C.E.): ars mathematica damnabilis interdicta est (Cod. Just. IX. xviii. 2).
[336]. Nero assigned Sardinia to the senate as ample satisfaction for Achaea, which he took under his own jurisdiction.
[337]. Acts xi. 26; xxvi. 28. Ιησοῦ χρήστου in the inscription quoted in n. 10. In this case the identification of names may be due to iotacism.
[338]. Cf. the well-known rhetorician Philostr. Vita. Soph. ii. 11, and in Rome itself Inscr. gr. Sic. et Ital. 1272; and ibid. 2417, 2.
[339]. The question of the authenticity and date of the Acts does not belong to this study. A thorough discussion will be found in Wendland, Die urchristlichen Literaturformen,3 p. 314 seq.
[340]. Acts xi. 19; xiii. 5, 50.
[341]. συναγωγή = ἐκκλησία. Le Bas, 2528 (318 C.E.), a Marcionite association.
[342]. There was a jurist Tertullian of whom some fragments have been preserved in the Digest (29, 2, 30; 49, 17, 4). He has on plausible grounds been assumed to be the same as the Church Father. There can be no question that the latter had legal training. As for the cruelties described by Tacitus, it may be said that Eusebius has no word of them, even in his denunciation of Nero. (Hist. Eccl. II. xxv.)
[343]. All the Church Fathers mention these outrageous charges. Pliny (Ep. x. 96) refers vaguely to wickednesses charged against them, but the flagitia cohaerentia nomini are more likely to be the treasonable machinations which the Christian associations were assumed to be engaged in than these foul and stupid accusations. It will be remembered that Tertullian (loc. cit.) is more eager to free the Christians from the charge of treason than of any other. Treason in this case, however, meant not sedition or rebellion, but anarchy, i.e. attempts at the destruction of the state. The attitude of medieval law toward heresy gives a good analogy.
[344]. It would scarcely be necessary to refute this slander, if it had not recently renewed currency; Harnack, Mission and Ausbreitung. Tertullian knows nothing of it, nor Eusebius, although the latter refers in the case of Polycarp to Jewish persecution of Christians (Hist. Eccl. IV. xv. 29). Tertullian, on the contrary, implies that an enemy of the Jews would be likely to be a persecutor of Christians (Apol. 5).