Apology made by Aristides the Philosopher before Hadrianus the King, concerning the worship of Almighty God.
But this, which seems to be a mere literary heading, proper, shall we say, for one out of a collection of apologies, is immediately |8 followed by another introduction which cannot be anything else than a part of the primitive apology. It runs as follows:
...Caesar Titus Hadrianus Antoninus, Worshipful and Clement, from Marcianus Aristides, philosopher of Athens.
The additional information which we derive from this sentence is a sufficient guarantee of its genuineness; we have the first name of the philosopher given, as Marcianus; and we have the name of the emperor addressed given at length. To our astonishment this is not Hadrian, but his successor Antoninus Pius, who bears the name of Hadrian by adoption from Publius Aelius Hadrianus. Unless therefore we can shew that there is an error or a deficiency in the opening sentence of the Apology we shall be obliged to refer it to the time of the emperor Antoninus Pius, and to say that Eusebius has made a mistake in reading the title of the Apology, or has followed some one who had made the mistake before him. And it seems tolerably clear that if an error exist at all in such a precise statement as ours, it must be of the nature of an omission. Let us see what can be urged in favour of this theory. We will imagine that the original title contained the names both of Hadrian and of Antoninus Pius, his adviser and companion, much in the same way as Justin opens his first Apology with" the words, "to the Emperor Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Pius Augustus Caesar and to his son Verissimus the Philosopher, and to Lucius the Philosopher, natural son of Caesar and adopted son of Pius....I Justin...have written the following appeal and supplication." In support of this theory we might urge the apparent dislocation of the opening sentence of our Apology. The Syriac version is clearly wrong in its punctuation, for example, since it transfers the expression [Syriac] (Almighty) to Caesar, by placing a colon after the word [Syriac] (God). This is clearly impossible, for that the writer did not attempt to translate, say, au)tokra&twr as if it were pantokra&twr will be evident from his correct use of the Divine attribute later on in his work. But even if the translator had been guilty of such a mistake, the case would not have been bettered, because Antonine would now have been styled Emperor as well as Caesar.
But let us imagine if we please that the term Caesar or |9 Emperor Caesar belongs to a previous name which has dropped out and supply the connective necessary, so as to read, "To the Emperor Aelius Hadrianus Augustus Caesar and to Titus Hadrianus Antoninus." In support of this we may urge that the adjectives which follow are marked in the Syriac with the sign of the plural, as if the writer imagined himself to be addressing more persons than one. Supposing then that this is the case we should still have to face the question as to the name given to Antonine; if he is called Hadrian, this must mean that the Apology is presented at some time subsequent to his adoption, which is generally understood to have taken place in the year A.D. 138, only a little while before Hadrian's death. So that in any case we should be prohibited by our document from dating the Apology in question either in the first visit of Hadrian to Athens or in the second visit, and we should only have the barest possibility that it was presented to Hadrian at all. It would have, so to speak, to be read to him on his death-bed at Baiae. Seeing then the extreme difficulty of maintaining the Hadrianic or Eusebian hypothesis, we are driven to refer the Apology to the reign of Antoninus Pius, and to affirm that Eusebius made a mistake in reading or quoting the title of the book, in which mistake he has been followed by a host of other and later writers. If he followed a text which had the heading as in the Syriac, he has misunderstood the person spoken of as Hadrian the king; and if on the other hand he takes the opening sentences as his guide, he has made a superficial reference, which a closer reading would have corrected. All that is necessary to make the Syriac MS. intelligible is the introduction of a simple prepositional prefix before the imperial name, and the deletion of the ribbui points in the adjectives.
Nor is this all; for there can be no doubt that the two adjectives in question ([Syriac]) are intended to represent two of the final titles of Antoninus: [Syriac] standing for the Greek Sebasto&j , which again is the equivalent of the Latin Augustus; and [Syriac] being the equivalent of the title Pius which the Roman Senate gave to Antoninus shortly after his accession and which the Greeks render by eu)sebh&j . And it is precisely in this order that the titles are usually found, |10 viz. Augustus Pius, which the Syriac has treated as adjectives, and connected by a conjunction. Moreover this translation of eu)sebh&j on the part of the Syriac interpreter shews that the meaning of the title is 'clement' or 'compassionate,' rather than that of mere filial duty, which agrees with what we find in a letter of Marcus Aurelius to Faustina; "haec (clementia) patrem tuum imprimis Pii nomine ornavit ."
Now how will this conclusion react upon the companion Apology of Quadratus? We could, no doubt, maintain that it leaves the question where it found it. The mistake made by Eusebius need not have been a double error, and the correct reference to Hadrian for Quadratus's Apology would have furnished a starting-point for the incorrect reasoning with regard to Aristides. On this supposition we should simply erase the reference to Aristides from Eusebius and his imitators.
But there is one difficulty to be faced, and that is the fact that we were in confusion over Quadratus before we reached any conclusion about Aristides. And our investigation has not helped to any elucidation of the confusion. Read for example the language in which Eusebius (H. E. IV. 3) describes the presentation of the Apology,
[Greek]
and compare it with the Greek of the Chronicon as preserved by Syncellus,
[Greek]
and we naturally suspect with Harnack that the title must have been something like the following,
[Greek]
and we are confirmed in this belief by finding that the Aristides Apology was also headed
a)pologi/a u(pe\r th~j qeosebei/aj?:
at least its literary heading must have been very like this. |11
May we not also infer that the opening sentences of the Quadratus-Apology must have contained the dedication Ai0li/w| 9Adrianw~| which we find suggested above? But when we have made these suppositions the similarity between the two apologies in the titles is very great, for Aelius Hadrianus is also a part of the adopted name of the emperor Antoninus.
And let us look at the matter from another point of view. One of our early sources of information about Quadratus, the bishop of Athens, is found in a passage of a letter of Dionysius of Corinth preserved by Eusebius, and certainly Dionysius of Corinth ought to be good authority for Athenian religious history of the time immediately preceding his own. Euscbius does not actually quote the letter which Dionysius wrote to the church at Athens, but he tells us its scope and makes it easy to divine its contents: his language is as follows:
[Greek]
From this it would naturally be inferred that the Quadratus mentioned in the letter was a contemporary of Dionysius of Corinth; for the latter writes to the Athenians at once convicting them of slackness in the faith, and congratulating them on their happy revival under the ministration of Quadratus. And since Dionysius writes letters also to Soter, the bishop of Rome, who belongs to the early years of Marcus Aurelius, we should probably say that Quadratus was not very much earlier than this, which would place him in the reign of Antoninus Pius. And the persecution at Athens which ended in the martyrdom of Publius must therefore fall in the same reign. Now Jerome ( de Virr. ill. § 19) identifies this Quadratus, the bishop of Athens, with the Apologist , and consequently pushes back the persecution into the |12 reign of Hadrian. We do not indeed attach any especial weight to Jerome's statement as to the time of the persecution, which is simply a combination made up out of passages from Eusebius concerning Quadratus and Dionysius with slight amplifications. He can hardly be right in placing the persecution under the reign of Hadrian, for, as Lightfoot points out , Eusebius, from whom he draws his facts, knows nothing about it: moreover we have information from Melito that Antoninus Pius did actually write to Athens to suppress a persecution of the Christians. But, on the other hand, may he not be right after all in his identification of the bishop Quadratus with the Apologist, and do not the circumstances of the persecution suggested by Melito and testified to by Dionysius exactly suit the presentation of the Apology to the emperor?
While then we would readily admit that, as long as the Apology of Aristides was held to belong to the time of an Athenian visit of Hadrian, the Apology of Quadratus naturally remained with it, yet on the other hand when the Hadrian hypothesis is untenable for Aristides, will not the Quadratus-bishop and Quadratus-apologist naturally run together, and be one and the same person? Or is there anything to prevent the identification? The words 'apostolorum discipulus,' used by Jerome, and the corresponding words of Eusebius, a0posto&lwn a0kousth&j , can hardly be held to militate seriously against this hypothesis, for they are evident deductions from the passage which Eusebius quotes from the Apology of Quadratus about the sick people healed by the Lord, 'some of whom continued down to our times.' Jerome says boldly that Quadratus had seen very many of the subjects of our Lord's miracles; which is in any case a gross exaggeration. But if such persons, either many or few, had really lived into the age of Quadratus, it would be very difficult to place |13 the Apologist in the reign of Antoninus Pius. Unless, therefore, it can be maintained that the language quoted by Eusebius from Quadratus is an exaggeration or a misunderstanding we can hardly identify the bishop with the apologist. This is the furthest point to which the evidence carries the argument.
And now let us return to Aristides and see whether we can determine anything further concerning the time and manner of presentation of the Apology.
And first of all we may say that the simplicity of the style of the Apology is in favour of an early date. The religious ideas and practices are of an antique cast. The ethics shew a remarkable continuity with Jewish ethics: the care for the stranger and the friendless, the burial of the dead and the like, are given as characteristic virtues both of Judaism and of Christianity. Indeed we may say that one of the surprising things about the Apology is the friendly tone in which the Jews are spoken of: one certainly would not suspect that the chasm between the Church and the Synagogue had become as practically impassable as we find it in the middle of the second century. There is no sign of the hostile tone which we find towards the Jews in the martyrdom of Polycarp, and nothing like the severity of contempt which we find in the Epistle to Diognetus. If the Church is not in the writer's time any longer under the wing of the Synagogue, it has apparently no objection to taking the Synagogue occasionally under its own wing.
Such a consideration seems to be a mark of antiquity, and one would, therefore, prefer to believe, if it were possible, that the Apology was earlier than the Jewish revolt under Bar-Cochab. But since we have shewn that view to be untenable (and yet how attractive if we could place Aristides in the second visit of Hadrian to Athens, and Quadratus in the first !) we must content ourselves with seeking as early a date as is consistent with the superscriptions.
Another point that seems ancient about our Apology is that it contains traces, and very interesting traces, of the use of a creed, very similar to the Apostolic Symbol, but involving certain notable points of difference. We shall discuss the question more at length by and by; but at present it will be interesting |14 to notice, especially in view of the obviously friendly attitude of the writer towards the Jews, that his creed contained a clause to the effect that