5. Christians in the army. — The extant literature of the Church down to the close of the 2nd cent, betrays no sense of military service as incompatible with Christianity ; it is discouraged rather than disparaged, when it is noticed at all. Neither then nor afterwards did the Church ever decline to baptize a soldier, or to allow him to remain in the army. Tertullian, writing about A.D. 197, proudly claims that Christians are so numerous that they have swarmed into eveiy department of Roman life, into the army as well as into civil employments (Apol. 37). How can you taunt us, he asks the Romans (ib. 42), with being jjarasites and useless members of the State, when we tight at your side, trade along with you, and prove every day of our lives that we are no rechuses? The langu.age is hyperbolical, especially when he w arns the Romans that Christians, by their sheer force of numbers, could wreck the State if they were to withdraw or to rebel. But, although the rhetorical bent of Tertullian always made him care more for emphasis than for accuracy, the significant point is that a Christian apologist was able to make this claim about Christians in the army, conscious that the fact could not be denied by his opponents, and sensible of no objection to it on the part of the Church. As Ave shall see, Tertullian li.ad other private views on the advis- ability of Christians serving in the army, and later on he developed these into a rigid repudiation of ndlitaiy service as a sphere for genuine Cliristians ; but as an apologist he makes no scruple whatsoever about using the existence of Christian soldiers as an argument in favour of the Church's claim to consideration at the hands of the empire. Even later, in his vehement protest ad Scapulam (4), he witnesses to the presence of Christian soldiers in
(lie ler;ions, mentioning ngain, as lie liail already <liine in the Apoloipj (5), the case of the I'Jth legion ill A.D. 174, wliiili, by its pniyers, wivs lielievetl to liave rescueil the army of Slarcus Aurelius from a desperate plight.
The Roman troops were in straits for laclc of water; these Christian soldiers krieJt down, and in response to their prayers God st'iit niin for thoinselvos and their fellows, wiiile thunder and lightning scared their enemies, the Germans and Sarnia- tians. So the story ran. The legion was called aft«r its liead- quart^rs at Melitene in S. Armenia, in the nei^hbonrhood of which it was recruited ; it siipjiliod more than one martyr snb- Bequently, and, as both S. Armenia and Edessa, which also supjilied soldiers to it, are known to have been penetrated by Christianity, at least as early aa the be^'inning of the ard cent., there is no reason to doubt that Christians did servo in its ranks.
Whatever be the historical truth of the tale,* it wa.s lirmly believed b5' the early Church from the end of the 2nd cent, onwards (see Eiis. HE v. 5), and for our purpose this is sutlicient ; tlie accept- ance of the story proves not only that Christians must have been in the army but that their presence there did nut raise the slightest sense of embarrass- ment or disajiproval in the Church. The Pax Romana, within which Christianity itself was growing, would not have been maintained unless there liad been plain, duty-loving men at arms, Christians as well as pagans, who were content to serve in the legions with the same kind of healthj' spirit as that which Marius expressed (Sallust, Jug. Ixxxiii. : 'Ilia multo optunia rei publicae doctus sum— hostem ferire, praesidium agitare, nihil metuere nisi turpem famara, liiemein et aestatem juxta pati, humi requiescere, eodem tempore inopiaiu et laborem tolerare ').
No reliable clue either to the relative number of Christians in the legions or to any deduction from thatnunibcir as tothegeneral feelingof theChurcb about military service can be found in the nianj' allusions scattered throughout the Christian in- scriptions. Soldiers are not often mentioned in the extant Christian epitaphs. But this is not so significant, perhaps, as it might seem to be. It must be recollected that soldiers fell in battle all over the empire, and usually on the far frontiers. Of all professions, the military was the least likely to furnish material for epitaphs in Christian cemeteries at Rome or in any of the leading cities of the empire. Death abroad, perhaps with no Christian comrade at hand, perhaps with no epitaph beyond the ' sed miles, scd pro patria ' muttered in pride and regret, was a frequent end to the Christian soldier's career. This must be taken into account in estimating the comparatively infre- quent notice of the military profession in the cata- combs and elsewhere. Besides, the worldly calling of a Cliristian is l)y no means universally inserted in his epitaph. M.'iny a soldier may have been buried without a word lieing set up to preserve his pro- fession. And this omission need not have been due to a sense of disapprobation or shame. In the presence of God social distinctions were often re- garded as beneath notice ; a modesty or reverence in the survivors forbade such secular positions being perpetuated in the memory of men. The grave of a slave was not always marked by the addition of 'slave' to the name of the departed, and the same would appi}- to .soldiers.