chronological order, he agrees with Tertullian in asserting that St: Peter died as a martyr under Nero and, being a conspicuous pillar of the Church, before the mass of the Christians. To this assertion Origen, quoted by Eusebius,! adds the statement that ‘at the end Peter being at Rome was crucified head-downwards having himself requested that he might so suffer”.
Eusebius in his account of the Neronian persecution endorses this tradition of St. Peter’s martyrdom and cites evidence to prove its truth: “So then at this time this man who was proclaimed one of the foremost fighters against God was led on to slaughter the Apostles. It is related that Paul was beheaded in Rome itself and that Peter was likewise crucified in his reign. And the history is confirmed by the inscription upon the tombs there which is still in existence. It is also confirmed by an ecclesiastic named Gaius, who lived at the time when Zephyrinus was Bishop of Rome, who writing to Proclus, the leader of the Phrygian heresy, says these very words about the places where the sacred tabernacles of the aforesaid Apostles are deposited, ‘ But I can shew the trophies of the Apostles. For if you will go to the Vatican or to the Ostian Way you will find the trophies of those who founded this Church. And that they both became martyrs at the same time Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, writing to the Romans proves in this way. You also by such admonition have compounded the plant of Romans and Corinthians which came from Peter and Paul. For they both of them came to our Corinth and planted us, teaching like doctrine, and in like manner they taught together in Italy and became martyrs at the same time.” 3
All the other extant evidence* agrees with this, and we may fairly conclude that from the end of the first century it has been the unchallenged belief of the Christian Church that St. Peter was put to death at Rome in Α.Ρ. 64. The question therefore arises, Is this tradition compatible with the traditional ascription of this document to St. Peter ?
Date, CIRCUMSTANCES, AND PurRPoOsE.
‘
If St. Peter was the author of this document and if St. Peter perished in the persecution under Nero, it follows that the document
1 Historiae Ecclesiasticae, iii. 1: ὃς καὶ ἐπὶ τέλει ἐν Ρώμῃ yevopevos averkodo- πίσθη κατὰ κεφαλῆς οὕτως αὐτὸς ἀξιώσας παθεῖν.
3 Historiae Ecclesiasticae, ii. 25.
3See Dr. Chase’s article on Peter (Simon) in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible vol. iii.