2. The Emperor Adrian said to the holy Symphorosa: "Either sacrifice thou along with thy sons to the omnipotent gods, or else I shall cause thee to be sacrificed thyself, together with thy sons." The blessed Symphorosa answered: "And whence is this great good to me, that I should be deemed worthy along with my sons to be offered as an oblation to God?" [1142] The Emperor Adrian said: "I shall cause thee to be sacrificed to my gods." The blessed Symphorosa replied: "Thy gods cannot take me in sacrifice; but if I am burned for the name of Christ, my God, I shall rather consume those demons of thine." The Emperor Adrian said: "Choose thou one of these alternatives: either sacrifice to my gods, or perish by an evil death." The blessed Symphorosa replied: "Thou thinkest that my mind can be altered by some kind of terror; whereas I long to rest with my husband Getulius, [1143] whom thou didst put to death for Christ's name." Then the Emperor Adrian ordered her to be led away to the temple of Hercules, and there first to be beaten with blows on the cheek, and afterwards to be suspended by the hair. But when by no argument and by no terror could he divert her from her good resolution, he ordered her to be thrown into the river with a large stone fastened to her neck. And her brother Eugenius, principal of the district of Tiber, picked up her body, and buried it in a suburb of the same city.
3. Then, on another day, the Emperor Adrian ordered all her seven sons to be brought before him in company; and when he had challenged them to sacrifice to idols, and perceived that they yielded by no means to his threats and terrors, he ordered seven stakes to be fixed around the temple of Hercules, and commanded them to be stretched on the blocks there. And he ordered Crescens, the first, to be transfixed in the throat; and Julian, the second, to be stabbed in the breast; and Nemesius, the third, to be struck through the heart; and Primitivus, the fourth, to be wounded in the navel; and Justin, the fifth, to be struck through in the back with a sword; and Stracteus, [1144] the sixth, to be wounded in the side; and Eugenius, the seventh, to be cleft in twain from the head downwards.
4. The next day again the Emperor Adrian came to the temple of Hercules, and ordered their bodies to be carried off together, and cast into a deep pit; and the pontiffs gave to that place the name, To the Seven Biothanati. [1145] After these things the persecution ceased for a year and a half, in which period the holy bodies of all the martyrs were honoured, and consigned with all care to tumuli erected for that purpose, and their names are written in the book of life. The natal day, moreover, of the holy martyrs of Christ, the blessed Symphorosa and her seven sons, Crescens, Julian, Nemesius, Primitivus, Justin, Stracteus, and Eugenius, is held on the 18th July. Their bodies rest on the Tiburtine road, at the eighth mile-stone from the city, under the kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom is honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
[1138] Gallandi, Bibl. Patrum, vol. i. Proleg. p. lxxi. and p. 329.
[1139] See Eusebius, Life of Constantine, ii. 50.
[1140] The Martyrologies celebrate their memory on the 10th June: one of the Colbert mss. gives Zoticus for Getulius.
[1141] A Colbert ms. gives "laudantes" = praising.
[1142] This response, along with the next interrogation, is wanting in the Colbert manuscript.
[1143] Sur., Card., and the Colbert Codex give "Zoticus."
[1144] The Colbert Codex reads "Extacteus;" Cardulus gives "Stacteus," by which name he is designated beneath by them all.
[1145] In one of the Colbert codices, and in another from the Sorbonne, there is a passage inserted here about the death of Adrian, which is said to have happened a little after that of these martyrs.
Elucidations.
------------------------
I.
(Joseph the son of both, p. 127.)
The opinion that Luke's genealogy is that of Mary was unknown to Christian antiquity. In the fifteenth century it was first propounded by Latin divines to do honour (as they supposed) to the Blessed Virgin. It was first broached by Annius of Viterbo, a.d. 1502. Christian antiquity is agreed that:--
1. Both genealogies are those of Joseph.
2. That Joseph was the son of Jacob or of Heli, either by adoption, or because Jacob and Heli were either own brothers or half-brothers; so that,--
3. On the death of one of the brothers, without issue, the surviving brother married his widow, who became the mother of Joseph by this marriage; so that Joseph was reckoned the son of Jacob and the son of Heli. [1146]
4. Joseph and Mary were of the same lineage, but the Hebrews did not reckon descent from the side of the woman. For them St. Luke's genealogy is the sufficient register of Christ's royal descent and official claim. St. Luke gives his personal pedigree, ascending to Adam, and identifying Him with the whole human race.
II.
(Conclusion, cap. xix. p. 138.)
On Jewish genealogies, note Dean Prideaux, [1147] vol. i. p. 296, and compare Lardner, vol. ii. 129, et alibi. Stillingfleet [1148] should not be overlooked in what he says of the uncertainties of heathen chronology.
Lardner repeatedly calls our author a "great man;" and his most valuable account, [1149] digested from divers ancient and modern writers, must be consulted by the student. Let us observe the books of Scripture which his citations attest, and the great value of his attestation of the two genealogies of our Lord. Lardner dates the Letter to Origen [1150] a.d. 228 or 240, according to divers conjectures of the learned. He concludes with this beautiful tribute: "We may glory in Africanus as a Christian" among those "whose shining abilities rendered them the ornament of the age in which they lived,--men of unspotted characters, giving evident proofs of honesty and integrity."
------------------------
Note.
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The valuable works of Africanus are found in vol. ix. of the Edinburgh edition, mixed up with the spurious Decretals and remnants of preceding volumes. I am unable to make out very clearly who is the translator, but infer that Drs. Roberts and Donaldson should be credited with this work.
[1146] Routh, Reliqu. Sacræ, vol. ii. pp. 233, 339, 341, 355. Compare also vol. ii. 334 and 346, this series.
[1147] Also on the Seventy Weeks (p. 134, supra), vol. i. pp. 227-240 and 322.
[1148] Origines Sacræ, vol. i. pp. 64-120.
[1149] Works, vol. ii. pp. 457-468.
[1150] See Introductory Notice, p. 123, note 4, supra.
Anatolius and Minor Writers
Anatolius and Minor WRiters.
[Translated by the Rev. S. D. F. Salmond, M.A.]
Introductory Notice
to
Anatolius and Minor Writers.
------------------------
Instead of reprinting a disjointed mass of "Fragments," I have thought it desirable to present them in a group, illustrative of the Alexandrian school. I give to Anatolius the deserved place of prominence, marking him as the meet successor of Africanus in ability if not in the nature of his pursuits. His writing and the testimony of Eusebius prove him to have been a star of no inferior magnitude, even in the brilliant constellation of faith and genius of which he is part.
These minor writers I have arranged, not with exclusive reference to minute chronology, but with some respect to their material, as follows:--
I. Anatolius, a.d. 270.
II. Alexander of Cappadocia, a.d. 250.
III. Theognostus, a.d. 265.
IV. Pierius, a.d. 300.
V. Theonas, a.d. 300.
VI. Phileas, a.d. 307.
VII. Pamphilus, a.d. 309.
Anatolius and Minor Writers.
------------------------
Anatolius of Alexandria.
------------------------
Translator's Biographical Notice.
[a.d. 230-270-280.] From Jerome [1151] we learn that Anatolius flourished in the reign of Probus and Carus, that he was a native of Alexandria, and that he became bishop of Laodicea. Eusebius gives a somewhat lengthened account of him, [1152] and speaks of him in terms of the strongest laudation, as one surpassing all the men of his time in learning and science. He tells us that he attained the highest eminence in arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, besides being a great proficient also in dialectics, physics, and rhetoric. His reputation was so great among the Alexandrians that they are said to have requested him to open a school for teaching the Aristotelian philosophy in their city. [1153] He did great service to his fellow-citizens in Alexandria on their being besieged by the Romans in a.d. 262, and was the means of saving the lives of numbers of them. After this he is said to have passed into Syria, where Theotecnus, the bishop of Cæsareia, ordained him, destining him to be his own successor in the bishopric. After this, however, having occasion to travel to Antioch to attend the synod convened to deal with the case of Paul of Samosata, as he passed through the city of Laodicea, he was detained by the people and made bishop of the place, in succession to Eusebius. [1154] This must have been about the year 270 a.d. How long he held that dignity, however, we do not know. Eusebius tells us that he did not write many books, but yet enough to show us at once his eloquence and his erudition. Among these was a treatise on the Chronology of Easter; of which a considerable extract is preserved in Eusebius. The book itself exists now only in a Latin version, which is generally ascribed to Rufinus, and which was published by Ægidius Bucherius in his Doctrina Temporum, which was issued at Antwerp in 1634. Another work of his was the Institutes of Arithmetic, of which we have some fragments in the theologoumena tes arithmetikes, which was published in Paris in 1543. Some small fragments of his mathematical works, which have also come down to us, were published by Fabricius in his Bibliotheca Græca, iii. p. 462.
[1151] De illustr. viris., ch. 73. [The dates which are known suggest conjectural dates of our author's birth and death.]
[1152] In the 32d chapter of the seventh book of his Ecclesiastical History.
[1153] ["There were giants in those days." How gloriously, even in the poverty and distress of the martyr-ages, the cultivation of learning was established by Christianity!]
[1154] [This Eusebius was a learned man, born at Alexandria.]
The Paschal Canon of Anatolius of Alexandria. [1155]
------------------------
I.
As we are about to speak on the subject of the order of the times and alternations of the world, we shall first dispose of the positions of diverse calculators; who, by reckoning only by the course of the moon, and leaving out of account the ascent and descent of the sun, with the addition of certain problems, have constructed diverse periods, [1156] self-contradictory, and such as are never found in the reckoning of a true computation; since it is certain that no mode of computation is to be approved, in which these two measures are not found together. For even in the ancient exemplars, that is, in the books of the Hebrews and Greeks, we find not only the course of the moon, but also that of the sun, and, indeed, not simply its course in the general, [1157] but even the separate and minutest moments of its hours all calculated, as we shall show at the proper time, when the matter in hand demands it. Of these Hippolytus made up a period of sixteen years with certain unknown courses of the moon. Others have reckoned by a period of twenty-five years, others by thirty, and some by eighty-four years, without, however, teaching thereby an exact method of calculating Easter. But our predecessors, men most learned in the books of the Hebrews and Greeks,--I mean Isidore and Jerome and Clement,--although they have noted similar beginnings for the months just as they differ also in language, have, nevertheless, come harmoniously to one and the same most exact reckoning of Easter, day and month and season meeting in accord with the highest honour for the Lord's resurrection. [1158] But Origen also, the most erudite of all, and the acutest in making calculations,--a man, too, to whom the epithet chalkeutes [1159] is given,--has published in a very elegant manner a little book on Easter. And in this book, while declaring, with respect to the day of Easter, that attention must be given not only to the course of the moon and the transit of the equinox, but also to the passage (transcensum) of the sun, which removes every foul ambush and offence of all darkness, and brings on the advent of light and the power and inspiration of the elements of the whole world, he speaks thus: In the (matter of the) day of Easter, he remarks, I do not say that it is to be observed that the Lord's day should be found, and the seven [1160] days of the moon which are to elapse, but that the sun should pass that division, to wit, between light and darkness, constituted in an equality by the dispensation of the Lord at the beginning of the world; and that, from one hour to two hours, from two to three, from three to four, from four to five, from five to six hours, while the light is increasing in the ascent of the sun, the darkness should decrease. [1161] ...and the addition of the twentieth number being completed, twelve parts should be supplied in one and the same day. But if I should have attempted to add any little drop of mine [1162] after the exuberant streams of the eloquence and science of some, what else should there be to believe but that it should be ascribed by all to ostentation, and, to speak more truly, to madness, did not the assistance of your promised prayers animate us for a little? For we believe that nothing is impossible to your power of prayer, and to your faith. Strengthened, therefore, by this confidence, we shall set bashfulness aside, and shall enter this most deep and unforeseen sea of the obscurest calculation, in which swelling questions and problems surge around us on all sides.