Introduction

Persecution as Context

In the year 312 Christianity gained the right to permanent existence as a religion of the Roman empire. By this time it was nearly three centuries old. Christian mythography and the lives of the saints used to insist that the way to legality had been an uphill struggle, guided by providence, perhaps, but strewn with the bodies of the martyrs, the church's "seed," as Tertullian boasted in his Apology. "The more we are mown down by you pagans, the more we grow." Still, there was something ominously correct in Tertullian's boast. At the end of the second century, when both Tertullian and the pagan philosopher Celsus were active in their campaigns for and against the church. the pagan philosopher could say with Grouchoesque humor. "If all men wanted to be Christians, the Christians would not want them."

Only a decade or so later, Tertullian could argue with equal conviction that the church had grown by such bursts that, "If the emperor were to exterminate the Christians he would find himself without an empire to rule."

The use of hyperbole to win converts did not begin with twentieth-century evangelism; it was a feature of the quarrel between pagan culture and Christian teaching from its beginning, and a trademark of the Greek and Latin rhetoric in which the argument was conducted.

Yet things changed quickly for the Christians. Martyrs there were, and fickle emperors ranging from Philip the Arab to Aurelian to Diocletian, men who could not make up their minds, or changed them after they had. In 248, Celsus' literary opponent, Origen, wrote: "Though [we lack] workers to bring in the harvest of souls, there is a harvest nevertheless: men and women brought in upon God's threshing floor, the churches. which are everywhere" (Contra Celsum 3.9). The boast that a plethos (a multitude) of people had entered the church -- a boast for Tertullian, an outrage to Celsus and his intellectual compadres, and later also for Porphyry -- set off an alarm heard throughout the Roman empire.

The third century was not just an age of persecution; it was the only century in which persecution affected Christians generally. The empire itself was in the throes of a power struggle and crisis of confidence, beginning with Decius in February of 250, and extending through the reigns of Valerian I (257-260) and Diocletian (284-305). With periods of remission, the effort to control the growth of the Christian movement lasted from 250 until 284. Then, on 23 February 303, at the height of his power, Diocletian outlawed Christianity. Even after his abdication in 305, persecution continued in the east for seven more years under Galerius and Maximinus Daia.

But persecution is a slippery term in the annals of the early church. An older generation of church historians, using the martyrologies and writings of the church fathers as their sources, believed that the era from Nero to Constantine was one of almost unremitting slaughter of professing Christians. Their opinion was enfeebled somewhat by the certainty that the Romans could have tried a "final solution" to the Christian problem much earlier, if they had wanted, and the fact that along with boasting of their many martyrs, church writers like Origen also bragged that rich folk, high officials, elegant ladies and illuminati were entering the church in great numbers. The pagan writers tried to counter this trend in their insistence that Christianity was really a religion for the lazy, the ignorant and superstitious, and the lowborn -- "women, yokels and children," Celsus had sneered. But the ploy was ineffective. Diocletian's persecutions revealed that Christianity had crept into the emperor's bedroom: his wife, his daughter, their servants, the treasury official Audactus, the eunuch Dorotheus, even the director of the purple dye factory in Tyre, were Christians or Christian sympathizers. Insulting the new converts did not stop the process of conversion. The political solution of the third century, therefore, was an attempt to scare people off -- to make being a Christian an expensive proposition. Persecution was the strong-arm alternative to failed polemical tactics by the likes of Celsus, Porphyry and Hierocles. It was a last-gasp attempt to save the old religious order from the muddled legalism of Christian moral teaching, which had been carelessly satirized as bacchic frenzy. Perhaps even by Celsus' day (since he barely alludes to Christian immorality) nobody believed the gossip. Christian and pagan neighbors in fourth-century Damascus winked at each other and giggled behind their hands when a zealous magistrate rounded up a gaggle of prostitutes from the city market and forced them into signing an admission that they were "Christian whores."

How were Christian persecuted? Almost on the eve of persecution, the Christian writer Origen said with pride that "we [Christians] have enjoyed peace for a long time now." But Origen also saw clouds on the horizon. Political instability and military disaster threatened; economic times were hard. Duty (pietas) required that loyal Romans should stand behind the traditions and honor the cults that had so far ensured their greatness. From the standpoint of staunch pagans and the Roman intellectual class, the past two generations had been characterized by slippage and erosion, a watering down of tradition. The ranks had to be closed.

In 250 Decius decreed simply that Christians would be required to sacrifice to the gods of Rome by offering wine and eating sacrificial meat. Those who refused would be sentenced to death. To avoid this punishment, well-to-do Christians seem to have given up the new religion in substantial numbers, becoming in the eyes of the faithful "apostates," a new designation derived from the Greek work for revolt. The apostates also numbered many bishops, including the bishop of the important region of Smyrna, as well as Jewish Christians who rejoined the synagogue, as Judaism was not encompassed in the Decian order. Subsequently the church was racked with confusion about what to do with those Christians who had lapsed from the faith in time of trouble but who wished to reenter the church once the troubles had passed -- the so-called lapsi. Augustine would find himself still dealing with the problem in fifth-century Africa. The Christian sacraments of baptism and (to a degree) the eucharist were reconceived against the political background of apostate priests and bishops: When was a sacrament not a sacrament? When it had been "performed" by a traitor to the cause, argued some. The effects of persecution thus worked themselves out in specific ways, I even in the doctrine of the church.

In the reign of Valerian (253-260) the focus shifted from the practice of the Christian faith to the church's ownership of property -- a cause of concern to pagan conservatives who had come to associate the rise of Christianity with the death of the old order. There is plenty to suggest that Christians in the middle of the third century had become self-confident and even ostentatious about the practice of their faith. In Nicomedia, the eastern capital of the empire, "the Christian church stood tall, visible from the palace" (Lactantius, On the Death of the Persecutors 12; Cyprian, Epistle 80.2). With money and property, Roman-style, came acceptability; the Christians were following the pattern of pagan philanthropists, endowing churches where previously they would have endowed shrines to the state gods. They were becoming, in a word, respectable.

In August 257, Valerian targeted the wealth of the clergy and in 258 the riches of prominent Christian lay persons. The tactic was obviously intended to make upper-crust Romans think twice before throwing their wealth in the direction of the "beggar priests" as Porphyry called them, and making themselves wards of the nouveaux riches lords of the church. In a society where well-being and wealth were nothing to be ashamed of, the Christian emphasis on poverty and suffering seemed to be less incomprehensible than merely foolish, a scam run by church officials at the expense of gullible, religion- hungry honestiores. The Valerian edict also included a pro- vision that "members of Caesar's household who have confessed or confess [to being Christians] should be sent in chains as slaves to work on Caesar's farms" (Cyprian, Epistle 80.1), while senators and men of rank should first lose their property and, only if they persisted, their heads.

The proceedings could be summary or drawn out. The record for short hearings seems to belong to the Roman governor of Spain in his interrogation of a bishop:

In 258, St. Cyprian, the great bishop of Carthage in North Africa, was executed after a lengthy interrogation by Galerius Maximus. The case is an interesting one from the standpoint of pagan-Christian relations. Cyprian had been pestered by a second-rate philosopher named Demetrian for a number of years. Demetrian argued -- as many had before and many would afterward -- that Christianity was responsible for the calamities of the empire, an assessment which Tertullian ridicules as early as the year 198. In the language of the "moral majority" of his day, Demetrian insisted that if only the Christians would pay due reverence to the state cults and to the person of the emperor, peace and prosperity would return. When he was finally goaded to· respond, Cyprian's answer was an oracle of doom, a longwinded paraphrase of Lucretius (d. De rerum natura 2.1105f.) asserting that the world was in the throes of decay:

The farmer fails and languishes in the fields, the sailor at sea, the soldier at camp. Honesty fails in the marketplace; justice in the courts; love from friendship; skill from the arts; discipline from conduct.... It is a sentence passed upon the world, it is God's law, that as things rose, so they should fall; as they waxed, so should they grow old.... And when they become weak and little, they die. (Cyprian, To Demetrian 3)

This "philosophical apocalypse" was nothing that Roman ears would have liked. For the Christians to quote from their own eccentric scriptures was one thing; to find analogies between their prophets of doom, including Jesus. and Roman philosophy was intolerable. If things were bad all over. Cyprian said confidently, it is the God of heaven and earth, the God and father of Jesus Christ, who makes it so. The empire is weakening as Christianity grows strong. Hauled first before the proconsul Paternus, Cyprian was by turns cagey and stubborn, refusing to be an informer on his fellow priests. For his refusal to denounce Christianity and conform to the Roman rites, he was sentenced to exile, then recalled by Galerius Maximus (Paternus' successor as proconsul) for a second round of questioning. Stubborn as before, the old man ran afoul of Galerius' short temper and was sentenced to death by beheading. According to Prudentius, who preserves his story, Cyprian's followers begged "with one voice" to be killed with him.

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On 31 March 297, under the emperor Diocletian, the Manichean religion was outlawed. Like Christianity it was an "import" of dubious vintage. More particularly, it was Persian, and Rome was at war with Persia. Holy books and priests were seized and burned without much ado. Professing members of the cult were put to death without trial. The most prominent Roman Manicheans (the so-called honestiores) were spared, but their property was confiscated and they were sent to work in the mines. The process against the Manicheans boded worse things to come for the Christians.

Diocletian published his first decree against the Christians in February 303. The church historian Lactantius (ca. 240-320) writes that Diocletian was a victim of his advisers, and especially of his Caesar of the East, Galerius, "who would have had anyone who refused the sacrifices burnt alive." In fact, Diocletian seems to have been something of a ditherer. Lactantius says it was his tragic flaw to take the credit for his successes by claiming he acted on his own, and to blame all failures on his advisers. The persecution of 303 was such a decision. Diocletian's original position was pragmatic and straightforward: There are simply too many· Christians throughout the empire. Blood will flow; uprisings will follow. Besides, most of them will go to their deaths eagerly. Why not simply make it illegal for court officials and soldiers to practice the pernicious superstition? Sensing opposition to this commonsense approach, advisers were called in: magistrates, military commanders, and finally -- in desperation -- a soothsayer who had been sent to inquire of the oracle of Apollo at Miletus what the will of the gods might be in this awkward matter. The answer was predictable: Apollo and Galerius were of one mind. The Christians must be stopped. Lactantius notes bemusedly that on the 23rd of February, the feast of Terminus, god of boundaries, the edict to stamp out ("terminate") the Christian religion was issued. It was the nineteenth year of the reign of Diocletian and just around Easter when word was sent out that Christian buildings were to be destroyed, the sacred books burned, heads of households arrested, and the presbyters compelled to sacrifice to the state gods.

In a famous incident at Cirta in May 303, only two months after the edict was issued, the mayor of the city, accompanied by a posse, arrived at the door of the house which the Christians used as a meeting place. Although interested in getting a record of all "readers" (clergy) in the church, the mayor was also instructed to inventory the church plate and holdings, and to confiscate all copies of scripture. The task proved slippery. The cooperation of the bishop's staff varied: some readers produced books without demur; others vacillated; still others refused. If the description of the inquest at Cirta is typical of the search-and -seize procedures required by the edict, the detective work was thorough and unrelenting. The posse moved from house to house, relying on the weaker clergy to name names. They found books hidden away in private houses, where the readers had squirreled them for safekeeping, the house-church itself being thought an unsafe repository for the full collection of gospels and epistles.

Diocletian had hoped to cripple the movement. Termination would have meant extermination. But the survival tactics of the movement made police work difficult. Christians had become sly. The enthusiasm for martyrdom was now paralleled by accomplished doubletalk:

Mayor: "Point out the readers or send for them"

Bishop: "You already know who they are."

Mayor: "Bring out your books."

Subdeacons: "We have thrown out everything that was here [in the church]."

Executions increased, especially after rumors reached Galerius that plots against the throne were being fomented in Christian circles. New edicts were issued with regularity, each a little more severe than the one before. The fourth edict (304) required that all the people of a city must sacrifice and offer libations to the gods "as a body," Christians included. Diocletian abdicated, in declining health, in 305; Galerius, now emperor, and the new Caesar of the East, Maximinus Daia, pressed on energetically until April 311, when Galerius -- one week before his death -- issued an edict of toleration. In the west, the enforcers (Maximian and Constantius) had lost heart and faith in the policy, taking an occasional swipe at a church but not much else. In the provinces, especially North Africa, persecution tended to be more severe. How severe is open to question. The church historian Eusebius (ca. 260-ca. 339) depicts the faithful of Thebes rushing to martyrdom as the net grew tighter; but in Oxyrhynchus, just down the Nile, Christians brought before a magistrate and ordered to sacrifice could authorize a third party, often a pagan relative, to perform the ritual in their behalf, thereby avoiding the contamination, involved in doing it themselves. As late as 311-312, the populations of a number of cities (Tyre, Antioch, Nicomedia, and Lycia Pamphylia) addressed petitions against the Christians to Maximinus Daia, who had an active retraining program in place, designed to reeducate lapsed Christians in their pagan heritage.

But the life was going out of the movement to repress Christianity. The pagan critics had not succeeded in stemming the popularity of the movement, and the "persecuting" emperors (except perhaps Diocletian himself) had miscalculated both the numbers and the determination of the faithful. The movement was Rome's Vietnam, a slow war of attrition which had been fought to stop a multiform enemy. Even at their worst under Diocletian, the persecutions had been selective and, in their intense form, short-lived. And (as has been known since the seventeenth century) the number of martyrs was not great.

One of the successes of Christian apologetics was to convince the persecutors in Brer Rabbit fashion that they enjoyed persecution -- that death is what they liked best of all. In dying for Christ Jesus, the crown of heavenly glory was theirs. With rare exceptions, the people in the cities and towns of the empire were not inclined to collaborate in the persecutions; Rome had a longstanding reputation for "live and let live," and the rulers' need to get political mileage from an enemy within was quickly detected. The goal of the fourth edict against the Christians in 304, in fact, had been to compel loyalty to unpopular rulers, and in 308 the greatly detested Maximinus tried the same tactic (Eusebius, Martyrs of Palestine 9.1-3): "Idol temples were forced to be rebuilt quickly; and people in groups, men and their wives and babies at the breast [were forced] 1:0 offer sacrifices and wine-offerings." The tactic was ineffectual, Eusebius says, because even the enforcers had lost the heart to impose the penalties and to support the machinery required for the "sacrifice factories" Maximinus tried to set up.

Unhappy at this failure, he sponsored a literary attack, circulating forged gospels and memoirs containing the stock slanders against Jesus. These were posted in public gathering-places and schoolteachers were required to assign portions of them to children as lessons (Eusebius, Martyrs of Palestine 9.4.2-5.2). To substantiate charges against the moral habits of the Christians, Maximinus then hired agents (duces) to round up prostitutes from the marketplace in Damascus. Tortured until they confessed to being Christians, they then signed statements to the effect that the churches routinely practiced ritual prostitution and required members to participate in sexually depraved acts. These statements were also distributed to the towns and cities for public display. Desperate times, desperate men, desperate measures.

By the time Galerius issued his edict of toleration in favor of the Christians on 30 April 311 three waves of attack had failed: the erratic policies of emperors from Nero to Marcus Aurelius; the literary and philosophical attacks, carried on in collusion with imperial sponsors; and the more sustained persecutions of the third century, ending in 311. Paganism was dying. Maximinus' plan for "reeducating" Christians in the religion of their ancestors had failed.

After Constantine's conversion -- whatever it may have been -- only Julian (332-363), his nephew, remained to pick up the baton for the pagan cause. Julian did his best to reestablish the old order. He reorganized the shrines and temples; outlawed the teaching of Christian doctrine in the schools; retracted the legal and financial privileges which the Christians had been accumulating since the early fourth century; wrote polemical treatises against the Christians himself; and -- in a clever political maneuver -- permitted exiled bishops to return to their sees to encourage power-struggles and dissension within the church. Naturally, the Christians despised him. The distinguished theologian Gregory of Nazianzus had been Julian's schoolmate in Athens, where both learned a love for the classical writers (but where Julian had been converted to Greek humanism). Cyril of Alexandria wrote a long refutation of Julian's Adversus Christianos (Against the Christians), parts of which hark back to Porphyry and Hierocles. All in all, this pagan interlude -- never really a renaissance -- lasted only three years, until Julian's death in June 363. While the dying words attributed to him as a paean to Christianity, "You have conquered, Galilean!" are not Julian's, they might as well have been.

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In the middle of the period we have just described stands Porphyry of Tyre, so named (his original name was Malchus) because of his native city's prominence as a manufacturing center for the royal purple dye (porphyreum). Born in 232, Porphyry was eighteen when the persecution broke out under the emperor Decius. Twelve years later, his dislike for Christianity was firmly established. Porphyry had heard Origen preach, studied the Hebrew scripture, especially the prophets, and the Christian gospels, and found them lacking in literary quality and philosophical sophistication. He had joined a "school" in Rome (ca. 262) run by the famous neoplatonic teacher, Plotinus, where he remained until about 270. In Sicily, following Plotinus' death, and back again in Rome, Porphyry developed an intense dislike for popular religion -- or superstition, as the Roman intellectuals of his circle preferred to call it, regarding Christianity as the most pernicious form of a disease infecting the empire. In a work titled Pros Anebo he pointed out the defects in the cults. Then he tackled Christian teaching in a work in fifteen books known later as Kata Christianon (Against the Christians). Popular until the rescript of Galerius in 311, the work was immediately targeted for destruction by the imperial church, which in 448 condemned all existing copies to be burned. What we know of the book comes from fragments preserved in the context of refutation by Christian teachers such as Eusebius and Apollinarius. Nevertheless Augustine admired Porphyry; Jerome wrote his great commentary on the Book of Daniel to neutralize the philosopher's scathing insights into the nature of biblical prophecy.

It is a convention to say that Porphyry was the most "learned" of the critics of Christianity. Having said this, we should note that the critics of Christianity were not at their intellectual best when writing polemic. It has sometimes been suggested, for example, that the fragments of Porphyry's work preserved by the teacher Macarius Magnes (4th-5th century) cannot belong to Porphyry because they represent '(he work of a lesser mind. A first-class mind Porphyry certainly was, but the debate was not a strenuous one. From the standpoint of the neoplatonic school, Christianity was contemptible because it was simple. Hence, simple devices and stereotyped arguments were used against it. The gospels were the work of charlatans, while Jesus himself was a criminal and a failure, even from the Jewish perspective. His followers had betrayed him; their chief, the greatest coward of all, was made prince of his church. As a miracle worker, Jesus was a second-rater. The teaching of the Christians is self-contradictory: they look for the end of the world, but what they really want is control of the empire. To worship Jesus as a god is an insult to any god deserving of the name. The sentiments expressed were devastating because they came from someone who knew the sacred books of the Christians and their doctrine intimately. Moreover, in his attack Porphyry denied the Christian teachers their favorite refuge: allegory. Porphyry dealt with the plain sense of words. Having mastered allegorical interpretation as a student of Longinus, he knew the tricks of the trade. Whether speaking of the prophecies of the Book of Daniel or the apocalyptic teaching of the church, he refused to excuse contradiction as "mystery" or misstatement of fact as paradox. The gospel writers were not Homer. Their Greek was, by and large, that of the marketplace. They lacked skill, not honesty, for if they had been dishonest men they would have tried to disguise Jesus' failures or the deficiencies of his apostles. But, as they stood, they were hardly worthy of the reverence with which Romans in increasing numbers treated them.

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In the following pages, I have reproduced the pagan critic's words as recorded in the Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes, amounting to well over half of those attributed by Adolf von Harnack to Porphyry. Since the appearance of Harnack's collection, Gegen die Christen, in 1916, a number of studies have appeared defending and attacking the German historian's conclusions. The result is that opinion is divided over whether the pagan of Macarius' dialogue is Porphyry, a transcriber of Porphyry (as Porphyry was of Plotinus) or someone else. That debate is likely to go on for some time, as occasionally new sentences and phrases are added to the corpus of Porphyry's lost work. My own position, as will become clear from what follows in the critical notes and Epilogue, is that Harnack was by and large right. Macarius was responding to Porphyry, either secreting the identity of his opponent for strategic reasons or, less likely, having only the fragments at his disposal without knowledge of their source. The style, themes, approaches, and conclusions belong ultimately -- which is not to say directly -- to the great pagan teacher. That his words have been paraphrased, manipulated and occasionally mangled by his ineloquent opponent is also fairly clear. It is regrettable, from the standpoints of the history of theology and philosophy, that Porphyry did not find an Origen or a Cyril of Alexandria to answer him.

Having said this, however, one senses that some of Porphyry's most damaging language has been preserved, as well as the sense of urgency and the deep-seated hostility and suspicion with which he regarded Christian doctrine. The work was written to reproach the Christians for their lack of patriot- ism -- a theme that surfaces as soon as Macarius begins to cite his opponent. It moves on to afford a "rationalistic" appraisal of key figures. beliefs. biblical episodes, and doctrines. If. as I said. the philosopher appears carping rather than profound. it is because the debate between philosophy and the church had become stereotyped by the late third century. The best arguments belonged to the pagans, but popular religion -- which Porphyry disliked intensely- -- as never guided or corrected by good argument. Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the debate between Macarius and the pagan is that the philosopher keeps his feet planted firmly in the mud throughout the match. Macarius tries flights of philosophical fancy, and usually ends up back on the ground.

The reader is invited to follow the critical notes and to consult the bibliography at the end for further reading. I have chosen to make my lengthy remarks in a comprehensive Epilogue rather than at the beginning of this work. There are two reasons for this procedure. First. as a student, I often resisted the introductions in anthologies of philosophical works, Greek plays or Shakespeare. I say this shamefacedly, knowing now how much work goes into the making of an introduction. But the worst of them said too much -- about the life and times and friends and sources of the writer or author -- and the hest too little. To this day I remember more about Milton than about Paradise Lost. When I moved from philosophy and literature to biblical studies. I soon discovered the wisdom of the fundamentalist dictum. that a good Bible can shed a lot of light on the commentaries. That sentiment may be usefully invoked in this case. Anyone interested in pursuing the Hellenistic context of Porphyry's lost work in a comprehensive fashion may begin by reading the Epilogue.

Second, I think we owe it to Porphyry and his "interpreter(s)" to permit them to speak to us directly. Having been buried -- more or less successfully -- since 448, the words should be permitted at last to breathe their own air. The current mood in classical and patristic studies is favorable to such an exercise. The critical notes provide a running commentary. and the final section of the Epilogue a discussion of text and translation followed by a bibliography of ancient and modern authors relevant to this study.

If the Epilogue (somewhat permissively titled "From Babylon to Rome") seems ambitious, it is because I think a comprehensive discussion of the "buildup" to the pagan critique of Christianity is an essential part of viewing the struggle itself. Pagan-Christian controversy was a continuation of the interface between Judaism and its enemies and of the synagogue and the church. Such an approach is more useful, I recognize, for the "average" reader than for the specialist. Nonetheless, the debate between Jerusalem and Athens (the church and pagan culture) does not begin in the first or the third century but in the recesses of biblical history. Its archetype is the relationship between Jerusalem and Babylon, or between the Maccabees and Greek culture. just as its later crudescence would be the debate between church and state in an era of secular values. The Epilogue has thus been designed for those who wish to explore the debate more fully.

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Credit but in no wise the blame for this project must be shared with those who have invested time and encouragement in its making. My wife, Carolyn, has been judiciously aggravating about seeing it completed; my daughter, Marthe, would like to have seen it completed a hundred times over. They have been patient and consistently hopeful.

I owe to my former colleagues in the Department of Humanities at California State University, Sacramento, and to the University Research scheme of that institution a note of thanks for providing the time to do most of the research and translation for this study during the autumn and spring terms of 1990-91. To Professors Robert Platzner and Stephen Harris goes a special word of thanks. The work was pursued in a less systematic way during my time as head of the History Department in the University of Papua New Guinea, and has been put happily and belatedly to bed at Westminster College, Oxford, where it has been encouraged by the members of the School of Theology.

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