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NEW APPROACHES TO
BYZANTINE HISTORY AND CULTURE

Political Memory and the

Constantinian Dynasty
Fashioning Disgrace
Rebecca Usherwood
New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture

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 Rebecca Usherwood

Political Memory
and the Constantinian
Dynasty
Fashioning Disgrace
Rebecca Usherwood
Trinity College Dublin
Dublin, Ireland

ISSN 2730-9363 ISSN 2730-9371 (electronic)

New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture
ISBN 978-3-030-87929-7 ISBN 978-3-030-87930-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87930-3

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For my parents, Carole and David
 Acknowledgements

This book is a substantially revised version of my Ph.D. thesis, which

was generously funded by a Humanities studentship at the University of
Nottingham. My supervisor was Doug Lee, who is the best anyone could
hope for: thank you for putting up with my nonsense and keeping me
on track. I was extremely fortunate to hold a residential Rome Award at
the British School at Rome early in my Ph.D., an experience which had
an enormous impact on the content and direction of this book; particular
thanks are due to Christopher Smith and Robert Coates-Stephens. My
external examiner was Mark Humphries. Not only did Mark make my
viva a (mostly) enjoyable experience, but he also went into the process
with a full understanding that this was only the beginning of his trou-
bles. Thank you for spending the following years writing endless letters
of recommendation, for your advice and mentoring, and for everything
you do to make late Roman history a more welcoming field.
I have had the dubious pleasure of moving five times for work as
an early career academic, holding teaching posts at UCL, Nottingham,
Durham, and St Andrews, before arriving at Trinity College Dublin in
the summer of 2018. One drawback of this itinerant lifestyle is that
this project has taken longer to complete than I would have liked. The
advantage has been having the privilege of working with lots of inspiring
colleagues, and drawing upon the collective knowledge, expertise, and—
most important of all—kindness and encouragement of so many. I owe
special thanks to the following: at UCL, Simon Corcoran and Benet

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Salway; at Nottingham, Mark Bradley, Carl Buckland, John Drinkwater,

Lynn Fotheringham, and Oliver Thomas; at Durham, Ted Kaizer, Sarah
Miles, and Phillip Horky; at St Andrews, Michael Carroll, Dawn Hollis,
Jill Harries, Tom Harrison, Jason König, Carlos Machado, Roger Rees,
and Rebecca Sweetman.
I would also like to thank Laura Conroy, James Corke-Webster,
Thomas Coward, Nicola Ernst, Christopher Farrell, Richard Flower,
Becca Grose, Arianna Gullo, Jack Lennon, Julia Pfefferkorn, Shaun
Tougher, and Robin Whelan: you are all examples of the best that
academia has to offer. Myles Lavan was characteristically generous with his
time as my office mate in St Andrews and even after I left Scotland: a huge
thank you for all your insight and advice. A special thanks to Eleri Cousins
for finally convincing me that I’d produced a ‘book-shaped object’. Thank
you to my new department at Trinity for all your support, especially to
Martine Cuypers for her help in the final stages of this project.
Thanks are also due to those in the field who have spent so much
of their time and energy cataloguing and publishing epigraphic mate-
rial, and especially to those who have made that material easily accessible
online (Oxford’s Last Statues of Antiquity database and the Epigraphik-
Datenbank Clauss/Slaby were particularly important for this project:
my gratitude to their creators and contributors). I am grateful to the
following individuals and institutions for their generosity and assistance
in securing image permissions for this book: the American Numismatic
Society (especially Elena Stolyarik), Maria Daniela and Agnese Pergola at
the Museo Nazionale Romano in Rome, Manfred Clauss, Nino Švonja at
the Arheološki muzej u Splitu, and Paolo Jorie at the Museo Correale,
Sorrento. To the series editors and especially Sam Stocker at Palgrave:
thank you for your professionalism and understanding.
Thank you to my many students over the years. You are endlessly
inspiring. I cannot believe I get paid to talk about the Romans with you.
For reading, advice, distraction, and encouragement, a big thanks to
Nick Akers, James Collings, Clare Corbett, Becky Harley, Kate Jacobs,
Maroula Perisanidi, Amy Skilbeck, Laura Trimingham, Laura Turnage,
everyone at InfoCat Ltd., and Phoebe and the kitkats. My love to
my grandmother, Mary, who was always encouraging of my academic
ventures (and once commented that the emperor Maxentius looks like
‘a very handsome chap’). I am sorry that you aren’t here to see the final
product, but you have certainly left your mark. Last but not least, thank
you to my parents, Carole and David. There is no way I could have done
this without you: this book is dedicated to you.
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
Political Memory, Disgrace, and Oblivion 7
Discourses of Disgrace 14
Central Direction and Local Action 21
The Materiality of Disgrace 26
References 39
2 Maximian 49
The Fall of Maximian 50
Disgrace and Iconoclasm 54
Maximian’s Disgrace in Constantine’s Territories 59
Civil War and the Spectre of Maximian 67
Maximian’s Disgrace in the Wider Roman World 75
Rehabilitating Maximian? 95
Conclusion: The Blurred Lines of Disgrace 105
References 106
3 Licinius 111
Licinius and Constantine 112
Civil War and a New Alliance 118
Licinius and the Law 128
The Disgrace of Licinius 132
Conclusion: The Emperor Vanishes 156
References 157

ix
x CONTENTS

4 Crispus 163
Crispus and Constantine 165
Silence and Scandal: Crispus’ Downfall in Ancient Accounts 172
Treason and Condemnation: Modern Interpretations 178
Crispus as a Disgraced Figure 182
Crispus and the Licinii 184
Crispus and the Constantinian Family 188
Conclusion: Constantinian Disgrace 207
References 208
5 Magnentius 213
Magnentius’ Supporters 217
The Disgrace of Constans 233
The Disgrace of Magnentius 250
Conclusion: The Limits of Disgrace 260
References 261
6 Epilogue 267
References 270

Appendix 1: Maximian 273

Appendix 2: Licinius 287
Appendix 3: Crispus 303
Appendix 4: Dating Decentius’ Elevation as Caesar 313
Bibliography 315
Index 341
 Abbreviations

AE L’Année épigraphique
CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum
ICUR Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae
IG Inscriptiones Graecae
ILAlg Inscriptions Latines de l’Algérie
ILS Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae
ILTun Inscriptions Latines de la Tunisie
InscrIt Inscriptiones Italiae
LSA Last Statues of Antiquity (http://laststatues.classics.ox.ac.uk/)
PLRE Prospography of the Later Roman Empire
RIC Roman Imperial Coinage
SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum

xi
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Plaque from statue base of Maximian from Segarra (AE
1908.3) (Illustration by author) 62
Fig. 2.2 Follis of divus Maximian, RIC VI Ostia no. 26. ANS
1984.146.117 (Photograph: American Numismatic
Society, reproduced with kind permission) 70
Fig. 2.3 Transcription of statue base of Maxentius from Caesarea
(CIL VIII.20989) 72
Fig. 2.4 Plaque from statue base of Diocletian and Maximian
with rededication to divus Maximian from Aletrium (CIL
X.5803, 5805) (Illustration by author) 73
Fig. 2.5 Statue base of Maximian from Patavium (CIL V.2818)
(Illustration by author) 81
Fig. 2.6 Transcription of fragmentary building plaque
with dedication to Diocletian as Senior Augustus,
from Tuscania (AE 1964.235) 82
Fig. 2.7 Fragments of Baths of Diocletian dedication panel(s)
from Rome (Museo Nazionale Romano, Terme di
Diocleziano, Inv. n. 115,813; 39,893. Photograph
by author, reproduced with kind permission
of the Ministry of Culture, Museo Nazionale Romano) 85
Fig. 2.8 Detail of fragment ‘d’ of Baths of Diocletian
dedication panel(s) (Museo Nazionale Romano,
Terme di Diocleziano, Inv. n. 115,813; 39,893.
Photograph by author, reproduced with kind permission
of the Ministry of Culture, Museo Nazionale Romano) 86

xiii
xiv LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 2.9 Statue base of Maximian from Teurnia (AE 1992.1359)

(Lower damage is due to later reuse. Illustration
by author) 91
Fig. 2.10 Bronze AE 3 of divus Maximian, RIC VII Siscia no. 4.
ANS 1994.123.33 (Photograph: American Numismatic
Society, reproduced with kind permission) 98
Fig. 2.11 Statue base of Constantine II, Celeia (CIL III.5207)
(Illustration by author) 103
Fig. 3.1 Gold aureus of Licinius Iunior, RIC VII Antioch no. 33.
ANS 1994.100.8978 (Photograph American Numismatic
Society, reproduced with kind permission) 118
Fig. 3.2 Triumphal arch in Cillium (CIL VIII.210). (Photograph
by Manfred Clauss, reproduced with kind permission) 121
Fig. 3.3 Detail of Constantinian/Licinian inscription on the arch
at Cillium (Photograph by Manfred Clauss, reproduced
with kind permission) 122
Fig. 3.4 Transcription of base of Licinius from Parentium (CIL
V.330) 140
Fig. 3.5 Statue base of Licinius from Pola (CIL V.31)
(Photograph by author) 141
Fig. 3.6 Detail of altar from Salona (CIL III.1968). Arheološki
muzej u Splitu inv. no. AMS A-187 (Photograph
by Tonći Seser, reproduced with kind permission) 144
Fig. 3.7 Dedicatory plaque from city gate, Tropaea Traiani (CIL
III.13734) (Illustration by author) 147
Fig. 3.8 Transcription of base with dedication to Crispus,
Licinius Iunior, and Constantine II, altered to Crispus,
Constantine, and Constantius II, Kos (IG-4,2.904).
Emboldening indicates carving into indentations left
by erased text 151
Fig. 4.1 Bronze AE 3 of Crispus, RIC VII Trier no. 142. ANS
1979.78.25 (Photograph: American Numismatic Society,
reproduced with kind permission) 168
Fig. 4.2 Transcription of milestone of Constantine and sons
with Crispus erased, Tolbiacum (AE 1967.341) 189
Fig. 4.3 Transcription of double statue base from Samothrace,
after Friedrich (IG XII-8.244), translation after LSA-826 194
Fig. 4.4 Plaque with dedication to Constantine, Crispus,
and Constantine II, Ostia (CIL VI.40770) (Photograph
by author) 196
Fig. 4.5 Detail of Fig. 4.4 (Photograph by author) 197
 LIST OF FIGURES xv

Fig. 4.6 Transcription of equestrian statue base of Crispus, Puteoli

(AE 1969/70.108) 197
Fig. 4.7 Statue base of Fausta, Surrentum (CIL X.678).
Museo Correale inv. 55 sala 4 (Photograph by author,
reproduced with kind permission of the Museo Correale
di Terranova, Sorrento) 201
Fig. 4.8 Detail of Fig. 4.7 with reconstruction of erased words
(Photograph by author, reproduced with kind permission
of the Museo Correale di Terranova, Sorrento) 202
Fig. 4.9 Transcription of base of Helena, Salernum (CIL X.517) 204
Fig. 5.1 Transcription of forum transitorium inscription, Mustis
(AE 1933.105. Textual reconstruction after Beschaouch
2005) 224
Fig. 5.2 Gold medallion of Magnentius, RIC VIII Aquileia aq.
not. ANS 1967.256.2 (Photograph American Numismatic
Society, reproduced with kind permission) 235
Fig. 5.3 Statue base of Constans with rededication under Fabius
Titianus, Rome (CIL VI.40783a, 41335a) (Illustration
by author) 238
Fig. 5.4 Transcription of statue base of Constans, Rome (CIL
VI.40782) 239
Fig. 5.5 Circus restoration dedication, Augusta Emerita (AE
1927.165) (Illustration by author) 242
Fig. 5.6 Tiber restoration plaque with dedication to Constantius
and Constans, Tibur (CIL XIV.3582) (Photograph
by author) 245
Fig. 5.7 Detail of Fig. 5.6 (Photograph by author) 246
Fig. 5.8 Equestrian statue base of Constantius II, Forum
Romanum, Rome (CIL VI.1158) (Illustration by author) 253
Fig. 5.9 Transcription of lost statue base of Magnentius, Rome
(CIL VI.1166) 255
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 Non-milestone dedications including Maximian

from within Constantine’s territories in 310 60
Table 2.2 Milestones including Maximian from within Constantine’s
territories in 310 60
Table 2.3 Milestones including Maximian from outside
Constantine’s territories in 310 78
Table 2.4 Other dedications including Maximian from outside
Constantine’s territories in 310 79
Table 3.1 Milestones including Licinius and/or Licinius Iunior 133
Table 3.2 Other dedications including Licinius and/or Licinius
Iunior 134
Table 4.1 Milestones including Crispus 185
Table 4.2 Milestones including Crispus, broken down by collegiate
grouping 185
Table 4.3 Other dedications including Crispus 190
Table 4.4 Other dedications including Crispus, broken
down by collegiate grouping 191
Table 5.1 Urban prefects of Magnentius 225

xvii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

When all hope was destined to fail and the will to make peace abandoned,
who could doubt that he [Maxentius] was divinely delivered to your arms,
when he had attained such a degree of madness that he even provoked, on
his own, the one whom he ought to have tried to win over? Oh, what sharp
and painful stings you have, insult, when inflicted by an inferior! Behold,
for sorrow! (words come with difficulty), the violent overthrow of revered
images and the vile erasure of the divine face! O impious hands, O savage
eyes! … But in the end what do you gain, blind madness? This face cannot
be destroyed. It is fixed on the hearts of all men. It does not shine by the
gilding of beeswax or the dye of pigments, but blossoms forth through the
longing of our spirits. Constantine will only be forgotten when the human
race is destroyed.
Nazarius, panegyric in praise of Constantine 1

1 Pan. Lat. IV(10) 12.1–5 (after Nixon and Saylor Rodgers trans.): Cum spes omnis
frigere debuerit et voluntas pacificandi alienata sit, quis dubitet divinitus armis tuis
deditum, cum eo dementiae processerit ut ultro etiam lacesseret quem ambire deberet? O
quam acres dolorum aculeos habes, contumelia quam imponit inferior! Ecce enim, pro dolor!
(verba vix suppetunt), venerandarum imaginum acerba deiectio et divini vultus litura
deformis. O manus impiae, o truces oculi! […] Sed quid tandem adsequeris, caeca dementia?
Aboleri vultus hic non potest. Universorum pectoribus infixus est, nec commendatione cerae
ac pigmentorum fucis renitet sed desiderio efflorescit animorum. Una demum Constantini
oblivio est humani generis occasus.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
R. Usherwood, Political Memory and the Constantinian Dynasty,
New Approaches to Byzantine History and Culture,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87930-3_1
2 R. USHERWOOD

This passage is a fitting point of departure for an examination of

Roman concepts of political disgrace since it highlights many of the
contradictions which surround the phenomenon. Firstly, it represents a
divergence from the conventional view of image-destruction as a punish-
ment inflicted posthumously on disgraced officials or failed emperors.
Here, the expected scenario is inverted, with the ‘bad’ emperor Maxen-
tius attacking the images of the ‘good’ emperor Constantine. Moreover,
far from being overthrown or dead, Constantine was still alive and ruling
when these attacks are said to have taken place; the portrait abuse instead
serves as both an overture to, and justification for, Maxentius’ own elim-
ination and disgrace. Secondly, the passage highlights the obstacles to
using such literary accounts as evidence for genuine practice. Not only is
this passage the only surviving piece of evidence, either literary or mate-
rial, which suggests that Constantine’s honorific images were attacked as
part of this civil conflict, the context also makes its veracity questionable,
since it forms a climactic moment in a speech delivered almost a decade
after Maxentius’ death, praising the character and justifying the actions of
his conqueror. Nevertheless, it has consistently been accepted by modern
commentators as proof of an actual, historical event.2
Damnatio memoriae is a modern phrase, used as an umbrella term for
a wide range of measures which the Romans used to denigrate, distort, or
nullify the memories of those who were, for various reasons, deemed to
have been disgraced. These measures changed with the passage of time,
along with wider shifts in cultural priorities and forms of commemora-
tion. From the confiscation of property, razing of houses, and banning of
names and funerary honours in the insular aristocratic world of Repub-
lican Rome,3 actions grew more public and ostentatious in the context of
the empire, when images of the emperor, imperial family, and other offi-
cials were prominent and widely disseminated. Portraits were vandalised,
removed, or recarved into others; dedications could be disfigured or
altered; a victim’s name and titles could be erased from inscriptions with
varying degrees of thoroughness; official legal acts could be nullified;
coins could be countermarked. In rarer cases, such as that of Maxentius,

2 Smith (1971: 91), Pohlsander (1996: 19), Stewart (2003: 269, 287), Marlowe (2006:
228–229), and Killerich (2014: 64).
3 See Mustakallio (1994) for sanctions against memory from the earliest periods of
Rome’s history, Flower (2006: Chapters 3–5) for the early to later Republican period,
and Bats (2007) for the time of Sulla.
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

a victim’s body was treated with the disrespect and malice customarily
reserved for criminals and other social outcasts.4 The past twenty years
have witnessed a significant growth of interest in these phenomena: their
mechanics, motivations, and the contradictions which were inherent in
their use.5 These modern investigations have urged us to view damnatio
memoriae not as a monolithic or homogenous set of penalties, but instead
as an inventive and adaptive process, and thus a lens through which the
priorities of an age can be examined.
This book is an examination of political disgrace from Constantine’s
rise to power until the accession of Julian, the last of the Constantinian
emperors. This period, encompassing roughly the first half of the fourth
century CE, was a time of profound political, religious, and cultural
change, and witnessed an unprecedented number of emperors suffering
from the penalties associated with political disgrace.6 Surviving literary
and material evidence indicates that, of seventeen emperors and other
major imperial claimants, fifteen were inflicted with some form of these
measures.7 This prevalence can be explained by features particular to this
age, above all the establishment of a collegiate form of imperial govern-
ment, increasing the number of emperors holding power at any one time,
which combined with political instability. Meanwhile, our understanding
of the political situation is also complicated by our reliance, particularly
for the earlier years of the fourth century, on Christian sources which were
written or revised in the aftermath of the Great Persecution. Disgrace is a
central theme of such narratives, and these Christian discourses have had

4 For associations between the treatment of the bodies of infames and disgraced
members of the elite, see Kyle (1998: 131–133).
5 See especially Hedrick (2000), Varner (2004), Flower (2006), Benoist and Lefevre
(2007), Krüpe (2011), Crespo Pérez (2014), and Omissi (2018).
6 By contrast, the Julio-Claudian period and its immediate aftermath witnessed measures
against only the emperors Caligula, Nero, Galba, and Otho, and a small number of other
prominent men, such as Sejanus. Instead, this period is distinct for its prevalence of
imperial women being subjected to these types of penalties: Varner (2001; 2004: 21–108)
and Flower (2006: 160–194).
7 Diocletian: Lactant. De mort. pers. 42.1–2 and inscriptions; Maximian: Lactant. De
mort. pers. 42, Euseb. Hist. eccl. 8.13.15, Vit. Const. 1.47.1, and inscriptions; Maximinus
Daia: Euseb. Hist. eccl. 9.11 and inscriptions; Maxentius: inscriptions, portraiture, and
monuments; Licinius: Euseb. Hist. eccl. 10.9.5, inscriptions and portraiture; Severus,
Galerius, Crispus, Licinius Iunior, Dalmatius, Constantine II, Constans, Magnentius,
Decentius, and Gallus: inscriptions.
4 R. USHERWOOD

a significant impact on the ways in which scholars have interpreted events.

As a consequence, the Constantinian age presents a unique opportunity
to explore the later evolution of Roman notions of political failure and
dishonour.
Despite several influential publications over the past twenty years which
redress the concept, a view prevails that so-called damnatio memoriae was
centralised, immediate, and totalising. This book uses four detailed and
contrasting case studies to draw out distinctive features of these prac-
tices which stand at odds with this perspective. My central argument is
that the penalties associated with political disgrace were neither imme-
diate nor universal, neither centrally imposed nor regulated. By contrast,
I argue that they reveal a spectrum of local responses to political change.
As a consequence, this book not only shines light on Roman concepts
of political disgrace, but provides wider insights on how imperial power
could be communicated, understood, and interpreted across wide swathes
of geographical space. Moreover, its argument that the transformation of
these political figures into objects of disgrace was a communal enterprise,
created over an extended period of time in a variety of media and by
a range of different people, resonates with wider academic discourse on
memory as a social and collective phenomenon.8
The Constantinian dynasty was built on the failure of its imperial
opponents. In practice, this was an uneasy foundation since, more often
than not, these opponents were either closely related to or even part of
the Constantinian family. This book’s first case study is Maximian (r.
285–310), former Augustus of the Tetrarchy and the father-in-law of
Constantine, who was eliminated by the younger emperor in 310. The
survival of multiple literary accounts of the destruction of Maximian’s
honorific images has cemented his position as a paradigm of political
disgrace. However, the most puzzling feature of this episode is the fact
that, seven years after he had killed his father-in-law, Constantine began
issuing coinage which declared that he was now a divus , a deified figure. I
unravel this episode through a close examination of the surviving literary,
numismatic, and epigraphic evidence, the latter in particular revealing
a wide variety of local responses to Maximian’s downfall in different
regions of the empire. Tracing the evolution of Maximian’s posthumous
status until the time of Julian, I argue that the emperor embodies the

8 See especially Fentress and Wickham (1992), Markovits and Reich (1997), Misztal
(2003), and Castelli (2004).
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

complexity of Roman attitudes to imperial memorialisation, one which

extends beyond the binary of ‘damned’ versus ‘deified’. Maximian was
never forgotten, but nor was he simply ‘rehabilitated’. Instead, he blurred
the lines between political honour and political disgrace.
The second chapter considers another close ally turned opponent of
Constantine: the emperor Licinius (r. 308–324) who was married to
Constantine’s sister, Constantia. Licinius was Constantine’s final imperial
rival from the disintegrated Tetrarchy, so the deconstruction of his legiti-
macy, as well as the rewriting of his relationship with Constantine, formed
a cornerstone of Constantine’s authority as sole ruler of the empire.
Constantine and Licinius’ turbulent decade-long co-emperorship, with its
initial inconclusive civil war, leading to a new treaty where the borders
between their territories were redrawn, provides the ideal conditions to
trace distinct stages of reactions in a contested political environment.
This chapter lays out most clearly one of this book’s key arguments: that
condemnation was neither immediate nor necessarily posthumous, but
part of a protracted process which could begin before a ruler had even
been decisively defeated.
Crispus (r. 317–326), the eldest son of Constantine, who was elim-
inated by his own father in mysterious circumstances, is my third case
study. Like Maximian, Crispus has been regarded as an archetype of
damnatio memoriae.9 However, rather than being inspired by literary
descriptions of the destruction of his images, this view is based on
the conspicuous silences which surround his downfall, which create the
impression that he had been ‘vaporised’ without any form of public expla-
nation. After establishing the status and position which Crispus occupied
within his father’s regime, and how the treatment of his posthumous
memory features in both ancient and modern explanations of his death,
I turn to a full consideration of the epigraphic evidence for his disgrace.
This understudied body of material offers contemporary documentation
of the different kinds of reactions generated by Crispus’ elimination.
Rather than a centrally driven campaign to forget Crispus by expunging
all traces of him from the empire, what emerges is a situation where some
were hesitant to attack the young emperor’s memory, whilst others openly
and proudly dishonoured him.

9 For example, MacMullen (1969: 187), Pohlsander (1984: 98; 1996: 58), Burgess
(2008: 7, 13), Stephenson (2009: 200), and Barnes (2011: 5).
6 R. USHERWOOD

The final chapter moves forward a quarter of a century to an empire

inherited by Constantine’s sons. It examines the case of Magnentius
(r. 350–353), the emperor who eliminated Constans, Constantine’s
youngest son, gaining control of half of the empire, and then posed a
prolonged threat to Constantius II, the last surviving son of Constan-
tine. As an individual who stood outside of the Constantinian dynasty,
Magnentius garnered a western support base of individuals who had
formerly served Constantine and his sons. Consequently, this chapter
not only examines how Magnentius was treated both during and after
his eventual defeat, but also how the memory of the Constantinian
dynasty was managed in the territories which fell under the new emperor’s
control. Constans and Magnentius, both failed emperors, were in similar
ways reduced to the status of tyranni (‘tyrants’) after their removal, trans-
formed into scapegoats who were condemned in isolation, allowing for
the survival and absolution of anyone who had supported them. Here,
we witness a reframing of the past to meet the ongoing needs of the
present, a present that treated recent events with selective amnesia and
selective commemoration.10
An obvious question is: given the prevalence of disgraced emperors
in the late third to mid-fourth centuries, why these particular four case
studies? This book prioritises depth over breadth, an approach designed to
avoid the assumption that disgrace followed a standard pathway, and to do
justice to the large and complex body of material evidence. My method-
ology weighs surviving literary evidence against this material evidence,
chiefly inscriptions, so a key rationale behind my choice of focus is
the quantity and territorial distribution of these sources. The four case
studies were also chosen with balance in mind, as each of them exempli-
fies a scenario where disgrace unfolded in a distinct way. An important
factor in this is the disparate relationships between the examined indi-
vidual and Constantine or his sons: a broken alliance between a senior
and a junior emperor (Maximian); a troubled relationship of nominal
equals (Licinius); a junior emperor viewed as an ideological extension
of his father (Crispus); an imperial claimant who remained determinedly
unrecognised by his would-be co-emperor (Magnentius).

10 For the relationship between memory (and forgetting) and political transition,
reconciliation, and continuity, see especially Loraux (2002) and Assmann and Shortt
(2012).
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

Though each chapter has its central focus, each also incorporates at
least two additional individuals with whom the central figure’s disgrace
was somehow entangled. My examination of Maximian’s posthumous
reputation involves a detailed treatment of the regime of his son, Maxen-
tius, as well as some discussion of Diocletian, his colleague of over
twenty years. The case of Licinius requires consideration of his young
son, Licinius Iunior, as well as the emperor Maximinus Daia. Due to the
proximity of their relative downfalls, analysis of the epigraphic evidence
for Crispus’ disgrace requires revisiting the Licinii, as well as a discus-
sion of possible connections to the disappearance of Crispus’ stepmother,
Fausta. Finally, my chapter on Magnentius involves considerable analysis
of the treatment of the ideological and material legacy of Constans, as well
as some thought about the precedent set by the death of Constantine II
a decade earlier. Hence, through its four case studies, this book aims to
do due justice to the breadth and complexity of evidence, practices, and
attitudes surrounding political disgrace in the Constantinian era.

Political Memory, Disgrace, and Oblivion

This book’s four case studies and overarching arguments are embedded
in wider themes of memory, disgrace, and the rhetoric of forgetting, all
of which have a considerable history in modern scholarship. The 1936
doctoral thesis of Freidrich Vittinghoff was the first detailed modern study
of the methods by which the Roman state attacked the memory of those
deemed to be public enemies. In his close examination of the ancient legal
and technical language used to target remembrance, Vittinghoff high-
lighted that the term damnatio memoriae belongs to the early modern
rather than the ancient world and was never used by the Romans them-
selves.11 Vittinghoff also drew attention to some of the inconsistencies
found in practice, such as the case of Caligula, an emperor who was
never officially condemned by the Senate but still suffered a form of
de facto condemnation, since inscriptions survive where his name has
been erased.12 Hence, it has long been recognised that Roman atti-
tudes to political disgrace were intricate and evolving, and the modern

11 Vittinghoff (1936: 64–74). The first attested use of damnatio memoriae is in the
title of a dissertation written by Schrieter and Gerlach in 1689: see Stewart (1999: 184
n.3) and Flower (2006: xix).
12 Vittinghoff (1936: 13).
8 R. USHERWOOD

use of a static label or concept to encompass these practices is inherently

problematic.
However, damnatio memoriae is still commonly used in modern schol-
arship, both of the Roman world and beyond, as well as in contemporary
journalism.13 The key reason for this is the convenience of the term,
combined with the sense that it encompasses a concept and phenomena
which are timeless and ubiquitous across cultures. One of the greatest
appeals of damnatio memoriae is its universalism. From the pulling down
and destruction of public statues to crowds vandalising the signs of
streets named after disgraced leaders, these practices evoke our imagina-
tion because we see them at play in our contemporary world.14 Yet it has
been observed that, in these modern contexts, iconoclasm is an ineffec-
tive way of creating oblivion. From the widely disseminated photographs
of these instances of violent attacks, to the statue plinths which are left
vacant in city centres, these moments become memorials of disgrace in
themselves, far more eye-catching and enduring than the original forms
of commemoration.15
Psychological approaches to the ways in which humans create and
forget memories have explored the paradoxical roles which personal or
authoritative agency can play. For example, the research of American
social psychologist Daniel Wegner demonstrated that ordering people to
forget or avoid thinking about something can have the opposite effect,
leading the object or event to become more deeply ingrained in memory,
a phenomenon for which he coined the term ‘ironic process theory’.16
Though it is possible to make individuals intentionally forget something
(so-called motivated forgetting), the right conditions need to be in place,

13 For example, see Westenholz (2012: 89) for its use in an ancient Akkadian context,
or Robey (2013) for its application to Renaissance Florence. Damnatio memoriae was used
by a number of media outlets in reference to the tearing down of confederate monuments
in Baltimore in the summer of 2017. See, for example, Davis Hanson (2017).
14 See Osgood (2007: 1588), who describes Roman practices as ‘eerily modern, like
those of a Stalinist purge or the vaporization of “unpersons” in George Orwell’s 1984’.
In contrast, see Flower (2006: 7) for an emphasis on the cultural specificity of Roman
practices.
15 See Forty (1999: 10) on removal of statues of communist heroes in Eastern Europe
and the Soviet Union after 1989.
16 See Wegner (1994).
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

such as deliberate avoidance of the object of recollection, active exclu-

sion or suppression of ideas, or a change in physical context.17 The kind
of conspicuous defamation created by ancient practices, where the once-
honoured figure’s fall from grace is paraded, clearly does not meet these
conditions. Hence, damnatio memoriae is a pantomime of forgetting.
Memory occupied a central position in Roman culture.18 However,
scholars of the Roman world were relatively slow to engage with the so-
called memory boom which has touched disciplines as diverse as history,
social sciences, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, literary studies,
media studies, and neuroscience over the past thirty years.19 Damnatio
memoriae is the aspect of Roman memory-practices which attracted the
earliest attention. A handful of articles were published over the half
century which followed Vittinghoff’s monograph,20 but it was the 1990s
which witnessed a growth in interest, particularly in American scholar-
ship, not only in the practices associated with damnatio memoriae, but
also in the creation of a more comprehensive and critical approach to
the ideology and inherent contradictions of the phenomenon. An impor-
tant contribution to this was the discovery in Spain in the late 1980s of
bronze copies of the Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone Patre, a senato-
rial decree which outlines the punishments to be inflicted on the Roman
aristocrat Piso, who had been accused of treason during the reign of the
emperor Tiberius.21 This document, which contains a number of specifi-
cations concerning the treatment of Piso’s public memory (the banning of
his name, its erasure from specific inscriptions, the removal of his statues
and images from both public and private places), stimulated discussions

17 Pennebacker and Banasik (1997: 10–11), Anderson (2009: 220–221), and Brandt
(2016: 263–267).
18 See, for example, Gowing (2005: 2): ‘Romans attached a heightened importance to
memory, which manifests itself in almost every aspect of their existence’, and Galinsky
(2014: 1): ‘Memory defined Roman civilization’.
19 The work of Susan Alcock (2001, 2002), is a notable exception. The most compre-
hensive engagement with theories of social memory in Roman contexts can be found in
the three edited volumes which emerged from Karl Galinsky’s Memoria Romana project:
Galinsky (2014, 2015, 2016). For critical general discussions of the origins, development,
and shifting appeal of the ‘memory boom’, see: Gedi and Elam (1996), Hutton (2000),
Klein (2000), Cattell and Climo (2002), Berliner (2005), White (2006), and Bond et al.
(2017).
20 For example, Sijpesteijn (1974), Pollini (1984), and Pallier and Sablayrolles (1994).
21 Eck et al. (1996), Damon and Takács (1999), and de Castro-Camero (2000).
10 R. USHERWOOD

about the meaning and precedents of these punishments, as well as their

intended effects.22
When the major works on Roman attitudes to political memory and
disgrace are placed side by side, what is striking is the range of different
approaches which the topic has stimulated. The work of Eric Varner has
centred on mutilated and reworked portraiture and sculpture, and related
issues of image and body destruction.23 Harriet Flower’s seminal The Art
of Forgetting, which focuses on the Republican and early Imperial periods,
contemplates the manipulation of political memory in a broader sense,
as an aspect of Roman ‘memory space’, encompassing not just portraits,
dedications, inscriptions, and monuments, but also rituals, oral traditions,
and written texts.24 Charles W. Hedrick’s History and Silence represents
another kind of approach. Hedrick used a single inscription from the end
of the fourth century, honouring the condemned and then rehabilitated
senator Virius Nicomachus Flavianus, as a springboard into a variety of
discussions on issues such as the character of paganism in late antique
Rome and the commemorative functions of editing. His fourth chapter,
‘Remembering to Forget’, draws upon the works of social theorists such
as Jan Assmann and Paul Connerton, which have been fundamental to the
wider academic ‘memory boom’. Using modern examples of the manip-
ulation of collective memory as points of reference, Hedrick highlights
the dangers inherent in bringing the same expectations to ancient prac-
tices, especially for how systematically measures were applied.25 He makes
a compelling argument that, in the Roman context, it was the intention
that actions disgracing individuals should be incomplete, since they gained
their symbolic force from the visibility of their implementation.
Despite these important contributions to our understanding of Roman
political disgrace, certain myths of damnatio memoriae persist. Three
misconceptions are widespread in scholarship. First, that it was possible
to declare or impose ‘the’ or ‘a’ damnatio memoriae, as though it was

22 Kajava (1995), Eck et al. (1996), and Griffin (1997); the American Journal of
Philology special edition on the document, ed. Potter (1999), especially Bodel and Flower.
23 Varner (2000a, 2004). For related work on spolia, see especially Kinney (1997),
Elsner (2000), Galinsky (2008).
24 Flower (2006: 276) ‘The Romans, especially those who wrote history, saw memory
(memoria) as if it were a discrete space, filled with monuments, inscriptions, portraits,
written accounts, and other testimonials to the life of Roman citizens.’
25 Hedrick (2000: 92).
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

a standard or customary legal procedure.26 Second, that measures were

implemented in a methodical or systematic manner, when a holistic review
of the surviving evidence demonstrates that generally only a fraction of
material was ever affected.27 Third, and most pervasive, is the idea that
such measures were designed to forcefully and completely erase a victim
from collective consciousness, to make them ‘disappeared’ like an elim-
inated opponent of a totalitarian regime, or an ‘unperson’ such as in
George Orwell’s novel 1984.28 Outside of Roman scholarship, damnatio
memoriae has become a paradigm of social memory control at work, one
which both foreshadowed and inspired these modern manifestations and
dystopian visions.29
This book uses the unique conditions of the Constantinian period
to offer new perspectives on these ideas of so-called damnatio memo-
riae. Drawing upon the extensive material evidence from the first half
of the fourth century, above all the hundreds of inscriptions which have
survived from across the Roman world, and integrating them with literary
evidence, I reconstruct the political and social environment within which
the actions associated with disgrace were carried out. My discussions pay
close attention to temporal and regional intricacies, arguing that these
practices were uneven and inconsistent across time and space, reflecting
self-guided actions by individuals and communities responding to polit-
ical events rather than central enforcement. Through a close examination
of the subtleties of these responses in four contrasting case studies, I aim
to open new avenues for our understanding of the diversities of ancient
experiences of, and reactions to, wider political change.

26 For example, Burgess (2008) and Lenski (2012: 70).

27 For example, Pohlsander (1984: 101) and Varner (2004: 221 n.62) reference a small
number of erased inscriptions of Crispus as evidence for systematic condemnation. See also
Pollini (2006: 590–597).
28 Barnes makes this assumption of both Crispus and Constantine II: (1993: 51; 2011:
5).
29 See Childs (2016: 268–269) on Roman damnatio memoriae (misunderstood as a
decree ‘to erase an individual entirely from public memory and discourse’) as a historical
influence on Orwell’s concept of ‘memory-holes’.
12 R. USHERWOOD

Terminology
Harriet Flower is clear in her reservations against using damnatio memo-
riae and avoids it throughout her monograph, though accepts that it
might be used as a convenient and familiar shorthand.30 Some scholars
have followed suit and now avoid the term, though this does not neces-
sarily mean that they avoid falling into the traps it poses.31 Varner
and Hedrick use damnatio memoriae throughout their work, acknowl-
edging its modern origin with varying degrees of explicitness.32 It remains
common in scholarship.33
The main issue is a lack of suitable alternatives. Hedrick suggests
‘repression’, ‘purge’, and ‘anathematization’, the last of which seems
somewhat fitting, whilst the first two seem too evocative of the twentieth-
century totalitarian models which he maintains are anachronistic.34
Flower offers ‘memory sanctions’, which is well suited to her broad
conception of Roman ‘memory space’. Both this phrase and the frame-
work which supports it have been highly influential, especially since they
move analysis beyond erased inscriptions and pulled-down statues, and
make space for discussions of the generative as well as destructive quali-
ties of such processes.35 However, it is not without flaws, since the word
‘sanctions’ carries implications of official authorisation and fixed legal
procedures.
It has been suggested that the pervasiveness of damnatio memoriae
means that we can never discard the label, despite the sometimes reduc-
tive ways in which it is still employed.36 In this book, I only use it when
addressing the arguments of others, and especially in cases where the

30 Flower (2006: xix; see also 1998: 155–156).

31 Barnes, having previously used the phrase (e.g. 1981: 41), now avoids it. However,
his new terms of reference continue to make the same assumptions that Flower’s rejection
of damnatio memoriae sought to avoid (e.g. 2011: 5: ‘[Constantine II] suffered abolitio
memoriae and officially became, like Crispus, an unperson for a decade or more’).
32 See Flower (2001–2002: 208) for a critique of Hedrick’s use of the term (‘he tends
to talk in terms of “the” damnatio memoriae as if it were a system of standard penalties’).
See Stewart (1999: 161) for an approval of the term (in reference to the edict against
Eutropius, Cod. Theod. 9.40.17) as ‘well suited to this kind of socio-legal annihilation’.
33 For example, Krüpe (2011), Crespo Pérez (2014), and Östenberg (2019).
34 Hedrick (2000: 93).
35 For example, Omissi (2016).
36 Omissi (2016: 170; 2018: 37).
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

anachronisms the phrase engenders are particularly apparent. I also avoid

‘memory sanctions’ because, in the period on which this book focuses,
the senate of Rome had long been obsolete as a body for deciding the
posthumous commemoration of emperors, and the reliability of literary
sources which claim that emperors personally ordered such measures is
questionable.37 Though the policies and ideologies crafted and commu-
nicated by emperors and their courts were of paramount importance in
deciding the treatment of the legacies of imperial rivals, this book seeks
to create a distinction between these centralised messages and the ways in
which they were—or, in many cases, were not—implemented by different
actors across the empire.
The Fashioning Disgrace of this book’s title refers to the collective
and communal process whereby a once-honoured political figure was
transformed into a disgraced figure. Physical evidence is central to this.
Unavoidably, my analysis focuses on the objects and monuments which
have happened to survive the passage of time, though I recognise the
roles which now-lost material might have played. When, in my analysis, I
speak of the ‘physical manifestations’ of an individual’s political identity,
his ‘material presence’ or ‘political memory’, I mean aspects which existed
because of this individual’s status, because he was an emperor. The image
and name of an emperor were present in a variety of media, well beyond
the portraits, statues, or statue bases that now draw the most attention. All
of these media and behaviours, such as the issuing of coinage or the prac-
tice of inscribing an emperor’s name as a consular date, were intrinsically
associated with the emperor’s authority: their use constituted the recog-
nition of his legitimacy, in regions both inside and outside of his direct
sphere of control.38 These physical aspects of imperial identity could then
be targeted as a potent way of rejecting this emperor and the status which
he had held, thus reversing his honoured position, and retrospectively
nullifying the relationships and alliances which he had formed with his
former co-rulers. In particular, actions taken against the imperial name as
it appeared on various kinds of inscription are a key focus in this book.

37 MacCormack (1981: 107–109) and Humphries (2015: 151–152).

38 See Noreña (2011: 300–324) and Hekster (2015: 1–2, 30–38) for recent discussions
of the ideological construct of Roman emperorship, and the different media and agents
involved.
14 R. USHERWOOD

Discourses of Disgrace
The example with which I began this introduction, in which the orator
Nazarius gives his account of Maxentius’ destruction of Constantine’s
images, illustrates a central theme of this book, namely the ways in which
the literary evidence for iconoclasm and related practices fail to corre-
spond with the surviving material evidence. There has been a tendency in
modern scholarship to focus on literary accounts of these acts of destruc-
tion and then use selective examples of surviving physical evidence, such
as damaged statues or erased inscriptions, to reinforce and confirm their
content.39 Whilst written accounts might refer to the wholesale, empire-
wide destruction of an individual’s images and other dedications, material
evidence—particularly epigraphic evidence—tells a different story, where
the majority of the physical traces of an emperor’s political memory
survived the ‘campaign’ unscathed.
I do not seek to disregard literary accounts, but to give weight to
the circumstances in which these narratives were created. The destruc-
tion and disgrace inflicted on imperial victims was an imagined process as
much as it was a tangible one, and this reality should be acknowledged
from the outset. As we have already seen in the case of Nazarius’ pane-
gyric, authors had their own political, moral, religious, or aesthetic reasons
for mentioning—or, equally, not mentioning—these practices. Moreover,
such accounts are rarely eye-witness reports, but instead formed part of
wider narrative discourses which drew upon literary conventions, imagi-
nation, and as we will see in the case of Christian writers, a certain level of
wishful thinking. Ultimately, the writers who engaged in these discourses,
envisioning how these long-established methods of inflicting dishonour
could play out in their own or past environments, were constructing
their own monuments of disgrace. This does not mean that we should
expect to find them replicated in the archaeological record. My discus-
sion explores the gap between this rhetoric and reality, and what it means
for our understanding of Roman notions of political dishonour.

39 See, for example, Varner (2004) on iconoclasm narratives in the cases of Vitellius
(108–110), Domitian (112–125) and Maximinus Daia (220–221). For criticism of his
approach, see, e.g., Machado (2007: 342–345).
Another random document with
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and whence his instructions might quickly go forth to all. His inspired
counsels, and his wonder-working prayers, might be sought for all
who needed them, and his apostolic ordinances might be heard and
obeyed, almost at once, by the most distant churches. But the
circumstance, which more especially might lead the wanderer from
the ruined city and homes of his fathers, to Ephesus, was the great
gathering of Jews at this spot, who of course thus presented to the
Jewish apostle an ample field for exertions, for which his natural and
acquired endowments best fitted him.

In the account given in the Acts of the Apostles of Paul’s visit to

Ephesus, particular mention is made of a synagogue there, in which
he preached and disputed daily, for a long period, with great effect.
Yet Paul’s labors had by no means attained such complete success
among the Jews there, as to make it unnecessary for another
apostle to labor in the ministry of the circumcision, in that same
place; for it is especially mentioned that Paul, after three months’
active exertion in setting forth the truth in the synagogues, was
induced by the consideration of the peculiar difficulties which beset
him, among these proud and stubborn adherents of the old Mosaic
system, to withdraw himself from among them; and during the
remainder of his two years’ stay, he devoted himself, for the most
part, to the instruction of the willing Greeks, who opened the schools
of philosophy for his teachings, with far more willingness than the
Jews did their house of religious assembly. And it appears that the
greater part of his converts were rather among the Greeks than the
Jews; for in the great commotions that followed, the attack upon the
preachers of Christianity was made entirely by a heathen mob, in
which no Israelite seems to have had any hand whatever; so that
Paul had evidently made but little impression, comparatively, on the
latter class. Among the Jews then, there was still a wide field open
for the labors of one, consecrated, more especially, for the ministry
of the circumcision. The circumstances of the times, also, presented
many advantages for a successful assault upon the religious
prejudices of his countrymen. The great Center of Unity for the race
of Israel throughout the world, had now fallen into an irretrievable
oblivion, under the fire and sword of the invader. The glories of the
ancient covenant seemed to have passed away forever; and in the
high devotion of the Jew, a blank was now left, by the destruction of
the only temple of his ancient faith, which nothing else on earth could
fill. Henceforth he might be trained to look for a spiritual
temple,――a city eternal in the heavens, whose lasting foundations
were laid by no mortal hand, for the heathen to sweep away in
unholy triumph; but whose builder and maker was God. Thus
prepared, by the mournful consummation of their country’s utter ruin,
for the reception of a pure faith, the condition of the disconsolate
Jews must have appeared in the highest degree interesting to the
solitary surviving apostle of Jesus; and he would naturally devote the
remnant of his days to that portion of the world where he might make
the deepest impression on them, and where his influence might
spread widest to the scattered members of a people, then as now,
eminently commercial.

Under these peculiarly interesting circumstances, the Apostle

John is supposed to have arrived at Ephesus, where Timothy, still
holding the episcopal chair in which he had been placed by the
Apostle Paul, must have hailed with great delight the arrival of the
venerable John, from whose instructions and counsels, he might
hope to derive advantages so much the more welcome, since the
sword of the heathen persecution had removed his original apostolic
teacher from the world. John must have been, at the time of his
journey to Ephesus, considerably advanced in life. His precise age,
and the date of his arrival, are altogether unknown, nor are there any
fixed points on which the most critical and ingenious historical
investigation can base any certain conclusion whatever, as to these
interesting matters. Various and widely different have been the
conclusions on these points;――some fixing his journey to Ephesus
in the reign of Claudius, long before the destruction of Jerusalem,
and even before the council on the question of the circumcision. The
true character of this tale can be best appreciated by a reference to
another circumstance, which is gravely appended to it by its
narrators;――which is, that he was accompanied on this tour by the
Virgin Mary, and that she lived there with him for a long time. This
journey too, is thus made to precede the journey of Paul to Ephesus,
by many years, and yet no account whatever is given of the reasons
of the profound silence observed in the Acts of the Apostles, on an
event so important to the history of the propagation of the gospel,
nor why John could have lived so long at Ephesus, and yet have
effected so little, that when Paul came to the same place, the very
name of Christ was new there. But such stories are not worth
refuting, standing as they do, self-convicted falsehoods. Others
however, are more reasonable, and date this journey in the year of
the destruction of Jerusalem, supposing that Ephesus was the first
place of refuge to which the apostle went. But this conjecture is
totally destitute of all ancient authority, and is inconsistent with the
very reasonable supposition adopted above,――that he, in the flight
from Jerusalem, first journeyed eastward, following the general
current of the fugitives, towards the Euphrates. Where there is such
a total want of all data, any fixed decision is out of the question; but it
is very reasonable to suppose that John’s final departure from the
east did not take place till some years after this date; probably not
until the reign of Domitian. (A. D. 81 or 82.) He had lived in Babylon
therefore, till he had seen most of his brethren and friends pass
away from his eyes. The venerable Peter had sunk into the grave,
and had been followed by the rest of the apostolic band, until the
youngest apostle, now grown old, found himself standing alone in
the midst of a new generation, like one of the solitary columns of
desolate Babylon, among the low dwelling places of its refugee
inhabitants. But among the hourly crumbling heaps of that ruined
city, and the fast-darkening regions of that half-savage dominion,
there was each year less and less around him, on which his precious
labor could be advantageously expended. Christianity never seizes
readily on the energies of a broken or degenerating people, nor does
it flourish where the influences of civilization are losing their hold. Its
exalted and exalting genius rather takes the spirits that are already
on the wing for an upward course, and rises with them, giving new
energy to the ascending movement. It may exert its elevating
influence too, on the yet wild spirit of the uncivilized, and give, in the
new conceptions of a pure faith and a high destiny, the first impulse
to the advance of man towards refinement, in knowledge, and art,
and freedom; but its very existence among them is dependent on
this forward and upward movement,――and the beginning of its
mortal decay dates from the cessation of the developments of the
intellectual and physical resources of the race on which it operates.
Among the subjects of the Parthian empire, this downward
movement was already fully decided; and they were fast losing those
refinements of feeling and thought on which the new faith could best
fasten its spiritual and inspiring influences; they therefore soon
became but hopeless objects of missionary exertion, when
compared with the active and enterprising inhabitants of the still
improving regions of the west. “Westward” then, “the star” of
Christianity as “of empire, took its way;” and the last of the apostles
was but following, not leading, the march of his Lord’s advancing
dominion, when he shook off the dust of the darkening eastern lands
from his feet, forever; turning his aged face towards the setting sun,
to find in his latter days, a new home and a foreign grave among the
children of his brethren; and to rejoice his old eyes with the glorious
sight of what God had done for the churches, among the flourishing
cities of the west, that were still advancing under Grecian art and
Roman sway.

Ephesus.――On the importance of this place, as an apostolic station, the Magdeburg

Centuriators are eloquent; and such is the classic elegance of the Latin in which these
moderns have expressed themselves, that the passage is worth giving entire, for the sake
of those who can enjoy the beauty of the original. “Considera mirabile Dei consilium.
Joannes in Ephesum ad littus maris Aegei collocatus est: ut inde, quasi e specula, retro
suam Asiam videret, suaque fragrantia repleret: ante se vero Graeciam, totamque Europam
haberet; ut inde, tanquam tuba Domini sonora, etiam ultra-marinos populos suis
concionibus ac scriptis inclamaret et invitaret ad Christum; presertim, cum ibi fuerit
admodum commodus portus, plurimique mercatores ac homines peregrini ea loca adierint.”
The beauty of such a sentence is altogether beyond the force of English, and the elegant
paronomasia which repeatedly occurs in it, increasing the power of the original expression
to charm the ear and mind, is totally lost in a translation, but the meanings of the sentences
may be given for the benefit of those readers to whom the Latin is not familiar.――“Regard
the wonderful providence of God. John was stationed at Ephesus, on the shore of the
Aegean sea; so that there, as in a mirror, he might behold his peculiar province, Asia,
behind him, and might fill it with the incense of his prayers: before him too, he had Greece
and all Europe; so that there, as with the far-sounding trumpet of the Lord, he might
summon and invite to Christ, by his sermons and writings, even the nations beyond the sea,
by the circumstance that there, was a most spacious haven, and that vast numbers of
traders and travelers thronged to the place.”

Chrysostom speaks also of the importance of Ephesus as an apostolic station, alluding

to it as a strong hold of heathen philosophy; but there is no reason to think that John ever
distinguished himself by any assaults upon systems with which he was not, and could never
have been sufficiently acquainted to enable him to attack them; for in order to meet an evil,
it is necessary to understand it thoroughly. There is no hint of an acquaintance with
philosophy in any part of his writings, nor does any historian speak of his making converts
among them. Chrysostom’s words are,――“He fixed himself also in Asia, where anciently
all the sects of Grecian philosophy cultivated their sciences. There he flashed out in the
midst of the foe, clearing away their darkness, and storming the very citadel of demons. And
with this design he went to this place, so well suited to one who would work such wonders.”
(Homily 1, on John.)

The idea of John’s visit to Ephesus, where Timothy was already settled over the church
as bishop, has made a great deal of trouble to those who stupidly confound the office of an
apostle with that of a bishop, and are always degrading an apostle into a mere church-
officer. Such blunderers of course, are put to a vast deal of pains to make out how Timothy
could manage to keep possession of his bishopric, with the Apostle John in the same town
with him; for they seem to think that a bishop, like the flag-officer on a naval station, can
hold the command of the post not a moment after a senior officer appears in sight; but that
then down comes the broad blue pennon to be sure, and never is hoisted again till the
greater officer is off beyond the horizon. But no such idle arrangements of mere etiquette
were ever suffered to mar the noble and useful simplicity of the primitive church
government, in the least. The presence of an apostle in the same town with a bishop, could
no more interfere with the regular function of the latter, than the presence of a diocesan
bishop in any city of his diocese, excludes the rector of the church there, from his pastoral
charge. The sacred duties of Timothy were those of the pastoral care of a single
church,――a sort of charge that no apostle ever assumed out of Jerusalem; but John’s
apostolic duties led him to exercise a general supervision over a great number of churches.
All those in Little Asia would claim his care alike, and the most distant would look to him for
counsel; while that in Ephesus, having been so well established by Paul, and being blessed
by the pastoral care of Timothy, who had been instructed and commissioned for that very
place and duty, by him, would really stand in very little need of any direct attention from
John. Yet among his Jewish brethren he would still find much occasion for his missionary
labor, even in that city; and this was the sort of duty which was most appropriate to his
apostolic character; for the apostles were missionaries and not bishops.

Others pretend to say, however, that Timothy was dead when John arrived, and that
John succeeded him in the bishopric,――a mere invention to get rid of the difficulty, and
proved to be such by the assertion that the apostle was a bishop, and rendered suspicious
also by the circumstance of Timothy being so young a man.

The fable of the Virgin Mary’s journey, in company with John, to Ephesus, has been very
gravely supported by Baronius, (Annals, 44, § 29,) who makes it happen in the second year
of the reign of Claudius, and quotes as his authority a groundless statement, drawn from a
mis-translation of a synodical epistle from the council of Ephesus to the clergy at
Constantinople, containing a spurious passage which alludes to this story, condemning the
Nestorians as heretics, for rejecting the tale. There are, and have long been, however, a
vast number of truly discreet and learned Romanists, who have scorned to receive such
contemptible and useless inventions. Among these, the learned Antony Pagus, in his
Historico-Chronological Review of Baronius, has utterly refuted the whole story, showing the
spurious character of the passage quoted in its support. (Pagus, Critica Baronius Annals,
42. § 3.) Lampe quotes moreover, the Abbot Facditius, the Trevoltian collectors and
Combefisius, as also refuting the fable. Among the Protestant critics, Rivetus and Basnage
have discussed the same point.

Of the incidents of John’s life at Ephesus, no well authorized

account whatever can be given. Yet on this part of apostolic history
the Fathers are uncommonly rich in details, which are interesting,
and some of which present no improbability on examination; but their
worst character is, that they do not make their appearance until
above one hundred years after the date of the incidents which they
commemorate, and refer to no authority but loose and floating
tradition. In respect to these, too, occurs exactly the same difficulty
which has already been specified in connection with the traditionary
history of Peter,――that the same early writers, who record as true
these stories which are so probable and reasonable in their
character, also present in the same grave manner other stories,
which do bear, with them, on their very faces, the evidence of their
utter falsehood, in their palpable and monstrous absurdity. Among
the possible and probable incidents of John’s life, narrated by the
Fathers, are a journey to Jerusalem, and one also to Rome,――but
of these there is no certainty, nor any acceptable evidence. These
long journeys, too, are wholly without any sufficient assigned object,
which would induce so old a man to leave his quiet and useful
residence at Ephesus, to travel hundreds and thousands of miles.
The churches of both Rome and Jerusalem were under well
organized governments, which were perfectly competent to the
administration of their own affairs, without the presence of an
apostle; or, if they needed his counsel in an emergency, he could
communicate his opinions to them with great certainty, by message,
and with far more quickness and ease, than by a journey to them.
Such an occasion for a direct call on him, however, could but very
rarely occur,――nor would so unimportant an event as the death of
one bishop and the installation of another, ever induce him to take a
journey to sanction a mere formality by his presence. His help
certainly was not needed by any church out of his own little Asian
circle, in the selection of proper persons to fill vacant offices of
government or instruction. They knew best their own wants, and the
abilities of their own members to exercise any official duty to which
they might be called; while John, a perfect stranger to most of them,
would feel neither disposed nor qualified for meddling with any part
of the internal policy of other churches. But the principal
condemnation of the statement of his journey to Rome is contained
in the foolish story connected with it, by its earliest narrator,――that
on his arrival there, he was, by order of the emperor Domitian,
thrown into a vessel full of hot oil; but, so far from receiving the
slightest injury from such a frying, he came out of this greasy place
of torture, quite improved in every respect by the immersion; and, as
the story goes, arose from it perfumed like an athleta anointed for
the combat. There are very great variations, however, in the different
narrations of this affair; some representing the event as having
occurred in Ephesus, under the orders of the proconsul of Asia, and
not in Rome, under the emperor, as the earlier form of the fable
states. Among the statements which fix the scene of this miracle in
Rome, too, there is a very important chronological
difference,――some dating it under the emperor Nero, which would
carry it back as early as the time of Peter’s fabled martyrdom, and
implies a total contradiction of all established opinions on his
prolonged residence in the east. In short, the whole story is so
completely covered over with gross blunders and contradictions
about times and places, that it can not receive any place among the
details of serious and well-authorized history.

Thrown into a vessel of oil.――This greasy story has a tolerably respectable antiquity,
going farther back with its authorities than any other fable in the Christian mythology, except
Justin Martyr’s story about Simon Magus. The earliest authority for this is Tertullian, (A. D.
200,) who says that “at Rome, the Apostle John, having been immersed in hot oil, suffered
no harm at all from it.” (De Praescriptionibus adversus Haereticos, c. 36.) “In oleum igneum
immersus nihil passus est.” But for nearly two hundred years after, no one of the Fathers
refers to this fable. Jerome (A. D. 397.) is the next of any certain date, and speaks of it in
two passages. In the first (Against Jovinianus I. 14,) he quotes Tertullian as authority, but
bunglingly says, that “he was thrown into the kettle by order of Nero,”――a most palpable
error, not sanctioned by Tertullian. In the second passage, (Commentary on Matthew xx.
23,) he furthermore refers in general terms to “ecclesiastical histories, in which it was said
that John, on account of his testimony concerning Christ, was thrown into a kettle of boiling
oil, and came out thence like an athleta, to win the crown of Christ.” From these two
sources, the other narrators of the story have drawn it. Of the modern critics and historians,
besides the great herd of Papists, several Protestants are quoted by Lampe, as strenuously
defending it; and several of the greatest, who do not absolutely receive it as true, yet do not
presume to decide against it; as the Magdeburg Centuriators, (Century 1, lib. 2. c. 10,) who
however declare it very doubtful indeed, “rem incertissimam;”――Ittig, Le Clerc and
Mosheim taking the same ground. But Meisner, Cellarius, Dodwell, Spanheim, Heumann
and others, overthrow it utterly, as a baseless fable. They argue against it first, from the bad
character of its only ancient witness. Tertullian is well known as most miserably credulous,
and fond of catching up these idle tales; and even the devoutly credulous Baronius
condemns him in the most unmeasured terms for his greedy and undiscriminating love of
falsehood. Secondly, they object the profound silence of all the Fathers of the second, third
and fourth centuries, excepting him and Jerome; whereas, if such a remarkable incident
were of any authority whatever, those numerous occasions on which they refer to the
banishment of John to Patmos, which Tertullian connects so closely with this story, would
suggest and require a notice of the causes and attendant circumstances of that banishment,
as stated by him. How could those eloquent writers, who seem to dwell with so much delight
on the noble trials and triumphs of the apostles, pass over this wonderful peril and
miraculous deliverance? Why did Irenaeus, so studious in extolling the glory of John, forget
to specify an incident implying at once such a courageous spirit of martyrdom in this
apostle, and such a peculiar favor of God, in thus wonderfully preserving him? Hippolytus
and Sulpitius Severus too, are silent; and more than all, Eusebius, so diligent in scraping
together all that can heap up the martyr-glories of the apostles, and more particularly of
John himself, is here utterly without a word on this interesting event. Origen, too, dwelling
on the modes in which the two sons of Zebedee drank the cup of Jesus, as he prophesied,
makes no use of this valuable illustration.

On the origin of this fable, Lampe mentions a very ingenious conjecture, that some such
act of cruelty may have been meditated or threatened, but afterwards given up; and that
thence the story became accidentally so perverted as to make what was merely designed,
appear to have been partly put in execution.

In this decided condemnation of the venerable Tertullian, I am justified by the example of

Lampe, whose reverence for the authority of the Fathers is much greater than that of most
theologians of later days. He refers to him in these terms: “Tertullianus, cujus credulitas,
in arripiendis futilibus narratiunculis alias non ignota est.”――“Whose credulity in catching
up idle tales is well known in other instances.” Haenlein also calls him “der leichtglaubige
Tertullian,”――“the credulous Tertullian.” (Haenlein’s Einleitung in Neuen Testamentes vol.
III. p. 166.)

This miraculous event procured the highly-favored John, by this extreme unction, all the
advantages with none of the disadvantages of martyrdom; for in consequence of this peril
he has received among the Fathers the name of a “living martyr.” (ζοων μαρτυρ) Gregory of
Nazianzus, Chrysostom, Athanasius, Theophylact and others, quoted by Suicer, [sub voc.
μαρτυρ,] apply this term to him. “He had the mind though not the fate of a martyr.” “Non
defuit animus martyrio,” &c. [Jerome and Cyprian.] Through ignorance of the meaning of the
word μαρτυρ, in this peculiar application to John, the learned Haenlein seems to me to have
fallen into an error on the opinion of these Fathers about his mode of death. In speaking of
the general testimony as to the quiet death of this apostle, Haenlein says: “But Chrysostom,
only in one ambiguous passage, (Homily 63 in Matthew) and his follower Theophylact,
number the Apostle John among the martyrs.” [Haenlein’s Einleitung in Neuen Testamentes
vol. III. chap. vi. § 1, p. 168.] The fact is, that not only these two, but several other Fathers,
use the term in application to John, and they all do it without any implication of an actual,
fatal martyrdom; as may be seen by a reference to Suicer, sub voc.

So little reverence have the critical, even among the Romanists, for any of these old
stories about John’s adventures, that the sagacious Abbot Facditius (quoted by Lampe)
quite turns these matters into a jest. Coupling this story with the one about John’s chaste
celibacy, (as supported by the monachists,) he says, in reference to the latter, that if John
made out to preserve his chastity uncontaminated among such a people as the Jews were,
in that most corrupt age, he should consider it a greater miracle than if John had come safe
out of the kettle of boiling oil; but on the reverend Abbot’s sentiment, perhaps many will
remark with Lampe,――“quod pronuntiatum tamen nimis audax est.”――“It is rather too
bold to pronounce such an opinion.” Nevertheless, such a termination of life would be so
much in accordance with the standard mode of dispatching an apostle, that they would
never have taken him out of the oil-kettle, except for the necessity of sending him to
Patmos, and dragging him on through multitudes of odd adventures yet to come. So we
might then have had the satisfaction of winding up his story, in the literal and happy
application of the words of a certain venerable poetical formula for the conclusion of a
nursery tale, which here makes not only rhyme but reason,――

his banishment.

This fable of his journey to Rome is by all its propagators

connected with the well-authorized incident of his banishment to
Patmos. This event, given on the high evidence of the Revelation
which bears his name, is by all the best and most ancient authorities,
referred to the period of the reign of Domitian. The precise year is as
much beyond any means of investigation, as most other exact dates
in his and all the other apostles’ history. From the terms in which the
ancient writers commemorate the event, it is known, with tolerable
certainty, to have occurred towards the close of the reign of
Domitian, though none of the early Fathers specify the year. The first
who pretend to fix the date, refer it to the fourteenth year of that
emperor, and the most critical among the moderns fix it as late; and
some even in the fifteenth or last year of his reign; since that
persecution of the Christians, during which John seems to have
been banished, may be fairly presumed, from the known
circumstances as recorded in history, to have been the last great
series of tyrannical acts committed by this remarkably wicked
monarch. It certainly appears, from distinct assertions in the credible
records of ecclesiastical history, that there was a great persecution
begun about this time by Domitian, against the Christians; but there
is no reasonable doubt that the extent and vindictiveness of it has
been very much overrated, in the rage among the later Fathers, for
multiplying the sufferings of the early Christians far beyond the truth.
The first Christian writers who allude to this persecution very
particularly, specify its character as far less aggravated than that of
Nero, of which they declare it to have been but a shadow,――and
the persecutor himself but a mere fraction of Nero in cruelty. There is
not a single authenticated instance of any person’s having suffered
death in this persecution; all the creditable historians who describe it,
most particularly demonstrate that the whole range of punishments
inflicted on the subjects of it, was confined to banishment merely.
Another reason for supposing that this attack on the Christians was
very moderate in its character, is the important negative fact, that not
one heathen historian makes the slightest mention of any trouble
with the new sect, during that bloody reign; although such repeated,
vivid accounts are given of the dreadful persecution waged by Nero,
as related above, in the Life of Peter. It is reasonable to suppose,
therefore, that there were no great cruelties practised on them; but
that many of them, who had become obnoxious to the tyrant and his
minions, were quietly put out of the way, that they might occasion no
more trouble,――being sent from Rome and some of the principal
cities, into banishment, along with many others whose removal was
considered desirable by the rulers of Rome or the provinces; so that
the Christians, suffering with many others, and some of high rank
and character, a punishment of no very cruel nature, were not
distinguished by common narrators, from the general mass of the
banished; but were noticed more particularly by the writers of their
own order, who thus specified circumstances that otherwise would
not have been made known. Among those driven out from Ephesus
at this time, John was included, probably on no special accusation
otherwise than that of being prominent as the last survivor of the
original founders, among these members of the new faith, who by
their pure lives were a constant reproach to the open vices of the
proud heathen around them; and by their refusal to conform to
idolatrous observances, exposed themselves to the charge of non-
conformity to the established religion of the state,――an offence of
the highest order even among the Romans, whose tolerance of new
religions was at length limited by the requisition, that no doctrine
whatever should be allowed to aim directly at the overthrow of the
settled order of things. When, therefore, it began to be apprehended
that the religion of Jesus would, in its progress, overcome the
securities of the ancient worship of the Olympian gods, those who
felt their interests immediately connected with the system of idolatry,
in their alarmed zeal for its support, made use of the worst
specimens of imperial tyranny to check the advancing evil.

patmos.

The place chosen for his banishment was a dreary desert island in
the Aegean sea, called Patmos. It is situated among that cluster of
islands, called the Sporades, about twenty miles from the Asian
coast, and thirty or forty southwest of Ephesus. It is at this day
known by the observation of travelers, to be a most remarkably
desolate place, showing hardly anything but bare rocks, on which a
few poor inhabitants make but a wretched subsistence. In this
insulated desert the aged apostle was doomed to pass the lonely
months, far away from the enjoyments of Christian communion and
social intercourse, so dear to him, as the last earthly consolation of
his life. Yet to him, his residence at Ephesus was but a place of exile.
Far away were the scenes of his youth and the graves of his fathers.
“The shore whereon he loved to dwell,”――the lake on whose
waters he had so often sported or labored in the freshness of early
years, were still the same as ever, and others now labored there, as
he had done ere he was called to a higher work. But the homes of
his childhood knew him no more forever, and rejoiced now in the
light of the countenances of strangers, or lay in blackening
desolation beneath the brand of a wasting invasion. The waters and
the mountains were there still,――they are there now; but that which
to him constituted all their reality was gone then, as utterly as now.
The ardent friends, the dear brother, the faithful father, the fondly
ambitious and loving mother,――who made up his little world of life,
and joy, and hope,――where were they? All were gone; even his
own former self was gone too, and the joys, the hopes, the thoughts,
the views of those early days, were buried as deeply as the friends
of his youth, and far more irrevocably than they. Cut off thus utterly
from all that once excited the earthly and merely human emotions
within him, the whole world was alike a desert or a home, according
as he found in it communion with God, and work for his remaining
energies, in the cause of Christ. Wherever he went, he bore about
with him his resources of enjoyment,――his home was within
himself; the friends of his youth and manhood were still before him in
the ever fresh images of their glorious examples; the brother of his
heart was near him always, and nearest now, when the persecutions
of imperial tyranny seemed to draw him towards a sympathetic
participation in the pains and the glories of that bloody death. The
Lord of his life, the author of his hopes, the guide of his youth, the
cherisher of his spirit, was over and around him ever, with the
consolations of his promised presence,――“with him always, even to
the end of the world.”

the apocalypse.

The Revelation of John the Divine opens with a moving and

splendid view of these circumstances. Being, as it is recorded, in the
isle that is called Patmos, for preaching the word of God, and for
bearing witness of Jesus Christ, he was in his lonely banishment,
one Lord’s day, sitting wrapped in a holy spiritual contemplation,
when he heard behind him a great voice, as of a trumpet, which
broke upon his startled ear with a most solemnly grand annunciation
of the presence of one whose being was the source and end of all
things. As the amazed apostle turned to see the person from whom
came such portentous words, there met his eye a vision so dazzling,
yet appalling in its beauty and splendor, amid the bare, dark rocks
around, that he fell to the earth without life, and lay motionless until
the heavenly being, whose awful glories had so overwhelmed him,
recalled him to his most vivid energies, by the touch of his life-giving
hand. In the lightning-splendors of that countenance, far outshining
the glories of Sinai, reflected from the face of Moses, the trembling
eye of the apostolic seer recognized the lineaments of one whom he
had known in other days, and upon whose bosom he had hung in
the warm affection of youth. Even the eye which now flashed such
rays, he knew to be that which had once been turned on him in the
aspect of familiar love; nor did its glance now bear a strange or
forbidding expression. The trumpet-tones of the voice, which of old,
on Hermon, roused him from the stupor into which he fell at the sight
of the foretaste of these very glories, now recalled him to life in the
same encouraging words, “Be not afraid.” The crucified and
ascended Jesus, living, though once dead, now called on his
beloved apostle to record the revelations which should soon burst
upon his eyes and ears; that the churches that had lately been under
his immediate attention, might learn the approach of events which
most nearly concerned the advance of their faith. First, therefore,
addressing an epistolary charge to each of the seven churches, he
called them to a severe account for their various errors, and gave to
each such consolations and promises as were suited to its peculiar
circumstances. Then dropping these individualizing exhortations, he
leaves all the details of the past, and the minutiae of the state of the
seven churches, for a glance over the events of coming ages, and
the revolutions of empires and of worlds. The full explanation of the
scenes which follow, is altogether beyond the range of a mere
apostolic historian, and would require such ability and learning in the
writer,――such a length of time for their application to this matter,
and such an expanse of paper for their full expression, as are
altogether out of the question in this case. Some few points in this
remarkable writing, however, fall within the proper notice of the
apostle’s biographer, and some questions on the scope of the
Apocalypse itself, as well as on the history of it, as a part of the
sacred canon, will therefore be here discussed.

The minute history of the apostolic writings,――the discussion of

their particular scope and tenor,――and the evidences of their
inspiration and authenticity,――are topics, which fall for the most
part under a distinct and independent department of Christian
theology, the common details of which are alone sufficient to fill
many volumes; and are of course altogether beyond the compass of
a work, whose main object is limited to a merely historical branch of
religious knowledge. Still, such inquiries into these deeper points, as
truly concern the personal history of the apostles, are proper
subjects of attention, even here. The life of no literary or scientific
man is complete, which does not give such an account of his writings
as will show under what circumstances,――with what design,――for
what persons,――and at what time, they were written. But a minute
criticism of their style, or illustrations of their meaning, or a detail of
all the objections which have been made to them, might fairly be
pronounced improper intrusions upon the course of the narrative.
With the danger of such an extension of these investigations, in view,
this work here takes up those points in the history of John’s writings,
that seem to fall under the general rule in making up a personal and
literary biography.

In the case of this particular writing, moreover, the difficulties of an

enlarged discussion are so numerous and complicated, as to offer
an especial reason to the apostolic historian, for avoiding the almost
endless details of questions that have agitated the greatest minds in
Christendom, for the last four hundred years. And the decision of the
most learned and sagacious of modern critics, pronounces the
Apocalypse of John to be “the most difficult and doubtful book of the
New Testament.”

The points proper for inquiry in connection with a history of the life
of John, may be best arranged in the form of questions with their
answers severally following.

I. Did the Apostle John write the Apocalypse?

Many will doubtless feel disposed to question the propriety of thus bringing out, in a
popular book, inquiries which have hitherto, by a sort of common consent, been confined to
learned works, and wholly excluded from such as are intended to convey religious
knowledge to ordinary readers. The principle has been sometimes distinctly specified and
maintained, that some established truths in exegetical theology, must needs be always kept
among the arcana of religious knowledge, for the eyes and ears of the learned few, to whom
“it is given to know these mysteries;” “but that to them that are without,” they are ever to
remain unknown. This principle is often acted on by the theologians of Germany and
England, so that a distinct line seems to be drawn between an exoteric and an esoteric
doctrine,――a public and a private belief,――the latter being the literal truth, while the
former is such a view of things, as suits the common religious prejudices of the mass of
hearers and readers. But such is not the free spirit of true Protestantism; nor is any deceitful
doctrine of “accommodation” accordant with the open, single-minded honesty of apostolic
teachings. Taking from the persons who are the subjects of this history, something of their
simple freedom of word and action, for the reader’s benefit, several questions will be boldly
asked, and as boldly answered, on the authorship, the scope, and character of the
Apocalypse. And first, on the present personal question in hand, a spirit of tolerant regard
for opinions discordant with those of some readers, perhaps may be best learned, by
observing into what uncertainties the minds of the greatest and most devout of theologians,
and of the mighty founders of the Protestant faith, have been led on this very point.

The great Michaelis (Introduction to the New Testament, vol. IV. c. xxxiii. § 1.) apologizes
for his own doubts on the Apocalypse, justifying himself by the similar uncertainty of the
immortal Luther; and the remarks of Michaelis upon the character of the persons to whom
Luther thus boldly published his doubts, will be abundantly sufficient to justify the discussion
of such darkly deep matters, to the readers of the Lives of the Apostles.

Not only Martin Luther as here quoted by Michaelis, but the other great reformers of that
age, John Calvin and Ulric Zwingle, boldly expressed their doubts on this book, which more
modern speculators have made so miraculously accordant with anti-papal notions. Their
learned cotemporary, Erasmus, also, and the critical Joseph Scaliger, with other great
names of past ages, have contributed their doubts, to add a new mark of suspicion to the
Apocalypse.

“As it is not improbable that this cautious method of proceeding will give offense to some
of my readers, I must plead in my behalf the example of Luther, who thought and acted
precisely in the same manner. His sentiments on this subject are delivered, not in an
occasional dissertation on the Apocalypse, but in the preface to his German translation of it,
a translation designed not merely for the learned, but for the illiterate, and even for children.
In the preface prefixed to that edition, which was printed in 1522, he expressed himself in
very strong terms. In this preface he says: ‘In this book of the Revelation of St. John, I leave
it to every person to judge for himself: I will bind no man to my opinion; I say only what I
feel. Not one thing only fails in this book; so that I hold it neither for apostolical, nor
prophetical. First and chiefly, the apostles do not prophesy in visions, but in clear and plain
words, as St. Peter, St. Paul, and Christ in the gospel do. It is moreover the apostle’s duty to
speak of Christ and his actions in a simple way, not in figures and visions. Also no prophet
of the Old Testament, much less of the New, has so treated throughout his whole book of
nothing but visions: so that I put it almost in the same rank with the fourth book of Esdras,
and cannot any way find that it was dictated by the Holy Ghost. Lastly, let every one think of
it what his own spirit suggests. My spirit can make nothing out of this book; and I have
reason enough not to esteem it highly, since Christ is not taught in it, which an apostle is
above all things bound to do, as he says, (Acts i.) Ye are my witnesses. Therefore I abide by
the books which teach Christ clearly and purely.’

“But in that which he printed in 1534, he used milder and less decisive expressions. In
the preface to this later edition, he divides prophecies into three classes, the third of which
contains visions, without explanations of them; and of these he says: ‘As long as a
prophecy remains unexplained and has no determinate interpretation, it is a hidden silent
prophecy, and is destitute of the advantages which it ought to afford to Christians. This has
hitherto happened to the Apocalypse: for though many have made the attempt, no one to
the present day, has brought any thing certain out of it, but several have made incoherent
stuff out of their own brain. On account of these uncertain interpretations, and hidden
senses, we have hitherto left it to itself, especially since some of the ancient Fathers
believed that it was not written by the apostle, as is related in Lib. III. Church History. In this
uncertainty we, for our part, still let it remain: but do not prevent others from taking it to be
the work of St. John the apostle, if they choose. And because I should be glad to see a
certain interpretation of it, I will afford to other and higher spirits occasion to reflect.’

“Still however, he declared he was not convinced that the Apocalypse was canonical,
and recommended the interpretation of it to those who were more enlightened than himself.
If Luther then, the author of our reformation, thought and acted in this manner, and the
divines of the last two centuries still continued, without the charge of heresy, to print
Luther’s preface to the Apocalypse, in the editions of the German Bible of which they had
the superintendence, surely no one of the present age ought to censure a writer for the
avowal of similar doubts. Should it be objected that what was excusable in Luther would be
inexcusable in a modern divine, since more light has been thrown on the subject than there
had been in the sixteenth century, I would ask in what this light consists. If it consists in
newly discovered testimonies of the ancients, they are rather unfavorable to the cause; for
the canon of the Syrian church, which was not known in Europe when Luther wrote, decides
against it. On the other hand, if this light consists in a more clear and determinate
explanation of the prophecies contained in the Apocalypse, which later commentators have
been able to make out, by the aid of history, I would venture to appeal to a synod of the
latest and most zealous interpreters of it, such as Vitringa, Lange, Oporin, Heumann, and
Bengel, names which are free from all suspicion; and I have not the least doubt, that at
every interpretation which I pronounced unsatisfactory, I should have at least three voices
out of the five in my favor. At all events they would never be unanimous against me, in the
places where I declared that I was unable to perceive the new light, which is supposed to
have been thrown on the subject since the time of Luther.

“I admit that Luther uses too harsh expressions, where he speaks of the epistle of St.
James, though in a preface not designed for Christians of every denomination: but his
opinion of the Apocalypse is delivered in terms of the utmost diffidence, which are well
worthy of imitation. And this is so much the more laudable, as the Apocalypse is a book,
which Luther’s opposition to the church of Rome must have rendered highly acceptable to
him, unless he had thought impartially, and had refused to sacrifice his own doubts to
polemical considerations.”

To pretend to decide with certainty on a point, which Martin Luther boldly denied, and
which John David Michaelis modestly doubted, implies neither superior knowledge of the
truth, nor a more holy reverence for it; but rather marks a mere presumptuous self-
confidence, and an ignorant bigotry, arising from the prejudices of education. Yet from the
deep researches of the latter of these writers, and of other exegetical theologians since,
much may be drawn to support the view taken in the text of this Life of John, which is
accordant with the common notion of its authorship. The quotation just given, however, is
valuable as inculcating the propriety of hesitation and moderation in pronouncing upon
results.
 The testimony of the Fathers, on the authenticity of the Apocalypse as a work of John,
the apostle, may be very briefly alluded to here. The full details of this important evidence
may be found by the scholar in J. D. Michaelis’s Introduction to the New Testament (Vol. IV.
c. xxxiii. § 2.) Hug’s Introduction to the New Testament (Vol. II. § 176.) Lardner’s Credibility
of Gospel History (Supplement, chapter 22.) Fabricii Bibliotheca Graeca. (Harles’s 4to.
edition with Keil’s, Kuinoel’s, Gurlitt’s, and Heyne’s notes, vol. IV. pp. 786‒795,
corresponding to vol. III. pp. 146‒149, of the first edition.) Lampe, Prolegomena to a
Johannine Theology.

Justin Martyr (A. D. 140,) is the first who mentions this book. He says, “A man among
us, named John, one of the apostles of Christ, has, in a revelation which was made to him,
prophesied,” &c. Melito (A. D. 177.) is quoted by Eusebius and by Jerome, as having written
a treatise on the Revelation. He was bishop of Sardis, one of the seven churches, and his
testimony would be therefore highly valuable, if it were certain whether he wrote for or
against the authenticity of the work. Probably he was for it, since he calls it “the Apocalypse
of John,” in the title of his treatise, and the silence of Eusebius about the opinion of Melito
may fairly be construed as showing that he did not write against it. Irenaeus, (A. D. 178,)
who in his younger days was acquainted with Polycarp, the disciple and personal friend of
John, often quotes this book as “the Revelation of John, the disciple of the Lord.” And in
another place, he says, “It was seen not long ago, almost in our own age, at the end of the
reign of Domitian.” This is the most direct and valuable kind of testimony which the writings
of the Fathers can furnish on any point in apostolic history; for Irenaeus here speaks from
personal knowledge, and, as will be hereafter shown, throws great light on the darkest
passage in the Apocalypse, by what he had heard from those persons who had seen John
himself, face to face, and who heard these things from his own lips. Theophilus of Antioch,
(A. D. 181,)――Clemens of Alexandria, (A. D. 194,――Tertullian of Carthage, (A. D.
200,)――Apollonius of Ephesus, (A. D. 211,)――Hippolytus of Italy, (A. D. 220,)――Origen
of Alexandria and Caesarea, (A. D. 230,)――all received and quoted it as a work of John
the apostle, and some testify very fully as to the character of the evidence of its authenticity,
received from their predecessors and from the contemporaries of John.

But from about the middle of the third century, it fell under great suspicion of being the
production of some person different from the apostle John. Having been quoted by
Cerinthus and his disciples, (a set of Gnostical heretics, in the first century,) in support of
their views, it was, by some of their opponents, pronounced to be a fabrication of Cerinthus
himself. At this later period, however, it suffered a much more general condemnation; but
though denied by some to be an apostolic work, it was still almost universally granted to be
inspired. Dionysius of Alexandria, (A. D. 250,) in a book against the Millenarians, who
rested their notions upon the millenial passages of this revelation, has endeavored to make
the Apocalypse useless to them in support of their heresy. This he has done by referring to
the authority of some of his predecessors, who rejected it on account of its maintaining
Cerinthian doctrines. This objection however, has been ably refuted by modern writers,
especially by Michaelis and Hug, both of whom, distinctly show that there are many
passages in the Revelation, so perfectly opposite to the doctrines of Cerinthus, that he
could never have written the book, although he may have been willing to quote from it such
passages as accorded with his notions about a sensual millenium,――as he could in this
way meet those, who did take the book for an inspired writing.

Dionysius himself, however, does not pretend to adopt this view of the authorship of it,
but rather thinks that it was the work of John the presbyter, who lived in Ephesus in the age
of John the apostle, and had probably been confounded with him by the early Fathers. This
John is certainly spoken of by Papias, (A. D. 120,) who knew personally both him and the
apostle; but Papias has left nothing on the Apocalypse, as the work of either of them. (The
substance of the whole argument of Dionysius is very elaborately given and reviewed, by
both Michaelis and Hug.) After this bold attack, the apostolic character of the work seems to
have received much injury among most of the eastern Fathers, and was generally rejected
by both the Syrian and Greek churches, having no place in their New Testament canon.
Eusebius, (A. D. 315,) who gives the first list of the writings of the New Testament, that is
known, divides all books which had ever been offered as apostolical, into three
classes,――the universally acknowledged, (ὁμολογουμενα homologoumena,)――the
disputed, (αντιλεγομενα antilegomena,)――and the spurious, (νοθα notha.) In the first class,
he puts all now received into the New Testament, except the epistle to the Hebrews, the
epistles of James and Jude, the second of Peter, the second and third of John, and the
Revelation. These exceptions he puts into the second, or disputed class, along with sundry
writings now universally considered apocryphal. Eusebius says also, “It is likely that the
Revelation was seen by John the presbyter, if not by John the apostle.”――Cyril of
Jerusalem, (A. D. 348,) in his catalogue of the Scriptures, does not allow this a place.
Epiphanius of Salamis, in Cyprus, (A. D. 368,) though himself receiving it as of apostolic
origin, acknowledged that others in his time rejected it. The council of Laodicea, (A. D. 363,)
sitting in the seat of one of the seven churches, did not give the Revelation a place among
the sacred writings of the New Testament, though their list includes all others now received.
Gregory, of Nazianzus, in Cappadocia, (A. D. 370,) gives a catalogue of the canonical
scriptures, but excludes the Revelation. Amphilochius, of Iconium, in Lycaonia, (A. D. 370,)
in mentioning the canonical scriptures, says, “The Revelation of John is approved by some;
but many say it is spurious.” The scriptural canon of the Syrian churches rejects it, even as
given by Ebed Jesu, in 1285; nor was it in the ancient Syriac version completed during the
first century; but the reason for this may be, that the Revelation was not then
promulgated.――Jerome of Rome, (A. D. 396,) receives it, as do all the Latin Fathers; but
he says, “the Greek churches reject it.”――Chrysostom (A. D. 398,) never quotes it, and is
not supposed to have received it. Augustin, of Africa, (A. D. 395,) receives it, but says that it
was not received by all in his time. Theodoret, (A. D. 423,) of Syria, and all the ecclesiastics
of that country, reject it also.

The result of all this evidence is, as will be observed by glancing over the dates of the
Fathers quoted, that, until the year 250, no writer can be found who scrupled to receive the
Apocalypse as the genuine work of John the apostle,――that the further back the Fathers
are, the more explicit and satisfactory is their testimony in its favor,――and that the fullest of
all, is that of Irenaeus, who had his information from Polycarp, the most intimate and
beloved disciple of John himself. Now, where the evidence is not of the ordinary cumulative
character, growing weighty, like a snowball, the farther it travels from its original starting-
place, but as here, is strongest at the source,――it may justly be pronounced highly
valuable, and an eminent exception to the usual character of such historical proofs, which,
as has been plentifully shown already in this book, are too apt to come “but-end first,” as the
investigator travels from the last to the first. It will be observed also, by a glance at the
places where these Fathers flourished, that all those who rejected the Apocalypse belonged
to the eastern section of the churches, including both the Greeks and the Syrians, while
the western churches, both the Europeans and Latino-Africans, adopted the Apocalypse
as an apostolic writing. This is not so fortunate a concurrence as that of the dates, since the
easterns certainly had better means of investigating such a point than the westerns. A
reason may be suggested for this, in the circumstance, that the Cerinthians and other
heretics, who were the occasion of the first rejection of the Apocalypse, annoyed only the
eastern churches, and thus originated the mischief only among them. Lampe, Michaelis and
others, indeed, quote Caius of Rome, as a solitary exception to this geographical
distribution of the difficulty, but Paulus and Hug have shown that the passage in Caius, to
which they refer, has been misapprehended, as the scholar may see by a reference to
Hug’s Introduction to the New Testament, vol. II. pp. 647‒650, [Wait’s translation,] pp. 593‒
596, [original.] There is something in Jerome too, which implies that some of the Latins, in
his time, were beginning to follow the Greek fashion of rejecting this book, but he scouts this
new notion, and says he shall stick to the old standard canon.

The internal evidence is also so minutely protracted in its character, that only a bare
allusion to it can be here permitted, and reference to higher and deeper sources of
information, on such an exegetical point, may be made for the benefit of the scholar.
Lampe, Wolf, Michaelis, Mill, Eichhorn and others, quoted by Fabricius, [Bibliotheca
Graeca, vol. IV. p. 795, note 46.] Hug and his English translator, Dr. Wait, are also full on
this point.

This evidence consists for the most part in a comparison of passages in this book with
similar ones in the other writings of John, more especially his gospel. Wetstein, in particular,
has brought together many such parallelisms, some of which are so striking in the peculiar
expressions of John, and yet so merely accidental in their character, as to afford most
satisfactory evidence to the nicest critics, of the identity of authorship. A table of these
coincidences is given from Wetstein, by Wait, Hug’s translator, (p. 636, note.) Yet on this
very point,――the style,――the most serious objection to the Apocalypse, as a work of the
author of John’s gospel, has always been founded;――the rude, wild, thundering sublimity
of the vision of Patmos, presenting such a striking contrast with the soft, love-teaching, and
beseeching style of the gospel and the epistles of John. But such objectors have forgotten
or overlooked the immense difference between the circumstances under which these works
were suggested and composed. Their period, their scene, their subject, their object, were all
widely removed from each other, and a thoughtful examination will show, that writings of
such widely various scope and tendency could not well have less striking differences, than
those observable between this and the other writings of John. In such a change of
circumstances, the structure of sentences, the choice of words, and the figures of speech,
could hardly be expected to show the slightest similarity between works, thus different in
design, though by the same author. But in the minuter peculiarities of language, certain
favorite expressions of the author,――particular associations of words, such as a forger
could never hit upon in that uninventive age,――certain personal views and sentiments on
trifling points, occasionally modifying the verbal forms of ideas――these and a multitude of
other characteristics, making up that collection of abstractions which is called an author’s
style,――all quite beyond the reach of an imitator, but presenting the most valuable and
honest tests to the laborious critic,――constitute a series of proofs in this case, which none
can fully appreciate but the investigators and students themselves.

ii. with what design was the apocalypse written?

There is no part of the Bible which has been the subject of so

much perversion, or on which the minds of the great mass of
Christian readers have been suffered to fall into such gross errors,
as the Apocalypse. This is the opinion of all the great exegetical
theologians of this age, who have examined the scope of the work
most attentively; and from the time of Martin Luther till this moment,
the opinions of the learned have for the most part been totally
different from those which have made up the popular
sentiment,――none or few, caring to give the world the benefit of the
simple truth, which might be ill received by those who loved
darkness rather than light; and those who knew the truth, have
generally preferred to keep the quiet enjoyment of it to themselves.
This certainly is much to be regretted; for in consequence of this
culpable negligence of the duty of making religious knowledge
available for the good of the whole, this particular apostolic writing
has been the occasion of the most miserable and scandalous
delusions among the majority even of the more intelligent order of
Bible readers,――delusions, which, affecting no point whatever in
creeds and confessions of faith, those bulwarks of sects, have been
suffered to rage and spread their debasing error, without subjecting
those who thus indulged their foolish fancies, to the terrors of
ecclesiastical censure. The Revelation of John has, accordingly, for
the last century or two, been made a licensed subject for the
indulgence of idle fancies, and used as a grand storehouse for every
“filthy dreamer” to draw upon, for the scriptural prophetical supports
of his particular notions of “the signs of the times,” and for the
warrant of his special denunciations of divine wrath and coming ruin,
against any system that might happen to be particularly abominable
in his religious eyes. Thus, a most baseless delusion has been long
suffered to pervade the minds of common readers, respecting the
general scope of the Apocalypse, perverting the latter parts of it into
a prophecy of the rise, triumph and downfall of the Romish papal
tyranny; while in respect to the minor details, every schemer has
been left to satisfy himself, as his private fancy or sectarian zeal
might direct him. Now, not only is all this ranting trash directly
opposed to the clear, natural and simple explanations, given by
those very persons among the earliest Christian writers, who had
John’s own private personal testimony as to his real meaning, in the
dark passages which have in modern times been made the subject
of such idle, fanciful interpretations; but they are so palpably