Hegesippus and Justin

Among these Hegesippus was well known. We have already used a great many of his words before, when we set down from what he handed on certain events of the apostles’ time. [a] In five books he recorded the unerring tradition of the apostolic preaching in the simplest style of writing, and he shows the time in which he was known when he writes this way about those who first set up idols: “To them they made empty tombs and temples, as is done to this day. Among them is Antinous, a slave of Hadrian Caesar, in whose honor the Antinoian games are held, which began in our own time. For Hadrian founded a city named after Antinous, and appointed prophets.” [b]

At the same time Justin too, a genuine lover of the true philosophy, was still occupied with the learning of the Greeks. He also indicates this time in the defense he addressed to Antoninus, where he writes: “We do not think it out of place to mention here Antinous as well, who lived in our own day, whom everyone rushed to worship as a god out of fear, though they knew who he was and where he came from.” [c] The same writer, mentioning the Jewish war of that time, adds this: “For in the Jewish war just past, Bar Kokhba, the leader of the Jews’ revolt, ordered that Christians alone be led away to terrible punishments unless they would deny Jesus the Christ and blaspheme him.” [d] In the same work he shows that his change from Greek philosophy to godliness did not happen without reason, but with judgment. He writes: “For I myself, when I delighted in the teachings of Plato, and heard the Christians slandered, yet saw that they were without fear before death and everything else thought fearful, realized that they could not possibly be living in wickedness and love of pleasure. For what lover of pleasure, or what man without self-control, who thinks it a good thing to feed on human flesh, could welcome death, so as to be robbed of his cravings? Would he not rather try by every means to live on forever in this present life and escape the notice of the rulers, instead of reporting himself to be put to death?” [e]

The same writer also relates that Hadrian received a letter on behalf of the Christians from Serennius Granianus, a most distinguished governor. It said that it was not just to put them to death untried, on no charge, to gratify the shouts of the people. Hadrian wrote back to Minucius Fundanus, proconsul of Asia, ordering him to judge no one without a charge and a reasonable accusation. [f] Justin gives a copy of the letter, keeping the Latin as it stood, and he introduces it with these words: “Although from the letter of the greatest and most illustrious Caesar Hadrian, your father, we have grounds to demand that you order trials to be held as we have requested, we have made this request not so much because Hadrian ordered it as because we know that what we ask is just. We have also attached the copy of Hadrian’s letter, so that you may know that we are telling the truth in this as well. And here it is.” [g] After these words the man we have named sets out the Latin reply itself. We have translated it into Greek as best we could, and it reads as follows: