Читать книгу A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East онлайн

164 страница из 236

We do know of an Apology by the author to whom the treatise is inscribed, but the fragment which Eusebius cites from it does not overlap with anything in our text, which appears to be complete, and the first editor’s attempts to credit Meliton with a second Apology were unpersuasive (Cureton 1855: vi–xi). The original language of composition is still undetermined, but the sheer intimacy with which the author is able to speak of the cults of Edessa and Hierapolis, in particular, might speak for a Syriac rather than a Greek original, and even for a place of composition in either of those cities. If so, then the Greek-speaking Meliton is ruled out as author straightaway; other grounds for refusing him authorship are the lack of congruence with his thought and the challenging tone, which does not suit the eirenic and accommodating Bishop of Sardis. Dating criteria are, first, the possible referent of “Antoninus Caesar”; second, clues internal to the text, especially an apparent reference to the emperor wearing female dress, and another to plural “sons”; and third, common ground shared with other apologists, a more slippery criterion which is harder to apply (Harnack 1897: 522–524; Vermander 1972: 33–36). The candidates for an “Antoninus Caesar” with plural sons are Antoninus Pius (d. 161), with his adoptive sons Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, and Marcus Aurelius with his sons Commodus and Annius Verus(d. 169, which would give a terminus ante quem if the reference to sons is secure). Some scholars, however, have looked further forwards, to Caracalla (211–217), who put an end to the Severan persecution of the Christians, and was present in the east, in Antioch, in 215; or to Elagabalus, in view of the reference to female dress; in that case the reference to sons would have to be prospective.