read by many with cold mistrust and even with repulsion. But recent scholarship has clearly demonstrated that the Antonines were bitter foes to Christianity, and that during their reigns the followers of Jesus were sorely harassed. Under the Emperor Marcus the persecutions extended through-*out his reign; they were, as Lightfoot does not hesitate to characterize them, "fierce and deliberate." They were aggravated, at least in some cases, by cruel torture. They had the Emperor's direct personal sanction. The scenes of these persecutions were laid in all parts of the Empire—in Rome, in Asia Minor, in Gaul, in Africa.
The martyrdom of Justin and his companions as told in the Acts of the Martyrdom of the great Christian teacher, an absolutely authentic piece, was carried out in Rome under the orders of Rusticus the city prefect, the trusted friend and minister of Marcus, under the Emperor's very eyes; while the persecutions at Vienne and Lyons were the most bloody persecutions on record up to this date, except, perhaps, the Neronian; and for these Marcus Antoninus is directly and personally responsible.
The Madaurian and Scillitan (proconsular Africa) martyrdoms apparently took place a few months after the death of Marcus, but these martyrdoms were certainly a continuation of the persecuting policy of Marcus. And these awful sufferings to which the Christian communities were exposed during these two reigns are not only learned from the few authentic Acts of Martyrdom preserved to us, but from various and numerous notices of contemporary writers which we come upon—embedded in their histories, apologies, and doctrinal expositions. Some of these are quoted[1] verbatim. The testimony we possess here of this continuous and very general persecution during these reigns when carefully massed together is simply overwhelming.[2]
