300 



DISCOVERY 



details are uncertain, but the general sense, which I 

 translate as follows, is clear.' 



The tomb of Gennadius his father and lady mother 

 constructed, for he grieved his family and native town, 

 being a pastor over the sheep ; for he endured (the prediction 



of) Holy Writ, 

 dying most piteously, and among impious foes 

 being gentle, and in years short-lived he came to his end.- 



This is an epitaph — at iirst sight of an ordinary 

 pagan type, belonging to the late third or early fourth 

 century, and using the jerky and broken-winded 

 hexameters common in this class of epitaph — dedicated 

 to Gennadius by his unnamed father and mother. But 

 when we look closely into it, we find features which 

 distinguish it sharply from pagan epitaphs. The word 

 "impious," applied to the " enemies " among whom 

 Gennadius was so " gentle," reminds us at once of 

 the language of the Acts of the Martyrs, in which similar 

 expressions occur over and over again. This would of 

 itself suggest that Gennadius was a Christian martyr ; 

 the third line, now fully recovered, places the question 

 beyond doubt. In this line, " pastor over the sheep " 

 describes the office of Gennadius in words which were 

 consecrated in this sense from the first beginnings of 

 Christianity, and the obscurely compendious " he 

 endured Holy Writ," whatever the exact meaning we 

 attach to the words, describes the conduct of a martyr 

 who was steadfast to the end. The close association, 

 in the Greek original, between these words and " dying 

 most piteously " in the next line makes it clear that 

 they refer to the martyrdom of Gennadius. They may 

 mean either " He (did not deny) Holy Scripture, but 

 endured (death) " or, more probably, as I have trans- 

 lated them, they are a condensed way of saying, " he 

 endured the prediction of Holy Writ," in which case 

 this south Galatian epitaph would contain a clear 

 reference to the words addressed by Paul to the south 

 Galatians in Acts xiv. 22, " e.xhorting them to continue 

 in the faith, and that through many tribulations we 

 must enter into the Kingdom of God," and to the south 

 Galatian Timothy (2 Tim. iii. 12) : " Yea, and all 

 that would live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer perse- 

 cution." Such obscurity of expression is familiar to 

 students of the epigraphy of pre-Constantinian Christi- 

 anity. During the centuries before Christianity became 



1 M. H, Gregoire, who very kindly read the paper referred to 

 above at the Brussels Congress in my absence, differs from me 

 in one or two points of detail, but accepts as certain my inter- 

 pretation of this inscription as a martyr's epitaph. 

 - Ti/^/SoK ren/aSet'oi' Trarjjp xai Trorna /j-tittjp 

 i^eriXeffaav 6 yap 7tVo? TrdrpTji' r'a^'axJ/trff 

 iroiixiu opt' (tt' ieaaiv 6 lpo\y]pa(f)elr]s/ yap df^TXTj 

 otKTtffTOP fffriaKuiv, Kai Svfffx^ffuv dvoafltj^v 

 ■fJTTto^ &v, eraiojp fjLLi'vv$d5€{OS 5' f re\ei/ra. 

 The accusation at the beginning of 1. 3 depends on the verb 

 " adorned " or " buried." implied in the first sentence. 



a legal religion, the Christians had perforce to avoid 

 open profession of their religion on tombstones, and 

 had recourse to a veiled language. This obscurity of 

 expression was both deliberate and necessary. 



As regards the date of this inscription, I can feel 

 no doubt that it belongs to the persecution under 

 Maximinus H, which, as we have seen, weighed heavily 

 on the Christians of Laodicea. The design of the panel, 

 and the lettering, are similar to those on the sarcophagus 

 of Julius Eugenius, although in this village epitaph 

 the execution is not so careful. The sarcophagus 

 of Eugenius was prepared about a.d. 340 ; the tomb- 

 stone of Gennadius was dedicated a decade or two 

 earlier, during the persecution or immediately after it. 

 That it was contemporary with the persecution is 

 clear from its veiled language ; in the inscriptions of 

 Eugenius and Severus, carved after the peace of the 

 Church, Christianity is openly proclaimed. In the 

 fourth century the ancient settlement at Suverek was 

 probably a village on the territory of Laodicea ; its 

 inscriptions betray no trace of a separate city organisa- 

 tion. Gennadius was accordingly a presbyter, or at 

 most a village bishop (chor-episcopus) under Bishop 

 Severus of Laodicea. Eugenius survived his torture ; 

 Severus probably, and Gennadius certainly, " won the 

 victor's crown." The Laodicean inscriptions thus 

 remind the Church of three forgotten martyrs. 



The Great Persecution in Phrygia 



Neander, arguing from literary sources, and Ramsay, 

 using the evidence of inscriptions, have both drawn 

 the conclusion that Phrygia suffered but slightly in 

 the persecutions antecedent to the great massacres 

 under Decius and especiallyDiocletian and his associates 

 (including the fierce persecutor Maximinus II, referred 

 to by Bishop Eugenius). In the second and early 

 third centuries persecution was usually instigated, and 

 at times forced on an unwilling government, by the 

 pagan population — or by the Jews ; under Decius and 

 Diocletian, it was engineered by the government itself. 

 The picture of Phrygian society which the inscriptions 

 enable us to reconstruct explains both the comparative 

 lightness of persecution in the earlier period, and its 

 severity in the later. 



It is a picture, as Ramsay has pointed out, of accom- 

 modation and good feeling between the Christians and 

 their pagan neighbours. On the negative side the 

 orthodo.x Christians (I say " orthodox " because some 

 of the heretical bodies form an exception) avoided all 

 parade of their religion which would give offence to 

 pagan susceptibility ; on the positive side, they appear 

 to have played an influential and patriotic part in the 

 city life of the province. L'nder these conditions, the 

 chief motive of the earlier type of persecution, popular 

 ill-feeling against a body of men who were regarded in 



