Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume I/Church History of Eusebius/Book III/Chapter 18

The Apostle John and the Apocalypse.

1. is said that in this persecution the apostle and evangelist John, who was still alive, was condemned to dwell on the island of Patmos in consequence of his testimony to the divine word.

2. Iren&#230;us, in the fifth book of his work Against Heresies, where he discusses the number of the name of Antichrist which is given in the so-called Apocalypse of John, speaks as follows concerning him:

3. &#8220;If it were necessary for his name to be proclaimed openly at the present time, it would have been declared by him who saw the revelation. For it was seen not long ago, but almost in our own generation, at the end of the reign of Domitian.&#8221;

4. To such a degree, indeed, did the teaching of our faith flourish at that time that even those writers who were far from our religion did not hesitate to mention in their histories the persecution and the martyrdoms which took place during it.

5. And they, indeed, accurately indicated the time. For they recorded that in the fifteenth year of Domitian Flavia Domitilla, daughter of a sister of Flavius Clement, who at that time was one of the consuls of Rome, Flavius Clemens was a cousin of Domitian, and his wife, Domitilla, a niece of the emperor. They stood high in favor, and their two sons were designated as heirs to the empire, while Flavius Clemens himself was made Domitian&#8217;s colleague in the consulship. But immediately afterward Clemens was put to death and Domitilla was banished. Suetonius (Domit, chap. 15) accuses Clemens of contemtissim&#230; inerti&#230;, and Dion Cassius (LXVII. 14) of atheism (&#7936;&#952;&#949;&#8057;&#964;&#951;&#964;&#959;&#962;). These accusations are just such as heathen writers of that age were fond of making against the Christians (compare, for instance, Athenagoras&#8217; Adv. Gent. chap. 4, and Tertullian&#8217;s Apol. chap. 42). Accordingly it has been very commonly held that both Flavius Clemens and Domitilla were Christians, and were punished on that account. But early tradition makes only Domitilla a Christian; and certainly if Clemens also&#8212;a man of such high rank&#8212;had been a Christian, an early tradition to that effect would be somewhere preserved. We must, therefore, conclude that his offense was something else than Christianity. The very silence of Christian tradition as to Clement is an argument for the truth of the tradition in regard to Domitilla, and the heathen historians referred to confirm its main points, though they differ in minor details. The Acts of Martyrdom of Nereus and Achilles represent Domitilla as the niece, not the wife, of Flavius Clemens, and Eusebius does the same. More than that, while the heathen writers report that Domitilla was banished to the island Pandeteria, these Acts, as well as Eusebius and Jerome (Ep. adv. Eustachium, Migne&#8217;s ed., Ep. CVIII. 7), give the island of Pontia as the place of banishment. Tillemont and other writers have therefore assumed that there were two Domitillas,&#8212;aunt and niece,&#8212;one banished to one island, the other to another. But this is very improbable, and it is easier to suppose that there was but one Domitilla and but one island, and that the discrepancies are due to carelessness or to the mistakes of transcribers. Pandeteria and Pontia were two small islands in the Mediterranean, just west of central Italy, and were very frequently employed by the Roman emperors as places of exile for prisoners. was exiled with many others to the island of Pontia in consequence of testimony borne to Christ.