Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/113

Rh it was in that year that the persecution broke out and that Justin suffered. These calamities roused the superstition of the great mass of the people, and a wild fanaticism succeeded to an epicurean atheism. The gods were wroth, and what had roused their anger but the presence of those who denied them? "Christianos ad leones&#8202;" seemed the remedy for every disaster. The gods might accept that as a piacular offering. On the other hand, the Christians saw in them signs of the coming judgment, and of the end of the world; and now in apocalyptic utterances, now in Sibylline books, uttered, half exultantly, their predictions of the impending woe (cf. Tertull. ad Scap. c. 3). All this, of course, increased the irritation against them to the white heat of frenzy (Milman's Hist. of Christianity, bk. ii. c. 7). They not only provoked the gods, and refused to join in sacrifices to appease them, but triumphed in their fellow-citizens' miseries.

Two apparent exceptions to this policy of repression have to be noticed. (1) One edition of the edict πρὸς τὸ κοινὸν της Ἀσίας, though ascribed by Eusebius (H. E. iv. 13) to Antoninus Pius, purports, as given by him, to come from Aurelius. But the edict is unquestionably spurious, and merely shows the wish of some Christians, at a later stage in the conflict, to claim the authority of the philosopher in favour of his brethren. (2) There is the decree mentioned by Eusebius (H. E. v. 5) on the authority of Tertullian (Apol. c. 5, ad Scap. c. 4, p. 208) and appended to Justin's first Apology, which purports to be addressed to the Senate, informing them how, when he and his army were in danger of perishing for want of water in the country of the Marcomanni, the Christians in his army had prayed to their God, and refreshing rain had fallen for them, and a destroying hail on their enemies, and bidding them therefore to refrain from all accusations against Christians as such, and ordering all who so accused them to be burnt alive. (Cf. in D. C. B. 4-vol. ed.) The decree is manifestly spurious. An interesting monograph, M. Aurelius Antoninus als Freund und Zeitgenosse des Rabbis Jehudas ben Nasi, by Dr. A. Bodek (Leipz. 1868), may be noticed as maintaining that this emperor is identical with the Antoninus ben Ahasuerus, who is mentioned in the Talmud as on terms of intimacy with one of the leading Jewish teachers of the time. If this be accepted, it suggests another possible element in his scorn of Christianity. G. H. Rendal, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, to Himself, Eng. trans. with valuable Intro. (Lond. 1898). [E. H. P.]  Ausonius, Decimus Magnus, a native of Bordeaux, was the son of Julius Ausonius, a physician of Cossium (Bazas), in Aquitania (Aus. Idyll. ii. 2). His poems, which are singularly communicative as to his private history, display him to us in riper years both as student and courtier, professor and prefect, poet and consul. At the age of 30 he was promoted to the chair of rhetoric in his native city, and not long after was invited to court by the then Christian emperor Valentinian I., who appointed him tutor to his son Gratian (Praef. ad Syagr. 15‒26). Ausonius was held

in high regard by the emperor and his sons and accompanied the former in his expedition, against the Alemanni. It was no doubt during the residence of the court at Trèves at this time that he composed his Mosella. From Valentinian he obtained the title of Comes and the office of Quaestor, and on the accession of Gratian became successively Prefect of Latium, Libya, and Gaul, and finally, A.D. 379, was raised to the consulship (Praef. ad Syagr. 35, etc.; Epigr. ii. iii., de fast.). After the death of Gratian, A.D. 383, although he seems to have enjoyed the favour of Theodosius (Praef. ad Theodos.), it is probable that he returned to the neighbourhood of his native city and spent the remainder of his life in studious retirement (Ep. xxiv.). His correspondence with Paulinus of Nola evidently belongs to these later years. The date of his death is unknown, but he was certainly alive in A.D. 388, as he rejoices in the victory of Theodosius over the murderer of Gratian at Aquileia (Clar. Urb. vii.).

The question of the poet's religion has always been a matter of dispute. Voss, Cave, Heindrich, Muratori, etc., maintain that he was a pagan, while Jos. Scaliger, Fabricius, Funccius, and later M. Ampère, uphold the contrary view. Without assenting to the extreme opinion of Trithemius, who even makes him out to have held the see of Bordeaux, we may safely pronounce in favour of his Christianity. The negative view rests purely upon assumptions, such as that a Christian would not have been guilty of the grossness with which some of his poems are stained, nor have been on such intimate terms with prominent heathens (Symmach. Epp. ad Auson. passim), nor have alluded so constantly to pagan rites and mythology without some expression of disbelief. On the other hand, he was not only appointed tutor to the Christian son of a Christian emperor, whom he seems at any rate to have instructed in the Christian doctrine of prayer (Grat. Act. 43); but certain of his poems testify distinctly to his Christianity in language that is only to be set aside by assuming the poems themselves to be spurious. Such are (1) the first of his idylls, entitled Versus Paschales, and commencing Sancta salutiferi redeunt solemnia Christi, the genuineness of which is proved by a short prose address to the reader connecting it with the next idyll, the Epicedion, inscribed to his father. (2) The Ephemeris, an account of the author's mode of spending his day, which contains not merely an allusion to the chapel in which his morning devotions were performed (I. 7), but a distinct confession of faith, in the form of a prayer to the first two Persons of the Trinity. (3) The letters of the poet to his friend and former pupil St. Paulinus of Nola, when the latter had forsaken the service of the pagan Muses for the life of a Christian recluse. This correspondence, so far from being evidence that he was a heathen (see Cave, etc.), displays him to us rather as a Christian by conviction, still clinging to the pagan associations of his youth, and incapable of understanding a truth which had revealed itself to his friend, that Christianity was not merely a creed but a life. The letters are a beautiful instance of wounded but not 