Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/453

 as to the treatment of Christians, complaining that their enemies expected him to condemn them without a trial. The emperor thereupon addressed an official letter to Minucius Fundanus, proconsul of Asia, regulating the mode of procedure against the persecuted sect. No encouragement was to be given to common informers (συκοφάνται) or to popular clamour. If the officials of the district (ἐπαρχιῶται) were confident that they could sustain a prosecution, the matter was to be investigated in due course. Offenders against the laws were to be punished; but, above all things, the trade of the informer was to be checked (Eus. H. E. iv. 8, 9). The character of Hadrian may be inferred from his policy. He had not the zeal of a persecutor nor the fear that leads to cruelty. His philosophy and his religion did not keep him from the infamy of an impure passion of the basest type. He adapted himself without difficulty to the worship of the place in which he was. At Rome he maintained the traditional sacred rites which had originated under the republic, and posed as the patron of Epictetus and the Stoicism identified with his name. At Athens he was initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, and rose to the dignity of an Epoptes in the order, as one in the circle of its most esoteric teaching. He became an expert in the secrets of magic and astrology. To him, as he says in his letter to Servianus, the worshippers of Serapis and of Christ stood on the same footing. Rulers of synagogues, Christian bishops, Samaritan teachers, were all alike trading on the credulity of the multitude (Flavius Vopiscus, Saturn. cc. 7, 8). According to a later writer, Lampridius (in Alex. Sev. c. 43), his wide eclecticism led him at one time to erect temples without statues, which he intended to dedicate to Christ. He was restrained, it was reported, by oracles which declared that, if this were done, all other temples would be deserted and the religion of the empire subverted. But the absence of contemporary evidence of such an intention, on which Christian apologists would naturally have lain stress, leads us to reject Lampridius's explanation of these temples as an unauthenticated conjecture. More probably, as Casaubon suggests (Annot. in Lamprid. c. 43), they were intended ultimately to be consecrated to Hadrian himself. So the imperial Sophist—the term is used of Hadrian by Julian (Caesares p. 28, ed. 1583)—passed through life, "holding no form of creed and contemplating all," and the well-known lines—

"Animula, vagula, blandula, Hospes, comesque corporis, Quae nunc abibis in loca, Pallidula, rigida, nudula? Nec, ut soles, dabis jocos" (Spartian. Vit. Hadr.)

shew a like dilettanteism in him to the last.

A reign like that of Hadrian naturally, on the whole, favoured the growth of the church. The popular cry, "Christianos ad loenes," was hushed. Apologetic literature was an appeal to the intellect and judgment of mankind. The frivolous eclecticism of the emperor and yet more his deification of Antinous were enough to shake the allegiance of serious minds to the older system. Tolerance was, however, equally favourable to the growth of heresy; and to this reign we trace the rise and growth of the chief Gnostic sects of the 2nd cent., the followers of in Syria, of, , and  in Egypt, of  in Pontus (Eus. H. E. iv. 7, 8). Cf., besides the authorities cited, Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. iii.; Milman, ''Hist. of Christ. ''bk. ii. c. vi.; Lardner, Jewish and Heathen Testimonies; c. xi.

[E.H.P.]

Hecebolius or Hecebolus, a rhetor at Constantinople in the reign of Constantius, who professed himself a "fervent" Christian, and was therefore selected by that emperor as one of the teachers of Julian (Socr. iii. 1, 13). After the death of Constantius, however, Hecebolius followed the example of his former pupil and became a "fierce pagan" (γοργὸς Ἕλλην; Socr. u.s. 13). He was in great favour with Julian, and appears to have been one of his familiar correspondents (Julian, Ep. 19, ed. Heyler, p. 23; Ἑκηβὸλῳ), and seems to have had some civil office at Edessa. The Arians of that city, "in the insolence of wealth," had violently attacked the Valentinians. Julian wrote to Hecebolius to say that, "since they had done what could not be allowed in any well-governed city," "in order to help the men the more easily to enter the kingdom of heaven as it was prescribed" by their "most wonderful law, he had commanded all moneys to be taken away from the church of the Edessenes, that they might be distributed among the soldiers, and that its property should be confiscated to his private treasury; that being poor they might become wise and not lose the kingdom of heaven which they hoped for" (Julian, Ep. 43, ed. Heyler, p. 82; Baron. s.a. 362, xiii.; Soz. vi. 1). Such appropriation of church property was one of the crimes of which Julian was accused after his death (Greg. Naz. adv. Jul. Orat. iii.). The emperor adds that he had charged the inhabitants of Edessa to abstain from "riot and strife," lest "they themselves" should suffer "the sword, exile, and fire." The last sentence in the letter appears to intimate that he would hold Hecebolius personally responsible for the future good conduct of the city. After the death of Julian and the reversal of the imperial policy, Hecebolius ostentatiously professed extreme penitence for his apostasy and prostrated himself at the church door, crying to all that entered, "Trample upon me—the salt that has lost its savour" (Socr. iii. 13; Baron. u.s. =Matt. v. 13). Baronius assumes the identity of the magistrate of Edessa with the "rhetor" of Constantinople (s.a. 362, xiii. xiv.), but Tillemont regards them as different persons (Mém. vii. 331, 332). Libanius mentions a Hecebolius, but gives us no clue to his history (Ep. 309).

[T.W.D.]

Hedibia, a lady in Gaul, who corresponded with St. Jerome (then at Bethlehem) c. 405. She was descended from the Druids, and held the hereditary office of priests of Belen (= Apollo) at Bayeux. Her grandfather and father (if majores is to be taken strictly) Patera and Delphidius (the names being in each case derived from their office) were remarkable men. Of Patera, Jerome says in his Chronicle, under 339, "Patera rhetor Romae gloriosissime docet."