Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/945

 They were publicly examined and tortured at three principal cities—Tarsus, Mopsuestia, and Anazarbus, where they were put to death and their relics carefully preserved. The Acts are often quoted by Le Blant (Les Actes des martyrs) to illustrate his argument. Thus, p. 9, he notes the sale of copies of the Proconsular Acts by one of the officials for two hundred denarii. He also illustrates by them the judicial formularies, proconsular circuits, etc. (cf. pp. 27–29, 32, 63, 68, 72, 74, etc.). They suffered under a president Numerianus Maximus (Ruinart, Acta Sinc. 454–492).

[G.T.S.]

Tatianus (1) the "Apologist," "born in the land of Assyria" (Oratio, c. xlii.), i.e. E. of the Tigris, in a land incorporated, under Trajan, with Mesopotamia and Armenia into one Roman province of Syria (Zahn, Forsch. z. Gesch. d. N.T. lichen Kanons; I. Theil, "Tatian's Diatessaron," p.268). Of his parents, date of birth (c. 110, Zahn; c. 120, Funk), and early training, little or nothing is known. In Syria were Greek official representatives of Rome, merchants, and residents. Among such, stationed in the Assyrian district, may have been the parents of Tatian; persons perhaps of birth and wealth (cf. Oratio, c. xi.). The lad, Semitic as regards the land of his birth, but possibly Greek by parentage and name, was educated in the Greek teaching open to him (Oratio, c. xlii.). As he grew older his inquiring mind led him to a personal examination of the systems of his teachers (c. xxxv.). A peripatetic by disposition if not in philosophy, he "wandered over many lands, learning from no man," but with eyes open and ears unstopped, listening, observing, hearing, pondering, until he abandoned the learning that had made him a pessimist, and became a teacher of that "Word of God" which had taught him a holier faith and a happier life (cc. xxvi. xlii.). He notes that the simplicity of style of Holy Scripture first attracted and then converted him (c. xxix.). The "barbaric [i.e. Christian] writings," upon which he stumbled by chance, charmed him by their modest diction and easy naturalness. He soon discovered that these writings were older than the oldest remains of Greek literature, and in their prophecies and precepts diviner and truer than the oracles and practices of the most powerful gods or the purest philosophers.

Tatian's information about himself ceases with the autobiographical allusions and statements in the Oratio. According to Irenaeus (adv. Haer. i. c. 28; cf. Eus. H. E. iv. 29) he was a hearer (ἀκροατής) of Justin Martyr; and the Oratio indicates that he and the "most admirable" Justin were at Rome together, and were both exposed to the hostility of the Cynic Crescens (cc. xviii. xix.).

Tatian's Christian life, like that of Tertullian, divides into pre-heretical and heretical periods. So long as Justin was alive, says Irenaeus, he brought out no "blasphemy"; after his death it was different.

The testimony of his pupil Rhodon (Eus. H. E. v. 13) leaves the impression that Tatian for some time after Justin's death worked and taught at Rome, busying himself with his "book of questions" (προβλημάτων βιβλίον), dealing with what was "hidden and obscure in the sacred writings" (i.e. of O.T.).

The chronology of his literary career is more or less connected with the martyrdom of Justin c. 163–167. Many critics consider Justin's Apology and the Oratio to have been composed about the same time (cf. Zahn, p. 279; Harnack, Texte u. Untersuch. z. Gesch. d. altchrist. Lit. i. p. 196), i.e. 150–153. Others place the Oratio after the death of Justin (Lightfoot in Contemp. Rev. May, 1877; Hilgenfeld, Ketzergeschichte, p. 395; Funk, Zur Chronol. Tatian's in Tübingen Theol. Quartalschrift for 1833, p. 219, etc.). The difference in opinion turns very much upon the estimate formed of a passage in Eusebius (H. E. iv. 16). A similar want of unanimity prevails as to the place of composition of the Oratio. Harnack (pp. 198–199) argues from its language that it was not written at Rome, where Zahn (p. 280) places it.

A. The Oratio.—The Oratio, by which he is best known, belongs to that part of Tatian's the most interesting and difficult of the Greek apologetic writings. The title, Τατιανοῦ πρὸς Ἕλληνας, terse and abrupt, is characteristic of life which is reckoned orthodox. It is one of the treatise. Tatian did not care for style. Christianity was not, in his opinion, dependent upon it. It was absent from the Scriptures which had fascinated him; it belonged to the Greek culture he had left behind. Yet he at times shews himself no novice in the art he condemned. C. xi. is a noble piece of declamation; c. xix. a scathing denunciation of the false, passing into a grave appeal in behalf of the true. He can draw word-pictures, e.g. those of the actor (c. xxii.), the wealthy patron of the arena (ib.), and the Cynic philosopher (c. xxv.), which are as clever and life-like as those of Tertullian. The Oratio has two principal divisions introduced by a preface (cc. i.–iv.). Div. i. states the Christian doctrines and their intrinsic excellence and superiority to heathen opinions (cc. v.–xxx.); div. ii. demonstrates their superior antiquity (cc. xxxi.–xli.); the whole closes with a few words autobiographical in character (c. xlii.).

Tatian opens (c. i.) by deprecating as unreasonable the contemptuous animosity of the Greeks towards "Barbarians," and points out that there was no practice or custom current among them which they did not owe to "Barbarians." Oneirology, astrology, auguries from birds or sacrifices had come to them from external sources. To Babylonia they owed astronomy, to Persia magic, to Egypt geometry, to Phoenicia instruction by letters. Orpheus had taught them poetry, song, and initiation into the mysteries, the Tuscans sculpture, the Egyptians history, rustic Phrygians the harmony of the shepherd's pipe, Tyrrhenians the trumpet, the Cyclopes the smith's art, and Atossa, queen of the Persians, the method of joining letter-tablets (see Otto's note). They should not boast of their excellent diction when they imported into it "barbaric" expression and maintained no uniformity of pronunciation. Of Doric, Attic, Aeolian, Ionian, which was the real Greek? Further, let them not boast while they used rhetoric to subserve injustice and sycophancy, poetry to depict battles, the amours of gods, and the corruption of the soul.

C. v., one of the most important (doc-