Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius (born at Rome 121 AD) was forty when he succeeded Antoninus. He ruled with his adoptive brother, Lucius Verus, until his death in 169. And then shared the throne with his son, Commodus, from 177 AD. He was the last of what was known as the Five Good Emperors. He has been called "The Philosopher" and was a practitioner of Stoicism.
Marcus Aurelius' own Meditations offer a personal view of what he claimed was his inner life. Yet, he used his position of power over the Pax Romana to conquer the Parthian Empire in the East. As the Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus directed his general Avidius Cassius to sack the Parthian capital Ctesiphon in 164 AD but later killed him as competition. He also fought the German Marcomanni, Quadi, and Sarmatians with vigor during the Marcomannic Wars but most significant is that he went out of his way to increase the persecution of early Christians during his reign.
In his youth through adoption, he was close to Emperor Hadrian. Hadrian and the Christians is a publication that must excite curiosity about this emperor whose reign is widely considered to be one of peace, prosperity, and religious tolerance.
Hadrian like Trajan had a policy toward the Christians that they should not be sought or hunted. But they continued to persecute them through prosecution for specific offenses. One of the common indictments was their consistent refusal to swear oaths. Hadrian laid down the regulation for the judges of the courts that accusers of Christians had to bear the burden of proof for their denunciations or be punished for calumnia.[1]
Quintus Licinius Silvanus Granianus, had enquired of Hadrian how to handle legal cases where some inhabitants were accusing their neighbors of being Christians through "informers or mere clamor". Gaius Minicius Fundanus was the recipient of that imperial edict from Hadrian about conducting trials of Christians which stated that merely being a Christian was not enough for action against them to be taken, they must also have committed some illegal act.[2]
This order of Hadrian was attached by the Christian apologist Justin Martyr to the end of his First Apology, 155 AD. The Sanctuary of the Three Gauls had been established by Augustus in the late 1st century BC at Lugdunum (Lyons, France). The persecution in Lyons[3] started as an unofficial movement to ostracize Christians from public markets, but eventually Christians were arrested, tried in the forum, and subsequently imprisoned and even condemned to various punishments: fed to the beasts, torture, and the poor living conditions of imprisonment. Accusations of atheism, incest, and even cannibalism were used to justify the Christian conlict.
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Footnotes
- ↑ Defamation, calumny, vilification, or traducement is the communication of a false statement that, depending on the law of the country, harms the reputation of an individual, business, product, group, government, religion, or nation.
- ↑ Also that "slanderous attacks" against Christians were not to be tolerated and should be punished.
- ↑ The sole account is preserved by Eusebius.