mountainman

Lactantius was just another one of Constantine's sponsored writers.
He was put on Constantine's payroll according to Jerome 311-313 CE.
He was in the Latin Dept, and generated polemic for Constantine's new
and strange religion, in Latin.

I was already aware that the libelli do not evidence christianity, and
have offered a number of alternative explanations for the evidence of
persecutions in the Roman Empire, other than persecutions relating to
christianity, which I believe did not commence until 311 in Rome, when
Constantine started persecuting the Hellenic traditions in the name of
his new and strange religion.

For example, persecution may have arisen due to refusal to enact
sacrifice, as a form of "conscientious objection" to making sacrifice.
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=165552



Pete Brown

spin

I wish you'd read what was written to you.

Lactantius was writing about a period which was still within the knowledge of people who were alive. If he were writing the hot cock you conjecture, they would be able to call him on it. Wake up, will you?

That's why I said "which you'll be pleased to know".

It gives you a certain mumble scope.

The only major recorded persecutions are the ones you are trying to deny.


Dura-Europos
Megiddo
the Roman catacombs
Lactantius (and also Tertullian's Latin and Cyprian's self-justifications)
the libelli




spin

mountainman

Surely you are not as ingenuous as that spin?
What do we know about Lactantius from here:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08736a.htm

The friendship of the Emperor Constantine raised him from penury and though very old (extrema senectute) he was appointed tutor in Latin to the emperor's son Crispus. This new appointment compelled him top follow his charge to Trier where he spent the remainder of his life. It seems very probable that his transfer to Trier did not take place until 317, when Crispus was made Caesar and sent to the city.. Crispus was put to death in 326, but when Lactantius died and in what circumstances is not know.

Trier was Constantine's barbarian stronghold for the period 306-337.

Not only is it unlikely that anyone at that time was really worried about
the details of the fictions and other perversions that Constantine was
sponsoring in new manuscripts via Eusebius and Lactantius, when they
were confronted with the person of the supreme imperial thug himself,
but they'd hardly treck to Constantine's barbarian stronghold, just
to call out one of his sponsored literacists.


Pete Brown

mountainman

The records of these libelli do not at all in any way reference
the new and strange roman religious order called christianity.

We are only informed by fourth century Constantinian literature
that the persecutions were related to the new and strange
roman religious order.

Unfortunately you have not provided any archeological and/or
scientific citations, in this forum, to objectively dismiss the
claim that none of the above provide compelling evidence
that pre-Nicaean christianity actually existed in the historical
sense.




Tertullian was a fourth century profile, not impossibly Eusebius,
despite the ill-founded belief that he did not write in Latin, and
Lactantius is openly admitted to be on the payroll of the supreme
imperial mafia thug Constantine.



Pete Brown

spin

This is called base unsupported conjecture, ie you're talking rubbish as though it were in some way reflective of the past. You need to start getting over your fantasy and start with evidence. You have none. Not one scrap of evidence. What you do is try to put off all the evidence to the contrary.

I really can't help it if you don't want to get up off your hind-quarters and open a book. You have trouble with the notion that third century popes were interred in the catacombs of Saint Callixtus? There is a body of literature that you might care to access in a well stocked library on the subject.

More vain unsupported conjecture on your part. If you have no evidence against what already exists, why pursue your error?

You have shown an unwillingness to understand the issues. For example, a Greek writing in Latin will not write Latin at the standard of Tertullian. Is that so difficult for you to understand. If it is, try taking another language that you know well and writing in it. You'll see how difficult it really is to write well-formed sentences. You won't have the fluid use of the language and expressions. This should be plain enough for you to understand. You have to be unwilling to confront the issues to continue to assume that it is not impossible for Eusebius to have written the Latin you want him to have written.

Proffer one example, just one that shows that he is adept at writing Latin. Your hands are looking quite empty. Nothing up your sleave. Face the fact that you're just pushing a fantasy. Pipe dream.

My god, why is this one so damned hard to sink into your head??

Lactantius also wrote about a period before Constantine. I put the "before" in bold just for you, so that you get the idea where the issue lies. There were people alive when Lactantius wrote who were alive during the period about which he wrote before Constantine who could easily have called him out as a fabricator of lies. They did not, so they didn't find what he wrote untoward. QED, your pushing it up a hill when you ignore the implications of Lactantius.

But then, this whole fantasy scenario is pushing it up hill. You have no evidence for it, you have no reason to believe it is true, you get no better understanding. All you do is elevate a hack like Eusebius to the level of genius, for which you also have no reason.

"Look Rocky, nothing up my sleave", says Bullwinkle.


spin

spin

This last talks of "the contemporaries of Lactantius himself, Diocletian, Maximian, Galerius, and Maximus". Get it mountainman? He wrote about those times. People were still alive under Constantine who were alive under these rulers. Did Lactantius invent the information? You say he did, but no-one else does, people who lived through the period would have known the truth. You don't write rubbish about a period that people who are still alive experienced.

Get it?


...Too bad.


spin

mountainman

There are two paragraphs. The first and the second.

The first asserts that the extant libelli do not make any distinct
reference to christianity. Surely you are not arguing that this
assertion is unsupported conjecture.


Pete Brown

mountainman

Spin, give sufficient consideration to whole period in question,
say the entire fourth century. There is one valid exception to
the rule that "You don't write rubbish about a period that people
who are still alive experienced."

The known exception exists when there is a dictatorship in
operation during the period in question. In these situations,
we know from history that the victorious dictatorship will
publish whatever propaganda best suits its own agenda.

In this instance, the dictatorship was the rule of Constantine.
a highly intelligent supreme imperial mafia thug, the detailed
nature of his activities outlined here:
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=176000

Ultimately, in this scenario, there will of course be "people
who lived through the period would have known the truth",
as you comment above. My response is quite simply that
the people who knew the truth of history, were treated as
fourth century heretics, as described in quite specific detail
by Vlasis Rassias, Demolish Them!:
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_060.htm

Our thesis is that Constantine was a dictator whose crimes
against humanity have not yet been fully assessed, except
for a brief period under Julian, where fragments indicate the
thesis to be consistent with Julian's invective against "wicked
men who composed fiction - a fable - a monstrous tale".




Pete Brown
AUTHORS of ANTIQUITY
http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_029.htm