spin

Like our Tacitus? You're being hopeful, Andrew. We are dealing with a fairly typical martyr story in Sulpicius. The only thing that is of interest is the Nero/christians fire connection. The Nero/christians part is nothing strange, is it? This is christian transference of the Jewish angst because it was Nero's forces which came to Judea at the start of the war. So Nero gets the persecutor role for christians. Jerome's translation of Eusebius's Chronicle (see Roger Pearse's page) sees Nero as the persecutor. It's not odd that Sulpicius should have received this tradition, is it?

Strange isn't it, that although Tacitus and Suetonius have questionable reference to christians, Dio Cassius, who uses both as sources, doesn't -- though of course people trying to deal with this deficit attempt to read christians into Dio.

Gosh, even Eusebius who has a full-blown Neronian persecution story doesn't know about the fire connection, despite his remarkable library. The first person who seems to know about it is, umm, well, ahh, Sulpicius. In fact, Eusebius does deal with the fire and with the christian persecution in the ninth and thirteenth years respectively (Jerome's translation of Eusebius's Chronicle), four years apart, so plainly Eusebius knew nothing of Tacitus dealing with christians, otherwise he wouldn't have started the persecution in Nero's last year.

You say that Sulpicius must have had something like Tacitus, but look at the context we are dealing with. This is a christian martyr story in the midst of other christian material which has a certain historical contextualisation to it.

What we find as we progress through the christian centuries is increasing information about "christian history", in our case with regard to this reputed Neronian persecution. Eusebius seems to know more than Tertullian. Plainly Sulpicius knew more about it than Eusebius. One possible reason for this is creative expansion.

Of course Sulpicius was using some sources, as he's got all sorts of historically related material, such as "Festus Florus" in the same chapter. Perhaps he got that from Tacitus as well??

Perhaps Tacitus also wrote

Maybe you'll grant that that mess was not written by an orator of such high repute as Tacitus was.

Actually this supposed "Tacitean style" in the passage is highly overrated.

Hopefully, you'll accept that much of Sulpicius's material is mostly based on -- to us -- unknown basis. You just don't want it to be so in this particular case.

And have you googled "medieval forgeries"? Or "mediaeval" -- it doesn't matter: you'll get the idea.)

Obviously a christian martyr story, so it might have been around before Sulpicius, but there is no need. He certainly had sources, but these things seem to grow over time. It would be wiser to stick with Sulpicius at this juncture as the best bet for the culprit who produced this martyr story, which got used as a source for an addition to Tacitus.

This much is certain: Tacitus, who had written a subtle attack on Nero up to this point, suddenly forgets his narrative interest in Nero and goes overboard with this very atypical longish passage that has little to do with his argument. Very un-Tacitean.


spin

spin

What I like about this passage is that the christians admitted something, but what exactly? That they and others were christians? They were convicted not for burning the city but for their hatred of mankind -- isn't that the crime of being christian?

I think Ben C you are misrepresenting the text.


spin

spin

Oh, come now, Andrew. The text indicates that christians were hated for their "abominations". That's pretty standard religious conflict language.


spin

Ben C Smith

I said that this line in Tacitus has Christians turning each other in.

The text says that the multitudo ingens (immense multitude) was convicted by the indicio eorum (the information of those [who had been first arrested]). So fit is the word indicium for informing on someone that the related verb indicare came to especially mean to inform against.

Ben.

Minimalist

Ah, shit. I guess I have to go looking for that list.

And I so wanted to play a computer game today. Ah, well....such is life.

Minimalist

That didn't take so long.

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/3678/Nero.htm

Two, of many.

spin

Especially? I know the range of meaning of the word indicium and I know what the word (indizio) has come to mean in modern Italian. I would have thought that the common meaning of the word tended towards "disclosure" of something not known, a secret.

Some christians fessed up to being christians. Under interrogation they disclosed other christians. (That's the way it tended to happen, isn't it? Tertullian deals with christian confession in his Apology.) That's what the passage indicates to me.

The text is quite clear that they were "convicted" not for any connection to the fire but for hate of humanity, ie being christian.

"Inform against" seems to be shaping the data.


spin

andrewcriddle

The point is not what Tacitus strictly speaking claims, nor what actually happened but how the passage could be interpreted. A Christian apologist in the 3rd century might well be concerned that reminding people of the Tacitus passage would raise the suspicion that the Christians burned Rome whether or not this is what a close reading of Tacitus would support.

(In an old thread I suggested that Tacitus is implying (as part of his hostility to Nero) that he blamed Christians for starting the fire to attempt to divert suspicion from himself. Tacitus avoids explicitly saying so because his sources had Christians killed as members of a corrupt cult the toleration of which had caused the Fire of Rome as a sign of the Gods' anger.)

If you are interpreting the passage in Tacitus as not really implying that Christians were accused of the Fire of Rome its derivation from Sulpicius Severus (who clearly claims this) becomes even more difficult.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

IMHO the story is not typical as a Martyr story.
There is no implication of the Christians dying for refusal to renounce their faith. The absence of any idea of death as witness to faith makes this in fact a rather unusual story.
Dio Cassius seems to deliberately avoid mentioning Christians anywhere in his History although he must have known of them.
Tacitus certainly deliberately uses alliteration. There is more here than usual. I lack the competence to judge whether the alliteration is so high as to be an argument against Tacitaean authorship. (Although most Tacitaean scholars to not seem IIUC to regard it as a problem)
It is at very least higher than one would expect on the basis of 'reverse engineering' from the passage in Sulpicius Severus.

Andrew Criddle

spin

Merely dying for their faith. They fessed up to being christians according to the account and they were crucified, torn to pieces, or crisp fried. (You know, all those gory details Tacitus brims with, right?)

Like he deliberately avoids mentioning Chinese. Oh, yeah, right. There were basically no Chinese in the Mediterranean. Because he doesn't talk about something doesn't imply that there was avoidance, Andrew. You're being inventive.

Tacitus as an orator could use alliteration and knew how to use it. The person who penned this pussy passage plainly didn't.

(Ie it hasn't been dealt with. Lots of problems haven't been dealt with -- especially in ancient literature. Let's not deal with them. Perhaps they'll go away.)

This response doesn't seem to contain evidence of any analytical thought.

You will be happy to say that (1) Tacitus deliberately sabotaged his own literary efforts to condemn Nero by suggestion when he changed the subject onto a tacky description of a persecution of naughty christians written in uncharacteristic tones and that (2) the contents of the passage are not more suited to Sulpicius Severus, right?


spin