“There still survived of the family of the Lord the grandsons of Jude, who was called his brother according to the flesh. These were informed against, as being of the family of David. The evocatus brought them before Domitian Caesar; for he feared the coming of Christ, as also did Herod.”
“And he asked them whether they were of David, and they confessed it. Then he asked them how many possessions they had, or how much money they controlled. And they both said that they had only nine thousand denarii between them, the half belonging to each of them; and this, they said, they had not in money, but in the valuation of land of only thirty-nine plethra, from which they both paid their taxes and supported themselves by their own labour.”
“Then they also showed their hands, presenting the hardness of their bodies as proof of their own labour, and the calluses imprinted on their own hands from their continual toil.”
“And being asked concerning Christ and his kingdom — of what sort it was, and where and when it would appear — they gave answer that it was neither of the world nor earthly, but heavenly and angelic, and would come to pass at the consummation of the age, when he should come in glory to judge the living and the dead, and to render to each according to his deeds.”
“Whereupon Domitian, condemning them in nothing, but even despising them as men of no account, set them free, and by a decree caused the persecution against the church to cease.”
“And those who had been released took the lead of the churches, both as witnesses and as being of the family of the Lord; and, peace having come, they remained alive until the time of Trajan.”
These things, then, says Hegesippus. But Tertullian also has made the following mention of Domitian: “Domitian too had once attempted to do the same as that man, being a portion of Nero's cruelty. But, I suppose, inasmuch as he had some measure of sense, he very quickly stopped, recalling even those whom he had banished.”
And after Domitian had ruled fifteen years, and Nerva had succeeded to the sovereignty, the Roman senate decreed that the honours of Domitian should be abolished, and that those who had been unjustly banished should return to their homes and recover their property — so relate those who have committed to writing the events of those times.
It was then, indeed, that the apostle John also returned from his exile on the island and took up again his abode at Ephesus, as an account of the ancients among us hands down.