Among these Hegesippus became known, of whose words we have already made much use before, citing certain matters concerning the apostolic age from his tradition.
Now this man, having recorded in five treatises in a most simple style of composition the unerring tradition of the apostolic preaching, indicates the time in which he flourished, writing thus of those who from the beginning set up idols: 「To whom they made cenotaphs and temples, as even until now; among whom is also Antinous, a slave of Hadrian Caesar, in whose honour the Antinoian games are held—and he was of our own time. For he also founded a city named after Antinous, and instituted prophets.」
In his time also Justin, a genuine lover of true philosophy, was still occupied in practising the learning of the Greeks. He too indicates this same period, writing thus in his Apology to Antoninus: 「And we think it not out of place to mention here also Antinous of the present day, whom all were impelled by fear to worship as a god, though they knew who he was and whence he had come.」
The same writer, in mentioning the war then waged against the Jews, sets down this: 「For in the Jewish war now being waged, Bar Chochebas, the ringleader of the revolt of the Jews, commanded that Christians alone should be led off to dreadful punishments, unless they would deny Jesus the Christ and blaspheme him.」
In the same work, showing that his conversion from Greek philosophy to the worship of God had taken place not without reason but with deliberate judgment, he writes thus: 「For I myself, while delighting in the teachings of Plato, used to hear the Christians slandered; yet seeing them fearless in the face of death and of all that is reckoned terrible, I considered it impossible that they were living in wickedness and love of pleasure. For what lover of pleasure or man without self-control, or one who counts the eating of human flesh a good thing, could welcome death so as to be deprived of his own desires, rather than by every means strive ever to prolong his present life here and to escape the notice of the rulers—let alone proclaim himself for execution?」
The same writer also relates that Hadrian, having received from Serennius Granianus, a most illustrious governor, a letter on behalf of the Christians stating that it was not just to put them to death on no charge merely to gratify the clamours of the populace, without trial, wrote in reply to Minucius Fundanus, proconsul of Asia, ordering that no one should be put to death without a charge and a reasonable accusation.
And he set down a copy of the letter as well, preserving the Latin tongue as it was. And he prefaces it with these words: 「Though we might, on the strength of a letter of the greatest and most illustrious Caesar Hadrian, your father, have demanded of you that trials be held as we requested, yet we have made this request not so much because it was commanded by Hadrian, as out of our knowledge that what we ask is just. We have also appended a copy of Hadrian’s letter, that you may recognize that in this too we are speaking the truth. And it is as follows.」