Now there is a tradition that the brother of this man, Marcus Aurelius Caesar, when he was drawn up in battle array against the Germans and Sarmatians, was reduced to straits, his army being hard pressed by thirst; and that the soldiers of the legion called the Melitene, which from that time even to our own day has held together through faith, when drawn up against the enemy, bent their knees upon the ground according to our own custom of prayer, and turned to supplications to God.
And while this sight, so marvellous, appeared to the enemy, the tradition says that another thing yet more marvellous immediately overtook them: a thunderbolt driving the enemy to flight and destruction, but a shower of rain restoring the army of those who had called upon the Deity, which was on the very point of perishing from thirst.
And this history is recorded also among writers far removed from our doctrine, to whom the writing concerning the persons in question has been a care; and it has been made known by our own people as well. But by the external historians, inasmuch as they were strangers to the faith, the marvel was indeed set down, yet they did not confess that it had come to pass through the prayers of our people; whereas by our own people, inasmuch as they are friends of the truth, the matter has been handed down in a simple and guileless manner.
Of these would be also Apolinarius, who said that from that time the legion which had through prayer wrought the marvel received from the emperor a name suited to what had taken place, being called in the Roman tongue the Thunder-striking.
And a trustworthy witness of these things would be Tertullian, who, in addressing to the Roman senate a defence on behalf of the faith—which we have mentioned also before—confirms the history with greater and clearer demonstration.
He too, then, writes, saying that letters of Marcus, that most prudent emperor, are still even now in circulation, in which he himself testifies that in Germany, when his army was on the point of being destroyed for lack of water, it was saved by the prayers of the Christians. And he says that this emperor also threatened death to those who attempted to accuse us.
To these the said man adds also this: 「What sort of laws, then, are these, which against us alone the impious, the unjust, the cruel put in force? Laws which neither Vespasian observed, although he had conquered the Jews; which Trajan in part set at nought, forbidding that Christians be sought out; which neither Hadrian, though he busied himself with all curious matters, nor he who was surnamed the Pious, ratified.」 But let these things be set down however anyone may wish; let us now pass on to the sequence of what follows.
Pothinus, then, having been perfected together with those who suffered martyrdom in Gaul, in the ninetieth year of his whole life, Irenaeus succeeded to the bishopric of the parish at Lyons over which Pothinus had presided. And we have learned that this man had in his early youth been a hearer of Polycarp.
This man, in the third book of his work against the heresies, having set out the succession of the bishops at Rome, brings the list down to Eleutherus—whose times are now under our examination—inasmuch as the writing was being composed by him in his day; and he sets out the list, writing thus: