At this time an account holds that the apostle and evangelist John, while still remaining in this life, was condemned to dwell on the island of Patmos for the sake of his testimony to the divine word.
At any rate Irenaeus, writing about the number of the name attributed to the Antichrist, which is borne in the so-called Revelation of John, says these very things concerning John, in the very syllables, in the fifth book of his work Against the Heresies:
“But if it had been necessary that his name should be plainly proclaimed at the present time, it would have been declared by him who also beheld the Revelation. For it was not seen long ago, but almost in our own generation, toward the end of the reign of Domitian.”
To such a degree, then, in the days of those indicated, did the teaching of our faith shine forth, that even writers far removed from our message did not shrink from handing down in their histories both the persecution and the martyrdoms in it. These also marked the time exactly, recording that in the fifteenth year of Domitian, Flavia Domitilla, together with very many others — she being the daughter of a sister of Flavius Clemens, one of the consuls at Rome at that time — was, on account of her testimony to Christ, banished by way of punishment to the island of Pontia.