its Quartodeciman practice had been commended. The next extant mention of him some 20 years later is in the Little Labyrinth (Eus. v. 28). He is there appealed to as one of the writers, older than Victor of Rome, who had spoken of our Lord as being God as well as man. A reference to him in a lost work of Tertullian, known to us through a citation by Jerome in the art. s.v. in his Catalogue (c. 24), shews his high reputation in Tertullian's time. Our fullest information is from the notices in Eusebius (H. E. iv. 13, 26), who gives a list of Melito's works with which he was acquainted, together with 3 extracts.
His Apology presented to the emperor Marcus Aurelius may have been his latest work. It is placed under a.d. 170 in Jerome's translation of the Chronicle of Eusebius, but the date may be more safely inferred from a passage preserved by Eusebius. Melito, addressing Marcus Aurelius, and speaking of Augustus, says, "of whom you have become the much-wished-for successor, and shall be so with your son if you keep that philosophy which took its beginning with Augustus," etc. That he here says "with your son," not "with your brother," is evidence that the date is later than the death of Lucius Verus, in 169. Commodus was associated in the empire with his father in 176. The passage quoted does not shew whether this association had already taken place or was only anticipated. In 177 persecutions of Christians were raging violently all over the empire. Melito's memorial seems to have been written at the very first beginning of that persecution. The Christians seem to be suffering more in their property than in their persons, and Melito is able to express a doubt whether the emperor had sanctioned the cruelties, and a belief that, when he had examined the case, he would interfere in their favour. Melito declares that Nero and Domitian were the only emperors who had sanctioned persecutions of Christians, and probably from this passage Tertullian derived his argument that only bad emperors had persecuted the Christians. On the other side, as forbidding interference, Melito quotes the letter of Hadrian to Fundanus, and letters of Antoninus, at a time when Aurelius himself was associated in the government, to the people of Larissa, of Thessalonica, and of Athens. One extract from the Apology preserved in the Paschal Chronicle (p. 483, Dindorf) gave rise to some discussion in the early Socinian controversy. "We are not worshippers of senseless stones, but adore one only God, Who is before all and over all, and [over] His Christ truly God the Word before all ages." The second "over" given in Rader's ed. of the Chronicle does not appear in the latest ed. (Dindorf's).
An Apology is extant in a Syriac trans. in one of the Nitrian MSS. in the Brit. Mus., which bears the heading, "The oration of Melito the Philosopher held before Antoninus Caesar, and he spoke to Caesar that he might know God, and he shewed him the way of truth, and began to speak as follows." Probably the Syriac translator, finding in his Greek original that the Apology was "addressed" to the emperor, made a blunder in supposing it delivered viva voce. It was printed in Syriac, with English trans. by Cureton (Spicileg. Syr.) and by Pitra, with a Latin trans. by Renan (Spicil. Solesm. vol. ii.) which has been revised in Otto's Apologists, vol. ix. Although this Syriac Apology appears complete, it contains none of the passages cited by Eusebius, and its character seems entirely different from that of the work known to Eusebius. The latter was mainly intended to induce the emperor to stop the persecution by shewing that the Christians did not deserve the treatment inflicted. The Syriac Apology is a calm argument against the absurdities of polytheism and idolatry, such as might have been written with the hope of making a convert of the emperor, but does not exhibit any of the mental tension of one suffering under unjust persecution. The Syriac Apology is, therefore, probably not the same as that from which Eusebius made extracts. Did, then, Melito write two apologies? The Paschal Chronicle records an Apology of Melito under both a.d. 164 and 169, but this is clearly only a double mention of one Apology, probably caused by the double mention in Eus. iv. 13, 26. The ascription of the Syriac Apology to Melito is probably an error, though the document is perhaps not much later. There are slight, but we think decisive, traces of the use of Justin Martyr's Apology: it must therefore be later than that. It is addressed to an emperor Antoninus, who might have been Pius, Aurelius, Caracalla, or Elagabalus. Probably one of the latter two is intended. The writer's point of view seems to be Syrian. In enumerating heathen idolatries he omits (as we should not expect from Melito writing in Asia Minor) Cybele and the Ephesian Diana; while he speaks in much detail of Syrian objects of worship, and seems to be personally acquainted with the city of Mabug, the Syrian Hierapolis. The, admonition, "if they wish to dress you in a female garment, remember that you are a man," suggests Elagabalus rather than any of the other emperors mentioned. One other passage supports a presumption of Syrian authorship. The writer speaks of the world as destined to suffer from three deluges—one of wind, one of water, one of fire; the first two already past, the third still to come. The deluge of wind is that by which the tower of Babel was supposed to have been destroyed (see the Sibylline verses quoted by Theophilus, ad Autol. ii. 31, and also Abydenus, quoted by Eus. Praep. Evan. ix. 14). "Flood of wind" occurs in the work called The Cave of Treasures (Cureton, Spicil. Syr. p. 94), and in the Ethiopic book of Adam (Ewald's Jahrbücher der Bibl. Wiss. 1853). It has been contended that the reference to the deluge of fire shews acquaintance with II. Peter; but it seems to us that this can by no means be positively asserted. On N.T. allusions in this Apology see Westcott (N. T. Canon, p. 219). Against placing it so late as Elagabalus it may be urged that its conclusion, if interpreted naturally, speaks of the emperor as having children; and though the apologist might be merely expressing a wish on behalf of the emperor's unborn successors, it is simpler to refer the work to the time of Caracalla, who
