history to Peter. That history is as follows: Clement's father, Faustinianus, was a member of the emperor's family, and married by him to a lady of noble birth, named Mattidia. By her he had twin sons, Faustus and Faustinus, and afterwards Clement. When Clement was five years old, Mattidia told her husband that she had seen a vision warning her that unless she and her twin sons speedily left Rome and remained absent for ten years, all must perish miserably. Thereupon the father sent his wife and children with suitable provision of money and attendance to Athens, in order to educate them there. But after her departure no tidings reached Rome, and Faustinianus, having in vain sent others to inquire for them, at length left Clement under guardianship at Rome, and departed himself in search of them. But he too disappeared, and Clement, now aged thirty-two, had never since heard of father, mother, or brothers. The story proceeds to tell how Peter and Clement on their way to Antioch go over to the island of Aradus to see the wonders of a celebrated temple there. While Clement and his party are admiring works of Phidias preserved in the temple, Peter converses with a beggar woman outside, and the story she tells of her life is in such agreement with that previously told him by Clement, that Peter is able to unite mother and son. The vision which she had related had been feigned in order to escape from the incestuous addresses of her husband's brother, without causing family discord by revealing his wickedness. On her voyage to Athens she had been shipwrecked, and cast on shore by the waves, without being able to tell what had become of her children. All now return to the main land, and on telling the story to their companions who had been left behind, Nicetas and Aquila recognize their own story and declare themselves to be the twin sons, who had been saved from the wreck and sold into slavery by their rescuers. Mattidia is baptized. After the baptism Peter and the three brothers, having bathed in the sea, withdraw to a retired place for prayer. An old man in a workman's dress accosts them and undertakes to prove to them that prayer is useless, and that there is neither God nor Providence, but that all things are governed by astrological fate (genesis). A set disputation takes place and occupies bks. viii. ix.; the 3 brothers, being well trained in Grecian philosophy, successively argue on the side of Providence, and discuss the evidence for astrology. The discussion is closed by a dramatic surprise. When all the old man's other difficulties have been solved, he undertakes to produce a conclusive argument from his own experience. His own wife had been born under a horoscope which compelled her to commit adultery, and to end her days by water in foreign travel. And so it turned out. She had been guilty of adultery with a slave, as he had learned on his brother's testimony, and afterwards leaving Rome with her twin sons on account of a pretended vision, had perished miserably by shipwreck. Peter has now the triumph of fully reuniting the family and gaining a victory in the discussion, by shewing the complete falsification of the astrological prediction. From the account given by Rufinus, it would seem that one of the forms of the Recognitions known to him closed here; but in the tenth book as we have it, the story is prolonged by discourses intended to bring Faustinianus to a hearty reception of Christianity. After this Simon is again brought on the stage. He has been very successful at Antioch in shewing wonders to the people and stirring up their hatred against Peter. One of Peter's emissaries, in order to drive him to flight, prevails on Cornelius the centurion, who had been sent on public business to Caesarea, to give out that he had been commissioned to seek out and destroy Simon, in accordance with an edict of the emperor for the destruction of sorcerers at Rome and in the provinces. Tidings of this are brought to Simon by a pretended friend, who is in reality a Christian spy. Simon, in alarm, flees to Laodicea, and there meeting Faustinianus, who had come to visit their common friends, Apion (or, as our author spells it, Appion) and Anubion, transforms by his magic the features of Faustinianus into his own, that Faustinianus may be arrested in his stead. But Peter, not being deceived by the transformation, turns it to the greater discomfiture of Simon. For he sends Faustinianus to Antioch, who, pretending to be Simon, whose form he bore, makes a public confession of imposture, and testifies to the divine mission of Peter. After this, when Simon attempts again to get a hearing in Antioch, he is driven away in disgrace. Peter is received then with the greatest honour and baptizes Faustinianus, who has meanwhile recovered his own form.
We turn now to the story as told in the Homilies. The opening is identical with that of the Recognitions, except for one small variation. Clement, instead of meeting Barnabas in Rome, has been induced by an anonymous Christian teacher to sail for Palestine; but being driven by storms to Alexandria, there encounters Barnabas. It is not easy to say which form is the original. On the one hand, the account that Clement is delayed from following Barnabas by the necessity of collecting money due to him is perfectly in place if the scene is laid at Rome, but not so if Clement is a stranger driven by stress of weather to Alexandria. The author, who elsewhere shews Alexandrian proclivities, may have wished to honour that city by connecting Barnabas with it; or was perhaps unwilling that Peter should be preceded by another apostle at Rome. On the other hand, the rabble which assails Barnabas is in both versions described as a mob of Greeks, and the fifteen days' voyage to Palestine corresponds better with Alexandria than with Rome. The narrative proceeds as in R. as far as the end of Peter's disputation with Simon at Caesarea; but both Peter's preliminary instructions to Clement and the disputation itself are different. In H. Peter prepares Clement by teaching him his secret doctrine concerning difficulties likely to be raised by Simon, the true solution of which he could not produce before the multitude. Simon would bring forward texts which seemed to speak of a plurality of Gods, or which imputed imperfection to God, or spoke of Him as changing His purpose or hardening men's hearts and so forth; or, again, which laid crimes to the charge of the just men of the law, Adam and
