They indeed show the more outspoken confidence in their God, while you during the whole time of your apparent ignorance both neglect all the other Gods and the worship of the Ever-living One,[1] whose worshippers, the Christians, you in fact harass and persecute to the death.
And on behalf of such persons many Governors also of provinces have before now both written to our deified father, whose answer in fact was not to molest such persons unless they were shewn to be making some attempt in respect to the Roman Government,[2] and to me also many[3] have given information about such men, to whom indeed I also replied in accordance with my father's view. And if any one persist in bringing any such person into trouble for being what he is, let him, against whom the charge is brought, be acquitted even if the charge be made out, but let him who brings the charge be called to account.[4]
Published at Ephesus in the Common Assembly of Asia.
- ↑ Harnack thinks Δία should be supplied and for the following five words substitutes ἐκεῖνος δέ.
- ↑ If this edict is by Pius, we should expect to find some such injunction in his "deified father" Hadrian's edict about the Christians (see Euseb. iv. 9), but there is none. On the other hand it may have been in the edict of Pius "to all the Greeks" mentioned by Melito (Euseb. iv. 10).
- ↑ This is the one word in the document which does not seem consistent with the date 161, when Marcus had only just become emperor.
- ↑ This portion of the edict seems too favourable to the Christians for even Marcus to have promulgated.
