REVIEWS 565

their extended families ; it was a new and unfamiliar idea. Green mentions the
existence of the tomb of Novatian and the Gaudentius inscription ( pp. 183–4). But
the really important question to be raised in connection with this is why the tomb,
monumentalised in the fourth century, is not surrounded by the tombs of the
succession of Novatian bishops. Was it not because Fabian’s novel and monarchical
concept of burying the leaders of the community like emperors, apart in their own
vault, was not considered appropriate by everyone, like those responsible for the
interment of Cornelius ? Green’s third chapter (‘ Persecution ’), with an analysis of
the legal position of early Christianity, follows Barnes and is basically sound, as is his
description of the Decian events. The dispute with Stephen could have been better
illuminated from the arguments of the anonymous De rebaptismate, representing
Stephen’s position even if he were not the author of that work itself ( p. 156). An
important distinction between Decius’ and Valerian’s edicts should have been made,
with reference to the work of Martha Sordi which is not included in the
bibliography : Decius’ edicts did not target Christianity directly, but Valerian’s did,
and specifically (in the first edict) the church hierarchy. This fact bears eloquent
testimony to the ideology of Cyprian and the response of Christianity to that
persecution in producing a more structured ecclesial edifice than there had been
before. Despite some problems, the fourth chapter (‘Catacombs ’) is generally very
good, and a valuable overview, as is the fifth (‘ Constantine ’). Bernard Green has
produced an interesting and important account of his subject.
ST EDMUND’S COLLEGE, ALLEN BRENT
CAMBRIDGE

Early Christian hagiography and Roman history. By Timothy D. Barnes. (Tria Corda.
Jenaer Vorlesungen zu Judentum, Antike und Christentum, 5.) Pp. xx+439.
Tübingen : Mohr Siebeck, 2010. E29 ( paper). 978 3 16 150226 2; 1865 5629
JEH (62) 2011 ; doi :10.1017/S0022046911000108
Reading any work by Timothy Barnes is an exhilarating experience. His formidable
command of both sources and bibliography never clouds his lucid prose or incisive
arguments. He seems to inhabit a world of infinite clarity and irrefutable certainty.
The book under review is vintage Barnes. His admirers will not be surprised to find
him upending Momigliano’s famous complaint that Otto Seeck ‘never believed
anything to be authentic if he could help it’ ( p. x). Barnes likes exactly what
Momigliano disliked. He presents Seeck’s scepticism as the very model of how to
proceed in the analysis of documents and literary texts for early Christianity. He
associates, not unreasonably, his teacher (and mine), Ronald Syme, with this
procedure. But the tone of Barnes’s writing is much less austere than Seeck’s and
markedly less oblique and ironic than Syme’s. He distributes unqualified accolades
to scholars whom he judges enlightened, and he hurls thunderbolts down upon those
who have failed to perceive what he regards as the truth. Barnes is ever impartial,
and on occasion we can find the same scholar basking in an accolade and writhing
under a thunderbolt.
Barnes likes both contradiction and certainty. He starts off his new book with
some arresting assertions: St Peter was not crucified at Rome, upside down or not,
566 JOURNAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
but was dressed in a combustible garment and burned alive. We are told that the em-
peror Domitian never persecuted the Christians but simply acquired his reputation
as a persecutor because he had a reputation as a bad emperor. The revisionist
account of Peter’s death depends entirely on John xxi. 18–19, which Barnes
acknowledges to be a text that all historians of the early Church have known, but he
claims with characteristic confidence that ‘ they have virtually without exception
misunderstood it ’ ( p. 7). The risen Christ is made to prophesy that, although Peter
had dressed himself when he was young and went wherever he wished, someone else
will dress him as an old man and take him where he does not want to go (this is
explicitly glossed as indicating death). Barnes insists that this cannot allude to
crucifixion because Peter’s clothes would have been removed for the purpose. Hence
Barnes thinks he was clad specially in a combustible garment to undergo a fiery end
among those Christians whom Nero burned alive on crosses during the persecution
that Tacitus described. For Barnes this does not count as a crucifixion but a parody
of one. Before we ask how generations of serious scholars could have been so
imperceptive, we have to wonder why Barnes denies Peter a traditional crucifixion in
the nude and yet allows him a crucifixion in an inflammable tunic. For that matter,
Peter could even have been burned upside down. As for Domitian’s persecution,
Barnes declares that it was ‘ widely accepted as historical by later authors both ancient
and modern ’ ( p. 37). This tradition has been good enough for most people to credit,
but Barnes claims that it ‘ is not attested by any reliable evidence at all ’. When does
evidence become reliable ? Barnes may conceivably be right in believing that Melito
of Sardis made up the whole story, but there is no reliable evidence for that either.
Barnes’s contrarian streak surfaces conspicuously in his account of the Greek and
Latin texts for the martyrdom of Perpetua. He resists Louis Robert’s compelling
argument for the priority of the Greek version, and claims priority for the Latin
because at 16.3 the Greek provides an equivalent for a Latin phrase that he believes
‘ is surely a corruption of the original text ’. Barnes helpfully puts up warning flags
before his more startling revisions : ‘surely ’ and ‘presumably ’ are among them, and
sometimes even stronger expressions such as ‘ it is an irresistible inference ’ ( p. 101).
In the case of Pass. Perp. 16.3, the imprisoned martyr-in-waiting asks why comfort
could not be provided since she and the other prisoners were going into the arena on
the emperor’s birthday : ‘ nobis refrigerare noxiis nobilissimis Caesaris scilicet et
natali eiusdem pugnaturis ’. Barnes is certain that Perpetua would have equipped
Geta with his official title nobilissimus, although it is hard to imagine why she would
have bothered at that moment. He insists that the transmitted text is a corruption of
‘ noxiis nobilissimi Caesaris ’. His postulated Greek translator is thought not to have
detected this error and therefore to have written onomastois katadikois Kaisaros. But
there is no way that onomastois could be a translation of nobilissimis. Instead it looks as
if the Latin writer misunderstood the Greek.
The follies of historians of early Christianity are compounded when Barnes
reports unequivocally that ‘ Christianity was recognised as a lawful religion by the
emperor Gallienus in 260. ’ He writes of ‘incalculable damage ’ caused by the failure
of everyone in the past to see this great truth. Yet, the sharp-eyed G. E. M. de Ste
Croix, had written, very judiciously, in his classic article of 1954 on the Great
Persecution of Diocletian that ‘ Since the edict and rescripts of Gallienus in the early
260s, recorded by Eusebius, the Christian Church (or churches) had received a
certain measure of toleration and recognition – how complete, and according to
 REVIEWS 567
what constitutional principles, there is fortunately no need to discuss here ’ (reprinted
in Christian persecutions, martyrdom, and orthodoxy, Oxford 2006, 38). Barnes neither
mentions de Ste Croix nor considers the issues of completeness or constitutional
principles.This is a pity because de Ste Croix himself was not unlike Barnes in his
relentless search for clarity in ecclesiastical history.
The foregoing observations represent but a small part of the immensely rich
material in Barnes’s new book. They serve only to illustrate the more treacherous
paths into which his crusade against error can sometimes lead him. History will
always be full of unsolved problems, inauthentic texts and, alas, unwarranted
dogmas. Timothy Barnes deserves the gratitude of all historians for his vigilance and
erudition in trying to set the record straight.
INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY, G. W. BOWERSOCK
PRINCETON

Roman attitudes toward the Christians. By John Granger Cook. (Wissenschaftliche

Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 261.) Pp. xv+375. Tübingen : Mohr
Siebeck, 2010. E99. 978 3 16 150553 9 ; 0512 1604
JEH (62) 2011 ; doi :10.1017/S0022046911000182
This book’s subject is an old one. Its author, John Granger Cook, discusses the
relevant and much dissected texts in a straightforwardly historical manner, adopting
an approach equivalent to that of a commentator. We begin with a chapter on
Claudius and the Christians, and end with one on Justin’s reference to a supposed
rescript of Hadrian concerning the Christians. In between there are detailed
chapters on the Neronic persecution, evidence for persecution under Domitian, and
the correspondence of Pliny with Trajan. Cook’s tone throughout is sober and he
rarely seeks to squeeze anything too unconventional or surprising from the small
clutch of texts relevant to his subject. The reference in Suetonius’ Life of Claudius 25.4
where the author mentions an expulsion of the Jews impulsore Chresto is to an
expulsion caused by a dispute about Christ, rather than one instigated by an
otherwise unknown Jewish agitator called ‘Chrestus ’. A reference to an expulsion of
the Jews under Claudius in the epitomated Cassius Dio 60.66.6 may be to the same
event, though this is by no means certain. Nero’s persecution of the Christians as
arsonists may have exploited already existing prejudices against them. Cook is clear
that Tacitus, while sceptical of the specific charge of arson, shared these common
prejudices, one of which, ‘ hatred of the human race ’, probably refers to a hatred of
Rome itself, seen in Christian contempt for Roman religious practice. Cook rejects
any idea that Tertullian’s institutum Neronianum refers to a new-found policy against
the Christians originating with Nero (the reference is probably to the persecution
itself), but is clear that the types of punishments recorded by Tacitus in his account of
the persecution may well be reflected quite specifically in the Gospel of Mark and
more generally in Revelation. Cook goes on to reject the view that there was any
concerted effort to persecute Christians in the reign of Domitian, arguing, amongst
other things, that the evidence adduced in favour of such a thing is restricted to a
Eusebian reference to an otherwise unknown author, Bruttius, and that the failure of
Dio to associate any of Domitian’s persecutions of certain important individuals for
atheism with Christianity, not least Flavius Clemens and Flavia Domitilla, is difficult