After that time he exercised no important influence in public affairs. He died on the 3rd of July 1908. IGNATIUS ([Greek: Ignatios]), bishop of Antioch, one of the "Apostolic Fathers." No one connected with the history of the early Christian Church is more famous than Ignatius, and yet among the leading churchmen of the time there is scarcely one about whose career we know so little. Our only trustworthy information is derived from the letters which he wrote to various churches on his last journey from Antioch to Rome, and from the short epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians. The earlier patristic writers seem to have known no more than we do. Irenaeus, for instance, gives a quotation from his Epistle to the Romans and does not appear to know (or if he knew he has forgotten) the name of the author, since he describes him (_Adv. haer._ v. 28. 4) as "one of those belonging to us" ([Greek: tis tôn hêmeterôn]). If Eusebius possessed any knowledge about Ignatius apart from the letters he never reveals it. The only shred of extra information which he gives us is the statement that Ignatius "was the second successor of Peter in the bishopric of Antioch" (_Eccles. hist._ iii. 36). Of course in later times a cloud of tradition arose, but none of it bears the least evidence of trustworthiness. The martyrologies, from which the account of his martyrdom that used to appear in uncritical church histories is taken, are full of anachronisms and impossibilities. There are two main types--the Roman and the Syrian--out of which the others are compounded. They contradict each other in many points and even their own statements in different places are sometimes quite irreconcilable. Any truth that the narrative may contain is hopelessly overlaid with fiction. We are therefore limited to the Epistles for our information, and before we can use even these we are confronted with a most complex critical problem, a problem which for ages aroused the most bitter controversy, but which happily now, thanks to the labours of Zahn, Lightfoot, Harnack and Funk, may be said to have reached a satisfactory solution.