The letters of Ignatius unfortunately, unlike the Epistles of St Paul, contain scant autobiographical material. We are told absolutely nothing about the history of his career. The fact that like St Paul he describes himself as an [Greek: ektrôma] (_Rom._ 9), and that he speaks of himself as "the last of the Antiochene Christians" (_Trall._ 13; _Smyrn._ xi.), seems to suggest that he had been converted from paganism somewhat late in life and that the process of conversion had been abrupt and violent. He bore the surname of Theophorus, i.e. "God-clad" or "bearing God." Later tradition regarded the word as a passive form ("God-borne") and explained it by the romantic theory that Ignatius was the child whom Christ took in his arms (Mark ix. 36-37). The date at which he became bishop of Antioch cannot be determined. At the time when the Epistles were written he had just been sentenced to death, and was being sent in charge of a band of soldiers to Rome to fight the beasts in the amphitheatre. The fact that he was condemned to the amphitheatre proves that he could not have been a Roman citizen. We lose sight of him at Troas, but the presumption is that he was martyred at Rome, though we have no early evidence of this. But if the Epistles tell us little of the life of Ignatius, they give us an excellent picture of the man himself, and are a mirror in which we see reflected certain ideals of the life and thought of the day. Ignatius, as Schaff says, "is the incarnation of three closely connected ideas: the glory of martyrdom, the omnipotence of episcopacy, and the hatred of heresy and schism." 1. Zeal for martyrdom in later days became a disease in the Church, but in the case of Ignatius it is the mark of a hero. The heroic note runs through all the Epistles; thus he says: "I bid all men know that of my own free will I die for God, unless ye should hinder me.... Let me be given to the wild beasts, for through them I can attain unto God. I am God's wheat, and I am ground by the wild beasts that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Entice the wild beasts that they may become my sepulchre...; come fire and cross and grapplings with wild beasts, wrenching of bones, hacking of limbs, crushings of my whole body; only be it mine to attain unto Jesus Christ" (_Rom._ 4-5).