IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH, BISHOP AND MARTYR, _CIRCA_ A.D. 107-10 Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, who suffered martyrdom in the days of Trajan, _circa_ A.D. 107-10,--some twelve or fifteen years after Clement of Rome wrote his memorable letter to the Church of Corinth,--is the next witness we propose to call in support of the contention advanced in the preceding pages, namely, that the persecution began by Nero in the year 64 was never really allowed again to slumber, but that with more or less vehemence it continued to harass the Christian sect all through the reigns of the Emperors of the Flavian dynasty and onward. The Letters of Ignatius were written, it is true, a few years after the extinction of the Flavian House. But the martyr-bishop of Antioch was born about the year of grace 40, and he therefore was about twenty-four years old when the persecution of Nero began; and all through the reigns of Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian without doubt he occupied a high position, probably in the Christian congregation at Antioch; he therefore may well be cited as a responsible witness of the relations which existed between the Christians and the government of the Empire during the last thirty-five years of the first century. In the course of his journey from Syria to Rome, where he was condemned to be exposed to the wild beasts in the magnificent Flavian amphitheatre (the Colosseum), Ignatius wrote seven letters which have been preserved to us; six of these were addressed to special Churches, and one to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna. Round these letters a long controversial war has raged respecting their authenticity. In our own day and time, thanks to the almost lifelong labours of the eminent scholar-bishop of Durham (Dr. Lightfoot), the controversy has virtually been closed. Serious European scholars, with rare exceptions, now accept the seven Epistles (the middle recension,[97] as Lightfoot calls it) of the Ignatian correspondence, as absolutely genuine. Ramsay well and briefly sums up the purport of the allusions to the conditions under which the Christian sect had been and still was living during the long period of Ignatius’ own personal experience, which included the whole duration of the sovereignty of the Flavian family, _i.e._ during the reign of the Emperors Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. These allusions all occur in the martyr’s four letters written in the course of his journey to Rome, during his halt at Smyrna, _i.e._ in the Epistles to the Churches of Ephesus, Tralles, Magnesia and Rome.