“For having put some to death on account of the false charges brought against us, they also dragged to the torture our servants--children--weak women--and by awful torments drove them to admit that they were guilty of those very actions which they (the persecutors) openly perpetrate,--about which, however, we are little concerned, because none of these actions are really ours. We have the ineffable God as witness both of our thoughts and deeds” (Justin, II. _Apol._ xii.). THE _OCTAVIUS_ OF MINUCIUS FELIX, _CIRCA_ A.D. 160 Jerome tells us that Minucius Felix was, before his conversion to Christianity, an advocate at Rome. The dialogue, which forms the substance of the writing--a work of some considerable length, is a supposed argument between a cultured pagan Cæcilius and the Christian Octavius--the writer Minucius Felix acting as arbiter between the disputants. The scene of the dialogue was the seashore of Ostia, it closes with the conversion of the pagan Cæcilius, who is convinced by the arguments brought forward by the Christian Octavius.[105] The resemblances between Minucius Felix and the famous _Apology_ of Tertullian, which was written _circa_ A.D. 200, are most striking--and the question which of the two was the plagiarist has long been before critics. Later scholars, among whom Ebert, Salmon, Bishop Lightfoot, Renan, and Keim are conspicuous, have conclusively established the priority of Minucius. The year of grace 160, before the death of Antoninus Pius, a date based upon the internal evidence of the writing, is suggested by Lightfoot as the most probable period of the composition. Dean Milman’s estimate of the literary excellence of the piece is as follows: “Perhaps no late work, either pagan or Christian, reminds us of the golden days of Latin prose so much as the _Octavius_ of Minucius Felix” (_Hist. of Christianity_, book iv. chap. iii.). The following striking passages bearing on the subject of the ceaseless persecution to which the Christians were subjected in the middle years of the second century are taken from the thirty-seventh chapter of the _Dialogue_: