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Constantine and the Christians of Persia*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
Extract
The twenty-three Demonstrations of Aphrahat are not likely to be familiar to most students of Roman history or of Constantine. Aphrahat was head of the monastery of Mar Mattai, near modern Mosul, with the rank of bishop and, apparently, the episcopal name Jacob: as a consequence, he was soon confused with the better known Jacob of Nisibis, and independent knowledge of his life and career virtually disappeared. Fortunately, however, twenty-three treatises survived, whose attribution to ‘Aphrahat the Persian sage’ seems beyond doubt. Aphrahat wrote in Syriac and composed works of edification and polemic for a Mesopotamian audience outside the Roman Empire. Nevertheless, he provides crucial evidence not only for the attitude of Persian Christians towards Rome, but also for the military situation on Rome's eastern frontier at the end of the reign of Constantine. It is worth the effort, therefore, to set Aphrahat's fifth Demonstration, which bears the title ‘On wars’ or ‘On battles’, in its precise historical context. The present paper begins by considering the place of this Demonstration in Aphrahat's oeuvre and its exact date (I–III); it then argues that in 337 Constantine was preparing to invade Persia as the self-appointed liberator of the Christians of Persia (IV, VI), that Aphrahat expected him to be successful (V), and that Constantine's actions and the hopes which he excited caused the Persian king to regard his Christian subjects as potential traitors—and hence to embark on a policy of persecution (VII).
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References
1 See the notice in BL, Orient. 1017, fol. 160a (dated A.D. 1364), printed by Wright, W., Catalogue of the Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum acquired since the year 1838 11 (1871), 401Google Scholar; 896. Episcopal rank is presupposed by Aphrahat's composition of the synodical letter which comprises Demonstration XIV, cf. Forget, J., De Vita et Scriptis Aphraatis, Sapientis Persae (Diss. Louvain, 1882), 82Google Scholar ff.
2 Within a hundred and fifty years of Aphrahat's death, Gennadius can summarize the content of the Demonstrations (albeit not quite accurately), but ascribe them to ‘Jacobus cognomento Sapiens Nizebenae nobilis Persarum modo civitatis episcopus’ (De viris illustrious 1). BL, Orient. 1017, fol. 159a confuses Aphrahat with Jacob of Tagrit.
3 Edited by Wright, W., The Homilies of Aphraates 1 (1869)Google Scholar; Parisot, R., Patrologia Syriaca 1, 1 (1894)Google Scholar; 1, 2 (1907), 1–489 (with Latin translation).
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8 Dem. 1, 1, etc. The address is combined with a claim to be systematic in Dem. 11, 11.
9 Dem. x, 7, taken with III, 1; VI, 6–10, implies that the addressee is to use the Demonstrations for instructing a monastic community. Note also I, 20: ‘so that you may learn and teach, believed and be believed’.
10 No such statement in fact stands at the end of x in either of the extant manuscripts of that treatise.
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14 The thesis of M. J. Higgins, BZ XLIV (1951), 265 ff.; Traditio IX (1953), 48 ff.; Traditio XI (1955), 1 ff., cf. Kmosko, G., Patrologia Syriaca 1, 2 (1907), 690 ffGoogle Scholar.
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21 The relevant part of the relative clause in A reads:
![](https://static.cambridge.org/binary/version/id/urn:cambridge.org:id:binary:20151020040013305-0979:S0075435800054782_eqnU1.gif?pub-status=live)
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27 Eusebius, VC 11, 18.
28 Eusebius, VC II, 44 ff., cf. AJP cv (1984), 69 ff.
29 Eusebius, Triac. 8, 1 ff.; VC III, 54, 4 ff.
30 Constantine, quoted by Athanasius, Apol. c. Ar. 86, 10/11; Gelasius, HE III, 10, 10; Eusebius, VC IV, 5/6.
31 Constantine (1981), 18.
32 ibid. 65.
33 Pan. Lat. IV (x), 38, 3; Porfyrius, Carm. XVIII, 4: ‘et Medi praestas in censum sceptra redire’. The Persian prince Hormizd, a brother of Shapur, had recently fled from Persia and arrived at the imperial court (Zosimus 11, 27, cf. John of Antioch, frag. 178).
34 Eusebius, VC IV, 8. This section of the Life is arranged thematically, not chronologically.
35 Eusebius, VC IV, 8.
36 de Decker, D., ‘Sur le destinataire de la lettre au roi des Perses (Eusèbe de Césarée, Vit. Const., IV, 9–13) et la conversion de l'Arménie à la religion chrétienne’, Persica VIII (1979), 99–116Google Scholar.
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40 RIC VII, 331, Rome 298; Victor, Caes. 41, 18; Chr. min. 1, 233 (rebuilding of Trajan's bridge on the Danube); AE 1934, 158 (title of Dacicus maximus).
41 Constantine, , Oratio 16, 4Google Scholar, cf. Phoenix xxx (1976), 186 ff.
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44 Faustus III, 21, cf. Ensslin, W., Klio XXIX (1936), 102 ffGoogle Scholar.
45 Ammianus xxv, 4, 23; Cedrenus I, 516 Bonn. However, the whole story is argued to be an invention by Eunapius, without any factual basis at all, by Warmington, B. H., ‘Ammianus Marcellinus and the Lies of Metrodorus’, CQ XXXI (1981), 464–8Google Scholar.
46 Eusebius, VC IV, 56; 62, 2.
47 Eusebius, VC IV, 57, chapter-heading (the text is lost); Libanius, Orat. LIX, 71 f.; Festus, Brev. 26.
48 Origo Const. Imp. 35; Epitome 41, 20.
49 RIC VII, 584; 589 f., cf. Seeck, O., Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt IV (1911), 25Google Scholar.
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51 Julian, Oral. I, 16 ff.; Socrates HE n, 2 ff., cf. Phoenix XXXIV (1980), 162.
52 Jerome, Chronicle 234d Helm; Chron. Pasch. 533 Bonn, cf. ZPE LII (1983), 229 ff.
53 Constantine (1981), 261 f.
54 Jacob of Nisibis died in the Seleucid year 649 after taking an active part in the defence against Shapur's first siege: see Peeters, P., ‘La légende de Saint Jacques de Nisibe’, Anal. Boll. XXXVIII (1920), 285–373Google Scholar.
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59 Lactantius, Mort. Pers. 10, 6 ff.; 31, 1; Eusebius, HE VIII, App. 1; 3.
60 Daniel VII, 23 stresses the difference between the third and fourth kingdoms which Aphrahat equates.
61 A saying of Jesus quoted in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies XII, 29 (PG 11, 324) and Epitome 96 (Resch, A., Agrapha. Aussercanonische Schriftfragmente 2 (Texte und Untersuchungen, N.F. XV, 3/4, 1906), 106 fGoogle Scholar.
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63 The sole manuscript appears to be Milan, Ambros. P 49 sup., fols. 54v–64v, the most recent edition that by D. Volkmann (Prog. Pforta, publ. Naumburg, 1871). I am grateful to the Medieval Institute of the University of Notre Dame, Indiana for providing me with a microfilm.
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66 e.g. Athanasius, Apol. ad Const. 4, where ‘any others (ἄλλους τινάς)’ means precisely Constantinus.
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