Eikon

Apollonius of Rome

The Holy Martyr Apollonius the Apologist, senator of Rome

Martyr · b. c. 105 — d. c. 185, at Rome

Commemorated 23 July — Martyrdom at Rome under Commodus

Apollonius, called the Apologist, was a Roman of senatorial rank who was denounced as a Christian under Commodus, about the year 185, and who answered the charge not by denial nor by silence but by reading out before the prefect and the Senate a written defence of the faith — one of the earliest Christian apologies known to have been delivered to the Roman state itself. The book is lost; Eusebius had it and quoted from the record of the trial, and Jerome names him among the ecclesiastical writers. He was condemned under the standing law against Christians and put to death. The Byzantine calendars keep him on July 23, where the Greek synaxarion names him with the bishops of Ravenna; the Latin West keeps him on April 21.

The denunciation

The story, as Eusebius tells it, begins with a betrayal from inside the household. Apollonius — a man of standing in Rome, whom Jerome calls a senator — was denounced as a Christian by one of his own slaves. The informer got nothing by it: under the law then in force an accuser who brought such a charge was himself liable if the procedure was abused, and Eusebius records that the man's legs were broken by sentence of the same prefect who tried his master. It is one of the sharper ironies in the martyr-literature — the delator destroyed by the machinery he set in motion — and Eusebius clearly relishes it.

The prefect was Perennis (Perennius), praetorian prefect and for some years the most powerful man in the empire under Commodus. He appears in the account not as a monster but as a magistrate visibly reluctant to kill a senator, urging Apollonius more than once to reconsider.

The defence before the Senate

Apollonius was called on to give an account of himself. He asked leave to do so at length, and produced a written apology, which he read out — first before Perennis, and then, three days later, before an assembly of senators and jurists convened to hear it. The hearing, as the acts preserve it, was conducted in civil tones, with few interruptions, and this is what makes the document remarkable: an argued Christian case put to the Roman governing class in its own forum, in the language of philosophy rather than of defiance.

Its substance is lost. Eusebius had the text and included it, with the trial record, in his Collection of Ancient Martyrdoms, a work which has not survived; what he says of it in the Ecclesiastical History is that Apollonius made "a most eloquent defence of the faith for which he was witnessing." Jerome, in De viris illustribus, lists Apollonius among the Christian writers precisely on the strength of the book read in the Senate.

Condemnation and death

Argument, however good, could not meet the legal position. There stood on the books a rule going back to the rescript of Trajan to Pliny under which a Christian who persisted in the confession was to be punished, whatever else might be said for him; and Perennis, having heard the defence out, applied it. Apollonius was sentenced and executed.

How he died the sources do not agree: the surviving Greek acts describe the crushing of his legs, the Armenian version says he was beheaded. Both come from the same lost Greek original at some remove, and neither can be preferred with confidence. The year is placed about 185, in the reign of Commodus.

Feast and commemoration

July 23 (church date; Old Calendar civil August 5). The Greek Menaion's synaxarion for the day names "the holy martyrs Apollinaris and Vitalius, bishops of Ravenna, and Apollonius of Rome, and the seven martyrs at Carthage" in a single notice, immediately after the memory of the hieromartyr Phocas, to whom the service of the day belongs; no proper service is appointed to Apollonius, and the Slavonic calendars of the day do not carry him. In the Roman rite his memorial is April 21.

Hymns

Troparion — Tone 4

Thy martyr Apollonius, O Lord, in his contest received from Thee our God the crown of incorruption; for having Thy strength he cast down the tyrants, and shattered the feeble boldness of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.

Original translation from the Greek

Iconography

Apollonius has no developed iconographic type in the Byzantine tradition, being known there only as a name in a list. Where he is painted he would take the form proper to a martyr of rank: a mature man, bearded, in the chlamys and tunic of a Roman noble rather than the plain garments of the popular martyrs, holding the cross of witness; a scroll or codex in the free hand would be the natural attribute of the man whose act was to read a book in the Senate, and is the mark by which he could be told from other martyrs of the name. No pre-1900 image of him has been identified for this collection, and the Menologion of Basil II covers only September to February and so offers nothing for a July memory.

Disputed questions

  • The recovery of the acts. For most of Christian history Apollonius was known only through the notices of Eusebius and Jerome. The Armenian version of his acts was published in the 1870s and a Greek recension was identified in a Paris menologion soon afterwards; both are secondary and partly rewritten, and scholars differ on how much of the original trial record survives in them. Nothing of the apology itself is recovered.
  • The date of the feast, East and West. The Byzantine books keep him on July 23. The Latin martyrologies gave April 18 to an Apollonius, and the confusion between that entry and this martyr produced conflicting dates in the Western lists until the Roman calendar settled on April 21. The Greek date is independent of that muddle and has not moved.
  • Not to be confused with. He is a different martyr from Apollonius of Sardis (Jul 10), crucified at Iconium; and from the several other Apollonii and Apollos of the calendar. The Greek notice's epithet "of Rome" is the distinguishing mark.
  • The extent of the record. The Greek synaxarion of July 23 gives him a bare name in a list. Everything above comes from Eusebius, Jerome and the recovered acts — that is, from outside the liturgical books; and beyond that, nothing of his life before the denunciation is known: not his family, not his conversion, not his age, though the conventional reckoning gives his birth about 105.

Sources

  1. Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History V.21 — the denunciation by the slave, the defence before Perennis and the Senate, the fate of the informer, and the reference to the full acts in the (lost) Collection of Ancient Martyrdoms.
  2. Jerome, De viris illustribus — Apollonius the Roman senator listed among the ecclesiastical writers on account of the volume read before the Senate.
  3. The Armenian and Greek recensions of the Acts of Apollonius, recovered and published in the later nineteenth century — the two divergent accounts of the manner of his death.
  4. Greek Menaion and Synaxarion of Constantinople, July 23 — the synaxarion notice naming "Ἀπολλωνίου Ῥώμης" with the bishops of Ravenna and the martyrs of Carthage (consulted live in the Greek liturgical text of the day).