DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4680#0155
486 XII. CHRISTIAN INSCRIPTIONS OF S.W. PHRYGIA.
as men living in company with the latter, similar in respect of food,
dress, surroundings and appliances, frequenting the same forum, market,
baths, shops, fairs, &C.1 We cannot doubt that the shopkeeper or
trader who was converted did not, as a rule, alter the outward appear-
ance of his life. People might converse with him in the street or the
forum, and observe no reason to suspect him of Christianity. He
did not break with ' all his old thoughts and habits and feelings and
friends when he was converted. He lived in externals much as before ;
he observed the same laws of politeness in society; his house, his sur-
roundings continued much the same; he kept up the same family
names, and when he died his grave, his tombstone and his epitaph
were in the ordinary style V Yet we are now to essay the task
of separating the Chr. from the pagan epitaphs, by observing the slight
variations through which the Chr. avoided using the too pronounced
pagan forms, while preserving the general character of the pagan
epitaphs.
This picture of quiet, peaceful development will be found justified
by everything which we find in the early Chr. inscr., but it is very
different from the account given by Aelius Aristides in the second
century. According to him the Christians cut themselves off from
all Greek culture, from everything that was good and noble • they
broke up family ties, and set brother against brother; their words,
thoughts, and acts were alike void of good result for society; they
stood aloof from the pleasures, the religion, and the duties of educated
or loyal citizens ; held no official position; comforted none who were
in sorrow ; healed no dissensions ; gave no good counsel; made poverty
and beggary into virtues ; practised robbery under the guise of equality,
and shameless vice under the cloak of rigid virtue; made evil into
good, and reckoned ugliness as beauty; laid claim to be the true
philosophers ; and spoke villainous Greek 3. But the whole tone of
this description, together with the fact that Aristides classes the Chr.
along with the Cynics as belonging on the whole to the same type,
1 Apol. 42 homines vohiscum degentes Arisfc. virepTa>i>TeTrapmvll pp.400f Dincl.;
einsdem vidua, hahitus, instrucius, eius- Lightfoot refuses to accept this shocking
dem ad vitam necessitatis......itaque picture as even intended for the Chris-
non sine foro, non sine macello, non sine tians ; but Neumann der rvm. Staat und
balneis tabernis officinis stabidis nicndinis die allgem. Kirche pp. 35 f takes a more
vestris ceterisque commerciis cohabitamiis correct view, following Bernays Gesamm.
in hoc saeculo. Abhandl. II p. 362 (a fragment implying
2 St. Paid the Traveller pp. 20S f. a change from Bernays's earlier view in
3 The last fault is the only one that Lucian und die Kyniher). See my Church
is shown in the inscr. (see no. 354;. in It- E. pp. 351 ft'.
as men living in company with the latter, similar in respect of food,
dress, surroundings and appliances, frequenting the same forum, market,
baths, shops, fairs, &C.1 We cannot doubt that the shopkeeper or
trader who was converted did not, as a rule, alter the outward appear-
ance of his life. People might converse with him in the street or the
forum, and observe no reason to suspect him of Christianity. He
did not break with ' all his old thoughts and habits and feelings and
friends when he was converted. He lived in externals much as before ;
he observed the same laws of politeness in society; his house, his sur-
roundings continued much the same; he kept up the same family
names, and when he died his grave, his tombstone and his epitaph
were in the ordinary style V Yet we are now to essay the task
of separating the Chr. from the pagan epitaphs, by observing the slight
variations through which the Chr. avoided using the too pronounced
pagan forms, while preserving the general character of the pagan
epitaphs.
This picture of quiet, peaceful development will be found justified
by everything which we find in the early Chr. inscr., but it is very
different from the account given by Aelius Aristides in the second
century. According to him the Christians cut themselves off from
all Greek culture, from everything that was good and noble • they
broke up family ties, and set brother against brother; their words,
thoughts, and acts were alike void of good result for society; they
stood aloof from the pleasures, the religion, and the duties of educated
or loyal citizens ; held no official position; comforted none who were
in sorrow ; healed no dissensions ; gave no good counsel; made poverty
and beggary into virtues ; practised robbery under the guise of equality,
and shameless vice under the cloak of rigid virtue; made evil into
good, and reckoned ugliness as beauty; laid claim to be the true
philosophers ; and spoke villainous Greek 3. But the whole tone of
this description, together with the fact that Aristides classes the Chr.
along with the Cynics as belonging on the whole to the same type,
1 Apol. 42 homines vohiscum degentes Arisfc. virepTa>i>TeTrapmvll pp.400f Dincl.;
einsdem vidua, hahitus, instrucius, eius- Lightfoot refuses to accept this shocking
dem ad vitam necessitatis......itaque picture as even intended for the Chris-
non sine foro, non sine macello, non sine tians ; but Neumann der rvm. Staat und
balneis tabernis officinis stabidis nicndinis die allgem. Kirche pp. 35 f takes a more
vestris ceterisque commerciis cohabitamiis correct view, following Bernays Gesamm.
in hoc saeculo. Abhandl. II p. 362 (a fragment implying
2 St. Paid the Traveller pp. 20S f. a change from Bernays's earlier view in
3 The last fault is the only one that Lucian und die Kyniher). See my Church
is shown in the inscr. (see no. 354;. in It- E. pp. 351 ft'.