Latest / Marcus Aurelius: Rome's Philosopher King — Fexingo History / Marcus Aurelius and the Christians
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've spent a lot of time with Marcus Aurelius the philosopher, the general, the administrator. But there's one group he famously clashed with, or at least presided over their clashing: the early Christians. Luna: Right, the persecutions. But wasn't Marcus supposed to be a tolerant, rational guy? Lucas: Exactly. That's the tension. He wrote about justice and kindness in the Meditations, and yet in the summer of 177 AD, while he was fighting the Marcomanni, a horrific persecution broke out in Lugdunum—modern Lyon—in Gaul. Dozens of Christians were tortured and executed in the arena. The story comes to us from a letter preserved by the church historian Eusebius. Luna: And that was on Marcus's watch. Did he order it? Lucas: Probably not directly. The legal situation is muddy. Christianity wasn't technically illegal under Roman law—there was no empire-wide edict against it. But it was considered a superstitio illicita, an unlawful superstition, and local governors could punish Christians who refused to worship the gods or the emperor. The standard procedure was: if someone was accused, the governor gave them a chance to sacrifice to the emperor; if they refused, they could be executed. Trajan had set that precedent decades earlier. Luna: So it was more about civil disobedience than active hunting? Lucas: Exactly. Most persecutions were local, sparked by mob violence or personal grudges. And that's what happened in Lyon. The governor of Gallia Lugdunensis at the time was a man named Tiberius Claudius Priscus. He seems to have been a capable administrator, but he caved to public pressure. There was a popular outcry against the Christians—accusations of incest, cannibalism, all the standard slanders. Priscus arrested them, tortured them to extract confessions, and finally condemned them to the beasts. Luna: The letter from Lyon is incredibly vivid. Blandina, the slave woman, especially. Lucas: She's the most famous martyr from that episode. She was small and frail, but she endured torture for days. The letter says she was 'like a noble athlete' in her suffering. They tied her to a stake and sent in wild animals, but she survived that. Finally they killed her with a sword. The bishop, Pothinus, was over ninety and died in prison from the beatings. But here's the key question: did Marcus know about this? And if he did, did he approve? Luna: What does the historical record say? Lucas: There's a famous story from a few years earlier, around 165 AD, involving Justin Martyr. He was a Christian philosopher in Rome who had debated with pagans and Jews. He and six companions were brought before the prefect of Rome, Junius Rusticus—who, ironically, was a Stoic philosopher and a former teacher of Marcus. Luna: Wait, Rusticus? The same one Marcus thanks in the Meditations for teaching him integrity? Lucas: The very same. Marcus writes that Rusticus 'showed me that my character required improvement and cure.' But when Justin and his friends refused to sacrifice to the gods, Rusticus condemned them to be scourged and beheaded. So the emperor's own philosophical mentor was directly involved in a Christian execution. That tells you something about the atmosphere in Rome. Luna: That's a heavy connection. So Marcus's inner circle didn't see a contradiction? Lucas: Apparently not. For Stoics, the gods were part of a rational, providential order. Refusing to honor them was an act of impiety that threatened social cohesion. Christians, by their exclusivity, seemed like atheists—they denied the traditional gods. And their talk of a separate kingdom was politically suspicious. Marcus, for all his philosophical refinement, was a traditionalist Roman. He believed in duty to the state and the gods. Luna: But what about his own writings? Doesn't he say something like 'the best revenge is to not be like that'? Lucas: Yes, Meditations book 6, chapter 6: 'The best way to avenge yourself is to not become like the wrongdoer.' That's a Stoic principle of not letting external events disturb your inner virtue. But it's applied broadly, not to state policy. In practice, he probably viewed Christians as misguided people causing social unrest. He wouldn't have seen killing them as 'revenge' but as necessary discipline. Lucas: It's worth noting that we keep this show ad-free by design. If you value digging into these nuanced historical questions without interruption, you can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Absolutely. It helps us keep exploring these stories. Lucas: So back to Lyon. After the persecution, the survivors wrote to the churches in Asia Minor, and that letter was later preserved. One detail: they mention that the martyrs were forbidden to be called martyrs—the term was reserved for Christ alone. But the church would soon honor them as saints. Marcus probably never heard of them. He was too busy with the war. Luna: It's striking that we have no evidence he ever even thought about Christianity. It's like a blind spot. Lucas: Completely. And that's the key: for all his philosophical depth, Marcus was a man of his time. He didn't see Christianity as a legitimate philosophical school—it was a superstition. The Stoic concept of logos—divine reason permeating the universe—could have overlapped with Christian Logos theology. But the Christians were too exclusive, too separatist. They refused to participate in the civic cults that held the empire together. Lucas: There's a later story from the Historia Augusta, which is notoriously unreliable, that Marcus issued a rescript ordering that Christians be punished only if they were also causing public disorder. But even that's not certain. If true, it would show he tried to limit persecution. But the Lyon evidence suggests the opposite: no restraint. Luna: What about the apologist Athenagoras? He addressed a plea to Marcus and his son Commodus in the 170s. Lucas: That's right. Athenagoras wrote a 'Plea for the Christians' around 177, arguing that Christians were loyal subjects who prayed for the emperor. He even used Stoic language to make his case. Did Marcus read it? We don't know. If he did, it didn't change policy. The persecutions continued sporadically until the Edict of Milan in 313. Luna: So the philosopher king wasn't so different from other emperors on this issue. Lucas: In the end, yes. Marcus's reputation as a wise, just ruler is well-deserved in many respects—legal reforms, clemency, dedication to duty. But when it came to Christianity, he was conventional. He saw state religion as the glue of society. Christianity threatened that glue. His Stoicism gave him a framework for enduring personal hardship, but not for embracing radical religious diversity. The 'inner citadel' had its limits. Luna: It's a reminder that even great minds are shaped by their time. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what makes history so valuable: we see the ideals clash with reality. Marcus wrote, 'The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.' He wrestled with the world as it was, not as he imagined it. And sometimes, the world won.