v., chapter 7). The Galileans,
i.e., the people of Galilee, appear to have had a bad name, and it is
highly probable that Epictetus simply referred to them, just as he might
have said as an equivalent phrase for stupidity, "like the Boeotians."
In addition to this, the followers of Judas the Gaulonite were known as
Galileans, and were remarkable for the "inflexible constancy which, in
defence of their cause, rendered them insensible of death and tortures"
("Decline and Fall," vol. ii., p. 214).

Marcus Aurelius (born A.D. 121, died A.D. 180) is Paley's last support,
as he urges that fortitude in the face of death should arise from
judgment, "and not from obstinacy, like the Christians." As no one
disputes the existence of a sect called Christians when Marcus Aurelius
wrote, this testimony is not specially valuable.

Paley, so keen to swoop down on any hint that can be twisted into an
allusion to the Christians, entirely omits the interesting letter
written by the Emperor Adrian to his brother-in-law Servianus, A.D. 134.
The evidence is not of an edifying character, and this accounts for the
omission: "The worshippers of Serapis are Christians, and those are
consecrated to the god Serapis, who, I find, call themselves the bishops
of Christ" (Quoted in "Diegesis," p. 386).

Such are the whole external evidences of Christianity until after A.D.
160. In a time rich in historians and philosophers one man, Tacitus, in
a disputed passage, mentions a Christus punished under Pontius Pilate,
and the existence of a sect bearing his name. Suetonius, Pliny, Adrian,
possibly Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, casually mention some people
called Christians.

The Rev. Dr. Giles thus summarises the proofs of the weakness of early
Christian evidences in "profane history:"--

"Though the remains of Grecian and Latin profane literature which belong
to the first and second centuries of our era are enough to form a
library of themselves, they contain no allusion to the New Testament....
The Latin writers, who lived between the time of Christ's crucifixion
and the year A.D. 200, are Seneca, Lucan, Suetonius, Tacitus, Persius,
Juvenal, Martial, Pliny the Elder, Silius Italicus, Statius, Quintilian,
and Pliny the Younger, besides numerous others of inferior note. The
greater number of these make mention of the Jews, but not of the
Christians. In fact, Suetonius, Tacitus, and the younger Pliny, are the
only Roman writers who mention the Christ