From this exposition of the texts I want now to turn backwards, to consider the relation of these texts to their predecessors. Martin Goodman argues (Ch. 3) that Josephus’ Against Apion does not itself stand in a tradition of Jewish apologetic; Frances Young argues that the genre of Greek Christian apologetics is also problematic (Ch. 5). None the less, these Latin authors were conscious that they had precursors. Thus On the Evidence of the Soul starts by talking about the labour involved in collecting evidence from pagan philosophers, poets, and other authors in order to show that Christianity rests on traditional authority and wisdom. ‘Indeed some of our people, who still continued their inquisitive labours in ancient literature, and still occupied memory with it, have published works we have in our hands of this very sort’ (I). Tertullian (and probably Minucius Felix) did not create their works ex nihilo.
Before considering the Christian authors to whom Tertullian refers here, we might pause for a moment to look at Jewish writers. Had Tertullian or other apologists read Josephus? The Apology does refer explicitly to him at one point (19. 6), as part of its argument that the Christian belief in one god was grounded in the Jewish prophets, who were themselves of great antiquity: ‘The Jew Josephus, native champion of Jewish antiquities, must be consulted.’ On the face of it, this is a reference to Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities, but the reference comes just after a string of references to the archives and citizens of foreign races, including Manetho, Berossus, and also Apion. Some of Tertullian’s alleged learning here may be mediated through reading of, and acceptance of the argument of, Josephus’ Against Apion, and Tertullian’s phrasing may be evidence that the original title of Josephus’ work was On the Antiquity of the Jews.
More can be said about these authors’ relationships to earlier Christian apologetic written in Greek. The most obvious way into this is through the title of one of Tertullian’s treatises: the Apology. The form Apologeticum is that given by the best manuscripts of the treatise, but the use of an accusative or neuter has no parallel in Latin book titles, and the correct title is surely Apologeticus. This is the form used by Jerome (Letter 70, 3) and in subsequent Latin treatises by other authors.Apologeticus had not previously been used in Latin, though Apologus had. It is clearly a transcript of the Greek apologetikos. The question is why, especially as Apologetikos itself had not been used as a title of any work in Greek. The simpler word to use would have been Apologia, and one might have expected Tertullian to pick up the title Apologia used a generation earlier by Apuleius for his speech of defence before the governor of Africa. In fact, this title is clearly not that used by Apuleius: both the manuscripts and the fourth-century annotations to the work use a periphrastic title like ‘In his Defence before Claudius Maximus Proconsul on Magic’. So that title can be dismissed as a red herring. Why then Apologeticus? The termapologetikos had been used occasionally in rhetorical handbooks, for one sort of speech delivered in court, and it was certainly not domesticated into Latin. In fact, Tertullian surely drew not on this rare rhetorical term, but on standard contemporary Greek usage. In the Hellenistic and Roman periods apologoumai means ‘to render an account or explanation’, without any forensic or defensive overtones. So in second-and third-century Christian martyr acts, the verb is used to refer to a detailed presentation of oneself and one’s faith. The fact that, irrespective of the title of Apuleius’ work, Tertullian eschewed the noun apologia shows how far this treatise was from a forensic setting. It was not itself an actual defence of Christianity; it offered material for a presentation of the faith, much as works like Poliorketika offered material on the subject of sieges. The title Apologeticus thus has a Greek ring, but it does not have any forensic overtones. It was common for pagan Latin works to have Greek titles, but as this is one of only a handful of Christian Latin treatises with a Greek title, Tertullian presumably intended an allusion to his Greek predecessors.
That Tertullian was alluding to Christian material in Greek should not surprise us (though it might surprise those used to a sharp distinction between Latin-and Greek-speaking Christianity). Three of Tertullian’s own works, including On Shows,existed both in Latin and in Greek, presumably for the edification of Greek-speaking Christians in Carthage. Tertullian himself may not have been read in the Greek East, but he was certainly aware of his Greek predecessors. The same passage of theApology that refers to Josephus (19. 5—8) also probably draws some of its learning from a reading of Tatian’s Address to the Greeks (31, 36— 41) and Theophilus’ To Autolycus (3. 16—29). Minucius Felix, however, if he knew the Greek apologies at all, adopted a different form, and developed very different arguments.
There is a further, equally important element to the background of the Latin apologies: conventional (i.e. non-Christian) upper-class education, both rhetorical and philosophical. I am not thinking here so much about the citation or use of non-Christian authors for particular points (though I shall return to Tertullian’s use of Varro shortly) as about the general modes of argument of the treatises. Though there are no good grounds for asserting that either Tertullian or Cyprian were jurists, both men had clearly had good educations in standard liberal studies: indeed, the nearcontemporary Life of Cyprian (2) explicitly mentions Cyprian’s immersion in such an education. Both writers are masters of rhetorical exposition. Cyprian’s oral abilities are attested by Lactantius (Divine Institutes, 5. I. 24) and Augustine (Sermon 312, 4), who alike illustrate his fame as an orator. And the texts of both men can clearly be analysed fruitfully in terms of rhetorical theory and practice. This has been done most fully for Tertullian by Heinze and Eckert for the Apology, and by Sider for his whole reuvre. Not all their work is equally satisfactory: for example, Heinze’s and Sider’s accounts of the structure of the Apology are very schematic, and depend in part on the use of abstract Latin nouns, some of dubious authority. In addition, Sider and to some extent Eckert are overdependent on a picture of Ciceronian practice, and pay too little attention to rhetorical practice in the second century (Apuleius plays no part in their work). The rhetoric of Tertullian and Cyprian needs to be set more firmly in a contemporary context. The peculiar style of Tertullian should also be noted. In general he used current Christian language, but with a strong personal element, and in a highly pointed (and sometimes extremely difficult) Asianic style. Tertullian’s language, in strong contrast to that of Minucius Felix, epitomizes his rejection of classical in favour of Christian culture.
Minucius Felix had the reputation among later Christians of having been an outstanding advocate (Lactantius, Divine Institutes, 5. I. 22; Jerome, On Famous Men, 58). Such a reputation may be merely an inference from the text, which refers to the judicial responsibilities of the narrator (2. 3), but the text is clearly imbued with contemporary rhetorical education. The opposing arguments of the two main speakers must be influenced by the practice standard in rhetorical education of the principate of making students plead one or other side of a case (the controversiae). Some of the cases on which students were trained were abstract philosophical ones. Quintilian includes among them the question whether the world is governed by providence (3. 5. 6; 5. 7. 35; 7. 2. 2). These have a real importance to the budding orator:
For, if the world is governed by providence, it will certainly be the duty of all good men to play their part in the administration of the state. If the origin of our souls be divine, we must win our way towards virtue and abjure the service of the lusts or our earthly body. Are not these themes that the orator will frequently be called upon to handle? (12. 2. 21)
Nor was the inclusion of such topics a peculiarity of Quintilian. Greek rhetoricians of the imperial period mention the same theme: whether the world is governed by providence. One, Aelius Theon, included in his work full instructions on how to handle this particular theme. Such a training surely lies behind Octavius. For example, Caecilius’ speech denies at some length that the world is governed by providence (5; cf. 10. 5), while Octavius argues that the beauty and order of the universe prove the existence of God, and conversely that God’s providence was visible in the detailed workings of nature (17—18).
This exposure to abstract arguments as part of a rhetorical education raises the issue of the role of technical philosophy in the formation of Latin apologetic. Tertullian was certainly able to make use of pagan philosophical arguments to serve his own purposes. In the Apology, for example, he decides to meet the objection raised by someone who accepted his earlier arguments about sacrilege and treason, but felt that Christianity was merely one more school of philosophy (46—9). Tertullian pointed out that such a position was inconsistent with actions taken against Christians: philosophers were not compelled to sacrifice, and some were hostile to the emperor. More importantly, Tertullian claimed that philosophers were inferior to Christians, both in their commitment to truth and in the morality of their lives. His examples here are standard Greek ones: Socrates was accused of corrupting the young (which Tertullian takes to be through homosexuality); ‘Speusippus, of Plato’s school, was killed in the act of adultery’; while the Christian attains sexual continence. He claimed that the philosophers had seen the truth by reading in ‘the sacred digests’ (i.e. the Old Testament), but had refused to talk of God as they found him there. Hence the disagreements of the different Greek philosophical schools about the nature of God.
Some are sure that he is incorporeal, others that he had a body—the Platonists that is and the Stoics. Others say he consists of atoms, others of numbers, as do Epicurus and the Pythagoreans. Another says of fire—the view of Heraclitus. The Platonists represent him as taking care of the world; on the other hand the Epicureans picture him as idle and unemployed, a nobody (so to say) as regards human affairs.
And so on. In short, ‘every one, as he felt, interpolated or remodeled’. This easy polemic does not read like the product of someone who had studied much philosophy himself, not surprisingly, as philosophy did not form part of the normal education for the upper-class Roman. Much of this material could have been taken over at second hand from earlier Greek Christian apologies or from pagan compilations. Cyprian also seems to show no direct knowledge of pagan philosophy; in his treatise on ‘patience’ (On the Virtue of Patience) he simply asserts that the Christian possesses true patience in contrast to the false patience (and wisdom) of the philosophers, and in his To Demetrianus he makes no reference to it at all.
Minucius Felix, on the other hand, had a very different relation to ancient philosophy. In addition to whatever he may have learned as part of his rhetorical training, he had also himself read some philosophical texts, in particular Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods. This treatise is a dialogue between the representatives of three philosophical schools—Academic, Epicurean, and Stoic—on the nature of the gods. Minucius Felix is obviously indebted to it (and perhaps to other philosophical dialogues) for the form of his own treatise, and for the fact that the narrator is not himself part of the debate. There are differences, however, between the two works. Minucius Felix is much more attentive to the physical setting of his dialogue, describing the Ostian shoreline with some care; Cicero, on the other hand, reaches the setting only after a lengthy introduction, and then spends only a brief paragraph on how Cicero was invited to Cotta’s house to hear the dispute between leaders of the three philosophical schools (I. 6. 15). Minucius Felix also simplifies the dialogue by having only two speakers, not three. This simplification means that there is one opponent of Christianity, whose views can be carefully chosen so as to be easily refutable. And the pagan Caecilius is shown not as the representative of a philosophical school, but as an ordinary educated Roman. Finally, the endings of the two works are very different. Cicero ends abruptly, saying that ‘here the conversation ended, and we parted, Velleius thinking Cotta’s discourse to be the truer, while I felt that that of Balbus approximated more nearly to a semblance of the truth’ (3. 40. 95). By contrast, Minucius Felix’s narrator is allied from the start with Octavius’ position, and happy to report the conversion of Caecilius. Octavius has a strong evangelistic element. Cicero’s academic suspension of commitment is replaced by the narrator’s Christian conviction. But Minucius Felix’ style is deeply classical (Ciceronian), which conformed to the structure of his work—a civilized dialogue between pagan and Christian.