emperor as supreme, or of governors, as sent by him to punish
those who do wrong and to praise those who do right’ (2.13–14).
Through such good conduct on the part of Christians, it was hoped
that pagans might be persuaded to come to know God in time
to glorify him on Judgement Day. The letter’s message in this
regard was reduced to a simple formula: ‘Fear God. Honour the
emperor’ (2.17).
Such tension between hostility and accommodation did not
diminish for later generations of Christians. Even Tertullian, that
purveyor of pungent criticisms of so many aspects of pagan
society (see above), was keen to stress that Christians were not
disloyal subjects of the emperor and that, however much they
seemed to be at odds with traditional paganism, they should not
be persecuted. In his Apology, his greatest appeal to the pagan
elite on behalf of Christianity, he drove the point home:
For we pray for the safety of our rulers to the eternal God,
the true God, the living God... We are praying continu-
ally on behalf of all of our rulers, that their lives should be
long, their power secure, their household safe, their armies
strong, their senate loyal, their people honest, their world
peaceful – everything for which man or Caesar could wish.
(Tertullian, Apology30.1, 4)Indeed, Tertullian argued that Christians were likely to be the best
of subjects: their special understanding of the apocalyptic horrors
that would attend the end of time meant that they were likely to
pray all the more earnestly that it should be postponed and that
the empire should prosper (Apology32.1). Against such a back-
ground, persecution could not be justified. Worse, it threatened to
disrupt the peaceful order of things, an outcome that would benefit
neither pagans nor Christians (To Scapula5.2–4).
Tertullian’s was not the only appeal. Other Christians before
him, such as Athenagoras in his Embassy on Behalf of the Chris-
tiansdirected to the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus
in the late-170s, would also plead that the interests of Christians
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