other · 150 · Smyrna
Writing to Florinus, who had gone over to the Valentinians, Irenaeus reminds him that they had both sat in the same room. I remember the events of that time more clearly than those of recent years, he says: I can tell the very place where the blessed Polycarp sat as he discoursed, his goings out and comings in, his manner of life, his personal appearance, and the accounts he gave of his intercourse with John and with the others who had seen the Lord — how he related their words, and what he had heard from them about the Lord, about his miracles and his teaching. He adds that he noted these things down not on paper but in his heart. The year here is a placing rather than a date: he says only that it was when he was a boy, in lower Asia, and gold puts his birth c. 130 while Jerome's editor puts it between 140 and 145. Any year from 140 to 155 fits, and 150 is inside the Smyrna window his own journey row already carries.
Nothing — he was a boy, and it is only in the remembering that it becomes the point.
The one live link this dataset has between the apostles and the second century, and the man who kept it knew exactly what he had.