other · 170 · Sardis
Melito writes that what never before happened is now happening: the race of the pious is suffering persecution, driven about in Asia by new decrees, and shameless informers and coveters of other men's property are taking occasion from those decrees to carry on robbery night and day. His argument to the emperor is political as much as religious — the faith and the empire grew up together under Augustus, the empire has prospered ever since, and whatever harms the one harms the other. It is the first statement of an idea that would have a very long career. Jerome, who is the other witness this project holds, names the emperor as Marcus Antoninus Verus and says the book was written on behalf of the Christian doctrine; his editor puts Melito as bishop about 150, dying between 171 and 180. NPNF places the Apology itself between 169 and 180, and the year here is a placing inside that window rather than a date anyone records.
To tell an emperor who thought of himself as a philosopher that his own officials were using new decrees as a licence for robbery.
Quoted at length by Eusebius, and lost otherwise.