The Apology of Aristides - c. 125 A.D.

Aristides the Athenian (also Saint Aristides or Marcianus Aristides; Greek: Ἀριστείδης Μαρκιανός) a Christian apologist living at Athens in the second century. According to Eusebius, the Emperor Hadrian, during his stay in Greece (123-127), caused himself to be initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. A persecution of the local Christians followed, due probably, to an outburst of pagan zeal, aroused by the Emperor's act. Two apologies for Christianity were composed on the occasion, that of Quadratus and that of Aristides which the author presented to Hadrian, at Athens, in 126 (Eusebius, Church History IV.3.3, and Chron. II, 166). St. Jerome, in his work Illustrious Men 20, calls him philosophus eloquentissimus, and, in his letter to Magnus (no. LXX), says of the "Apologeticum" that it was contextum philosophorum sententiis, and was later imitated by St. Justin Martyr. He says, further (De vir ill., loc. cit.), that the "Apology" was extant in his time, and highly thought of. Eusebius (loc. cit.), in the fourth century, states that it had a wide circulation among Christians.