tumultuous period in the religious history of
the world'; and in connection with the Bishop of Smyrna he notes that 'a
chief arena of the struggle between creeds and cults was Asia Minor.' If
in the earlier part of the second century (A. D. 112) Pliny, in his
celebrated letter to Trajan,[86] deplored what Polycarp may have
witnessed--on the one hand, heathen temples deserted and heathen
sacrifices starved as to their victims; on the other, young and old, man
and woman, patrician and peasant, bond and free, attracted to and
mastered by a 'superstition' which affected alike the city and the
village, the nobleman's mansion and the herdsman's hut, yet the splendid
successes of Christianity did not blind either saint or philosopher. 'A
veritable Pagan propaganda,' as Renan calls it, also set in in the
second century; and when Polycarp died, it was at its height. Everywhere
was it supported by the reigning emperors. 'The political and truly
Roman instincts of Trajan were not more friendly to it than the
archaeological tastes, the cosmopolitan interests, and the theological
levity of Hadrian. From their immediate successors, Antoninus Pius and
Marcus Aurelius, it received even more solid and efficient support.'

Smyrna, the see of Bishop Polycarp, was fully exposed to the influences
of this reviving Paganism. The rhetorician, Aristides--true type of the
Pagan charlatan who summoned to his aid in subjugating a superstitious
people the mysterious and occult powers with which astrology and dreams,
auguries and witchcrafts, invested their possessors--was himself a
frequent dweller in Smyrna. Often must he have heard of and despised the
man branded by the titles, 'the teacher of Asia, the father of the
Christians, the puller-down of our gods, who teacheth numbers not to
sacrifice nor worship'[87] which--like the inscription over his
crucified Lord--did unconsciously proclaim the very and only truth.
Twice did the city of Smyrna, during Polycarp's prime, receive fresh
honours and privileges for her devotion to the worship of Imperial
deities. The religious guild of the temples of the Augusti celebrated
here their festivals with exceptional splendour; the 'theologians' and
'choristers,' who owed their existence and affluence to the magnificence
of a Hadrian, not only saluted him as their 'god,' their 'saviour and
founder,' but by senatorial decree established games--the Olympia
Hadrianea--grotesquely pompous in titular magnificence. N