ember
[79:4], Volkmar builds his theory. It will be observed that the cause of
the martyr's death, as laid down by Volkmar, receives no countenance
from the story of Malalas, who gives a wholly different reason--the
irritating language used to the emperor.

Now this John Malalas lived not earlier than the latter half of the
sixth century, and possibly much later. His date therefore constitutes
no claim to a hearing. His statement moreover is directly opposed to the
concurrent testimony of the four or five preceding centuries, which,
without a dissentient voice, declare that Ignatius suffered at Rome.
This is the case with all the writers and interpolators of the Ignatian
letters, of whom the earliest is generally placed, even by those critics
who deny their genuineness, about the middle or in the latter half of
the second century. It is the case with two distinct martyrologies
[80:1], which, agreeing in little else, are united in sending the martyr
to Rome to die. It is the case necessarily with all those Fathers who
quote the Ignatian letters in any form as genuine, amongst whom are
Irenaeus and Origen and Eusebius and Athanasius. It is the case with
Chrysostom, who, on the day of the martyr's festival, pronounces at
Antioch an elaborate panegyric on his illustrious predecessor in the see
[80:2]. It is the case with several other writers also, whom I need not
enumerate, all prior to Malalas.

But John Malalas, it is said, lived at Antioch. So did Chrysostom some
two centuries at least before him. So did Evagrius, who, if the earliest
date of Malalas be adopted, was his contemporary, and who, together with
all preceding authorities, places the martyrdom of Ignatius in Rome. If
therefore the testimony of Malalas deserves to be preferred to this
cloud of witnesses, it must be because he approves himself elsewhere as
a sober and trustworthy writer.

As a matter of fact however, his notices of early Christian history are,
almost without exception, demonstrably false or palpably fabulous
[80:3]. In the very paragraph which succeeds the sentence quoted, he
relates how Trajan had five Christian women burnt alive; the emperor
then mingled their ashes with the metal from which the vessels used for
the baths were cast; the bathers were seized with swooning-fits in
consequence; the vessels were again melted up; and out of the same metal
were erected five pillars in honour of the five martyrs by the emperor's
orders. These pilla