but "our town" may mean that in which he and Tryphon were conversing, i.e., according to Eusebius, Ephesus. It must have been before the Bar-Cocheba wars, if it is from them that Tryphon was flying when Justin met him. The conversion takes the form of a passage from the imperfect to the perfect philosophy; throughout his life it retains that impress. He was not rescued from intellectual despair, but was in the highest condition of confidence when the old man met him. The aim with which he started on his studies was achieved when he became a Christian. Hence he is not thrown into an attitude of antagonism to that which he leaves; his new faith does not break with the old so much as fulfil it. He still, therefore, calls himself the philosopher, still invites men to enter his school, still wears the philosopher's cloak (Dial. i. § 217; Eus. H. E. iv. 11; cf. the Acts of Justin). From the first, philosophy had been pursued with the religious aim of attaining the highest spiritual happiness by communing with God; the certified knowledge of God, therefore, professed by the prophets, and made manifest in Christ, comes to him as the crown of his existing aspiration.
One other motive he records to have affected his conversion, i.e. his wondering admiration at the steadfastness of Christians under persecution. "When I was still attached to the doctrine of Plato, and used to hear the accusations hurled against Christians, and yet saw them perfectly fearless in the face of death and of all that is terrible, I understood that it was impossible they should be living all the time a life of wickedness and lust" (Apol. ii. 12, § 50 A). This appeal, which the moral steadfastness of the Christians had made to him, he continually brings to bear upon others (i. 8, § 57; i. 11, § 58 E, etc.). Perhaps, too, the lack of moral reality and energy in the doctrines of philosophy was not unfelt by Justin, for his words seem sometimes to recall the old man's taunt, "You are a man of words, and not of deeds" (cf. i. 14, § 61 E, "For Christ was no Sophist, but His word was the power of God").
We have no details of his life after baptism. He seems to have come to Rome, and, perhaps, to have stayed there some time, according to Eusebius (H. E. iv. 11). His peculiar office was to bring the Christian apologetic into the publicity of active controversy in the schools. The collision with Tryphon in the Colonnades is probably but a specimen of the intellectual intercourse which Justin challenged by wearing the philosopher's cloak. The introduction to the Dialogue appears to record a familiar habit. The Second Apology mentions a dispute with Crescens the Cynic (3, § 43, B, C). The memory of Justin's characteristic attitude is recorded by Eusebius: "It was then that St. Justin flourished, who, under the dress of a philosopher, preached the word of God, and defended the truth of our faith by his writings as well as by his words"; and the Acts of his martyrdom speak of Justin as sitting in the house of Martinus, a recognized place of meeting for Christians, and there conversing with any who visited him, imparting to them the true doctrine. The persons condemned with him are companions whom he has gathered about him and converted. "I took delight," says one of them, Evelpistus, "in listening to Justin's discourse."
When persecution fell sharply upon the church, he was in the van of those who considered it their first duty to make public to their judges the doctrine and life so foully accused (Apol. i. 3, § 54). So, in the Dialogue with Tryphon, he speaks of the guilt he would incur before the judgment seat of Christ if he did not freely and ungrudgingly open to them his knowledge of the meaning of Scripture (Dial. c. 58, § 280 B).
This freedom of apologetic crowned itself towards the close of Justin's life in the three works which alone can be accepted as undoubtedly authentic: the two Apologies and the Dialogue with Tryphon the Jew. This same freedom brought him to his death.
The secret cause of his seizure is supposed by Eusebius to have been the enmity of an opponent whom he had convicted of ignorance, Crescens the Cynic. "Crescens," Tatian write, "who made himself a nest in Rome, while professing to despise death, proved his fear of it by scheming to bring Justin and myself to death as to an evil thing" (Or. c. 32; cf. Eus. H. E. iv. 16). For the reality of his violent death for Christ we have the indubitable testimony of his historic title, Justin Martyr. For the actual account of it we are dependent on the Acts of his martyrdom, which embody, probably without serious change, the simple and forcible tradition which the 3rd cent. retained of the death-scene. They have the appearance of containing genuine matter. According to these, he and his companions are brought before Rusticus, the prefect of the city, and are simply commanded to sacrifice to the gods, without any mention of Crescens, or of Justin's Apologies to the emperors. Justin, on examination, professes to have found the final truth in Christianity, after exploring all other systems; this truth, he declares, consists in adoring the one God, Who has made all things, visible and invisible, and Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Who was foretold by the prophets to be coming into the world to preach salvation and teach good doctrine. He declares that Christians meet wherever they choose or can, seeing that their God is not limited to this or that place, but fills heaven and earth; but that he himself, on this, his second visit to Rome, held meetings for his followers in the house of one Martinus only, near the baths of Timotinus. After a brave refusal to sacrifice, and an assurance of salvation in Christ, he and those with him were condemned to be beaten with rods and beheaded. They died praising God and confessing their Saviour. The faithful secretly carried their bodies to a fit burial.
Such are the fragments left to us of his life; between what dates do they fall? The title of the First Apology is decisive; it is addressed to the "Emperor Titus Aelius Antoninus Pius, Augustus, Caesar; to Verissimus his son, philosopher, and to Lucius, the natural son of a philosophic Caesar, the adopted son of a pious Caesar." Here we have Antoninus Pius as sole emperor, with his two imperial companions, adopted by him as
