Antoninus Pius

Antoninus was born on 19 September in the year of Domitian’s twelfth consulship, AD 86 (Historia Augusta, Antoninus Pius 1.8). He succeeded Hadrian in 138 and died after twenty-two full years of rule, when Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus followed him (Eusebius, Church History 4.14.10). Hadrian, near death and without a son, adopted him on condition that he in turn adopt the young Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus (Cassius Dio, Roman History 69.20–21) (Historia Augusta, Antoninus Pius 4.5).

Justin Martyr addressed his First Apology to him and to those two adopted sons (Justin, First Apology 1). Melito, bishop of Sardis, writing to Marcus Aurelius, says that Antoninus wrote to Larissa, Thessalonica, Athens and “all the Greeks” forbidding new measures against Christians (Eusebius, Church History 4.26.10). Eusebius quotes as his a letter to the assembly of Asia which orders that accusers of Christians be punished, though the copy he gives is headed with the name of Marcus Aurelius; another copy, under Antoninus’s own name, is attached to Justin’s Apology (Eusebius, Church History 4.12–13) (Justin, First Apology appendix). A. C. McGiffert, the translator of Eusebius used here, calls it “undoubtedly spurious” in his note (Eusebius, Church History 4.13, translator’s note). Polycarp is commonly held to have died in his reign: see the Martyrdom of Polycarp.