The sources of Apologeticum

1. Plato 1 authority · 2 neutral · 1 refuted 4 citations · 7 passages

   apologeticum 7 passages anchored here

   Named alongside Pythagoras as holding an opposing cosmological doctrine.

   For this whole body of the world — whether unborn and unmade, as Pythagoras holds, or born and made, as Plato holds — once for all, in its construction, was found ordered and equipped and arranged with every governance of reason.

2. teaching on endurance of death Diogenes 3 neutral 3 citations · 1 passage

   apologeticum

   Diogenes is listed by name among exhorters to endurance, fewer of whose disciples match the Christians.

   Many among you exhort to the endurance of pain and of death:

3. Aeneid Virgil 1 authority · 1 neutral 2 citations

   apologeticum 2 passages anchored here

   Explicitly quoted as authority to characterize the untrustworthiness of rumor.

   Would Juno wish the Punic city, beloved of her with Samos set aside, to be destroyed by the race of the sons of Aeneas?

4. Histories Herodotus 1 neutral · 1 refuted 2 citations · 4 passages

   apologeticum 4 passages anchored here

   Cited tentatively ('I think') as the source of a blood-covenant custom.

   As to the feeding upon blood and dishes of that tragic kind, read — somewhere it is recorded (in Herodotus, I think) — that certain nations made a covenant by drawing blood from their arms and tasting it from one another.

5. doctrine of God's nature and providence Platonists 2 neutral 2 citations

   apologeticum 2 passages anchored here

   Platonist doctrines of God's incorporeality, providence, and immanence are cited as part of the catalogue of philosophical disagreement.

   the Platonists within the world, to remain, after the example of a pilot, within that which he governs.

6. Jewish Antiquities Josephus 1 authority 1 citation

   apologeticum

   Josephus is invoked as a Jewish source corroborating scriptural antiquity.

   Josephus the Jew, native champion of Jewish antiquities;

7. Marcus Aurelius 1 authority 1 citation

   apologeticum

   Cited directly as documentary proof favorable to Christians.

   We, on the contrary, can produce a protector, if the letters of Marcus Aurelius, that most weighty emperor, be sought out, in which he testifies that the Germanic drought was broken by a rain obtained, as it chanced, through the prayers of Christian soldiers.

8. Oedipus Sophocles 1 neutral 1 citation

   apologeticum

   The tragedy is invoked as background to the Macedonians' mocking reaction.

   And the Macedonians too were suspected, because, when first they heard the tragedy of Oedipus, mocking the incestuous man's grief, they would say, "Drive on against the mother.

9. Pindar 1 refuted 1 citation

   apologeticum

   Cited to illustrate impious poetic treatment of the gods, which Tertullian criticizes.

   There is too that lyric poet — Pindar I mean — who sings that Aesculapius, for the desert of his avarice, because he practised medicine to men's hurt, was condemned by the thunderbolt.

10. Pliny the Younger 1 neutral 1 citation

    apologeticum

    Tertullian cites Pliny's report to Trajan as documentary evidence of Christian conduct.

    For Pliny the Younger, when he was governing his province and had condemned certain Christians and degraded others from their rank, was so disturbed by their very numbers that he consulted the emperor Trajan as to what he should do thereafter, alleging that, apart from their obstinacy in not sacrificing, he had discovered nothing else about their rites than that they held meetings before dawn to s …

11. Tusculan Disputations Cicero 1 neutral 1 citation

    apologeticum

    The Tusculans is named directly as Cicero's work exhorting endurance of death, contrasted with Christian teaching by deeds.

    Cicero in the Tusculans, Seneca in his work On Chance, Diogenes, Pyrrho, Callinicus.

Each stands at a single passage. The chapter carries the anchors.

apologeticum 40 sources

A saying of Diogenes concerning the Megarians · A saying of Socrates ('If the demon permit') · Christian apostolic writings (epistle) · Decree on consecration of gods · Delphic inscription (Know Thyself) · Epicurean doctrine of pleasure as equanimity of mind · Epicurus's doctrine on pain and death · Lex Papia Poppaea (Papian laws) · On Chance (De Providentia) · Persica · Public records (acta) of the emperors · Rescript to Pliny · Roman proverbs and maxims · Roman public archives · Senatorial decrees and imperial mandates · Sibylline oracles · Stoic doctrine of pneuma (universal spirit) · Stoic doctrine of the Logos · The Attic sentence condemning Socrates as a corrupter of youth · The Decalogue's command against killing and Christ's teaching against anger · The Delphic oracle's pronouncement on Socrates' wisdom · The Law of Moses (the divine law) · The divine Scriptures / the prophets · account of the Septuagint translation · archives of Egyptian, Chaldean, and Phoenician antiquity · chronicles of antiquity concerning Saturn · doctrine of God as fire · doctrine of atoms and an idle god · doctrine of metempsychosis · doctrine of the unborn, unmade world · history of the war of Belus and Saturn · legend of Romulus's apotheosis · mime on Pythagorean transmigration · poetic depictions of the underworld and Elysium · reply to Dionysius on the gift of philosophy · saying under torture · the Hebrew prophets / holy scriptures · the Law (writings of Moses) · the Prophets (Hebrew scriptures) · the rule of truth