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Varus of Egypt: a Fictitious Military Martyr

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

David Woods
David Woods*
Affiliation:
St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth
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Extract

The attitude of the early church to war and military service is a subject which has long exercised the attention of many scholars, and doubtlessly this will continue to be the case. There are those who hold a pacifist viewpoint and argue that originally the early Christians completely rejected military service, and there are others who are opposed to this viewpoint. However, all agree on one issue, that there is far less early material on this subject than one would initially prefer. Thus, both sides have felt the need to utilise sources and materials which would otherwise lie neglected, the hagiographical accounts of the early military martyrs in particular. Debate has now centred upon a relatively small number of texts, those which have traditionally been accepted as the genuine acts of authentic military martyrs, to which ever increasing attention has been paid. Unfortunately, concentration upon these texts in particular seems to have led to a neglect of texts which are of great interest in their own right. This was inevitable given that the accounts of the military martyrs have normally been examined only as to their suitability for use as weapons in the ongoing polemic concerning the ‘true’ attitude of the early church to war. Seldom has the development of the cult of military martyrs been regarded as a historical phenomenon worthy of study in itself. Thus, it is the purpose of this note to begin to rectify this situation by drawing attention to the neglected acts of a military martyr, Varus, who allegedly suffered death in Egypt during the reign of Galerius Maximianus (305-311).

Type
Research Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 20 , 1996 , pp. 175 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1996

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References

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58. Tert. De Idololatria 19.2: ‘Non convenu sacramento divino et humano, signo Christi et signo diaboli, castrís lucis et castris tenebrarum; non potest una anima duobus deberi, deo et Caesari.’ Interestingly, Bohec, Y. Le, ‘Tertullien, De Corona 1: Carthage ou Lámbese?’, Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes 38 (1992) 6–18 Google Scholar, argues that the subject of this work was executed at Rome rather than in North Africa, and that he was in fact a member of the praetorian guard. Thus, the rejection by members of the imperial guard of service of the state in favour of service of God can now be traced back as far as the opening years of the 3rd century.

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62. The commentary at AASS. Oct. VIII, 436, suggests that it should read lÇ in the belief that there existed a fixed age of enrolment at 17 years of age.

63. A fine illustration of the fact that no fixed age of enrolment existed is provided by a late 3rd or early 4th century inscription, CIL XI 6168, which records the death of two brothers, members of the comités imperatoris, who had both served 2 years and 6 months before their deaths together, the older aged 21 years, 2 months, and 6 days, while the younger was aged 20 years and 12 days. In the case of Cleopatra’s son, the most obvious comparison is with Martin of Tours who was enrolled among the scholae palatinae at court, at 15 years of age apparently, Sulp. Sev. Vit. Mart. 2.5. However, the circumstances surrounding his conscription are much disputed, and it seems probable that he was conscripted during a particularly vicious civil-war when an urgent need of man-power affected recruitment policy accordingly. See Woods, D., ‘A Note Concerning the Early Career of Valentinian I’, Ancient Society 26 (1995), 273–88 Google Scholar.

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69. Soz. HE 9.2.

70. Soz. HE 9.17.