ABSTRACT
The Ad Demctrianum is an eloquent denunciation of a certain Demetrianus. without doubt a rnagistrate,2 or possibly merely a rhetorician, in any case an ilnplacable enemy of the Christians, who had spread abroad thc rumour that certain recent calamities --war, pestilence, famine and drought ~must be put to the account of their impiousncss. 'Ve arc acquainted with t.his complaint whif'h was for a long time yet to be revived: Tcrtullian had already drawn attention to it; 3 it is mentioned at the beginning of the Adversus Nationcs by Arnobius; Laetantius makes allusion to it in his Instituti01wS Divinae,. 4 St Augustine examines it fully in his Civitas Dei. It was St Cypt'ian who pinned down the fundamental points of the Christian refutation. He did not concern himself to question the acts of Providence, but to demonstrate the anger of Heaven called down against the vices of the pagans, who were alone responsible, whieh furnished to the Christians themselves the opportunity of trials which they accepted with resignation and confidence, whereas the pagans had nothing to OpPoS(~ to the suffering's which fall upon them. In § viii, we note a curious passage on slavery: here the Christian is assuming the accents of Stoicism: 5
" From thy slave thou dost exact absolute submission, Thou art man and dost oblige a man to obey thee. You
are both called to birth by the same chance, subjected to death by the same condition, formed of the same matter, endowed with the same soul; by the same law by which you enter into this world, you go out from it. In spite of this, if he serve thee not according to thy wish, if he bend not to thy least desire, imperiously and without pity thou dost make him pay the penalty of his servitude: stripes, hunger, nakedness, even the sword or the dungeon are the punishments which thy cruelty exercises against him."
