The Road Through Asia

Under military escort — the “ten leopards” of his own bitter image — Ignatius was marched across Asia Minor toward martyrdom at Rome. The route can be reconstructed from his letters: at a road-junction his guards took the northern road through Philadelphia to Smyrna, where Polycarp received him and delegations from the southern-road churches came to greet him, and from where he wrote four letters; then on to Troas, where, hearing that peace had returned to Antioch, he wrote three more before sailing for Europe.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostolic Father)

The “Ten Leopards”

The single most famous sentence about the journey is Ignatius’s own description of his guard. Writing ahead to Rome from Smyrna, he says: “From Syria even unto Rome I fight with wild beasts, by land and sea, by night and day, being bound amidst ten leopards, even a company of soldiers, who only wax worse when they are kindly treated; but in their wrong-doings I become more completely a disciple” (Ignatius, To the Romans 5; trans. Lightfoot). The Greek phrase rendered “ten leopards” is δέκα λεοπάρδοις, a hapax-like coinage that has drawn comment because λεόπαρδος (“leopard”) is not classical and may be among the earliest attestations of the word in Greek; the number ten is best taken as the size of the escort, a contubernium-sized detachment, rather than as a symbolic figure (Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, Part II, vol. 2, ad loc.).

The remark “who only wax worse when they are kindly treated” is illuminating about the conditions of travel. Ignatius and his party evidently had some freedom to receive visitors, accept gifts, and dispatch letters — the Christians of Asia attended to the prisoners — and yet the soldiers became harsher precisely when the local churches did them kindnesses, presumably extorting more or guarding more jealously. The whole journey is for Ignatius already a “fight with wild beasts” before he ever reaches the arena: the phrase fuses his present ordeal under guard with the damnatio ad bestias awaiting him at Rome (see Arrest and Condemnation; Wheat of God).

The Two Roads and the Northern Route

The reconstruction of the itinerary across Asia Minor — the framework still standard since Lightfoot — turns on a simple geographical fact. A traveller coming from the east toward the Aegean coast of the province of Asia reached a point where the road forked. The southern road ran down the Maeander valley through Tralles, Magnesia (on the Maeander), and so to Ephesus on the coast; the northern road ran through Philadelphia and Sardis to Smyrna. Ignatius’s escort took the northern road, bringing him to Smyrna and not through Ephesus, Magnesia, or Tralles (Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, Part II, vol. 2; cf. the synthesis in The Corpus).

This is not a guess imposed on the letters but a deduction from them. The decisive evidence is that the three southern-road churches — Ephesus, Magnesia, and Tralles — did not host Ignatius but instead sent delegations to meet him at Smyrna. Had he passed through their cities, he would have addressed them as host communities; instead he thanks them for coming to him. That he passed through Philadelphia on the northern road is confirmed by his later Letter to the Philadelphians, which speaks of his personal visit and of things he said while among them (Ignatius, To the Philadelphians 7). The route, in short, is recovered from the social traffic the letters record, and it is internally consistent across all seven.

At Smyrna: Polycarp and the Delegations

At Smyrna Ignatius was received by the young bishop of that city, Polycarp — later himself a martyr and the link between Ignatius’s generation and that of Irenaeus (see The Apostolic Fathers). The stay at Smyrna was the social and literary centre of the whole journey. There the churches that lay along the road he had bypassed sent their own bishops, presbyters, and deacons to honor and console the prisoner, and Ignatius names them with care.

From Ephesus came a delegation headed by its bishop, Onesimus: “I have received your whole multitude in the person of Onesimus… who is moreover your bishop” (Ignatius, To the Ephesians 1; trans. Lightfoot), together with the deacon Burrhus and the companions Crocus, Euplus, and Fronto (Ignatius, To the Ephesians 2). From Magnesia on the Maeander came Bishop Damas with his presbyters Bassus and Apollonius and the deacon Zotion: “I was permitted to see you in the person of Damas your godly bishop and your worthy presbyters Bassus and Apollonius and my fellow-servant the deacon Zotion” (Ignatius, To the Magnesians 2; trans. Lightfoot). From Tralles came its bishop, Polybius: “Polybius your bishop… by the will of God and of Jesus Christ visited me in Smyrna” (Ignatius, To the Trallians 1; trans. Lightfoot). The pattern is exact and mutually confirming: each southern church is represented at Smyrna by its own ministry, and each letter is built around gratitude for that visit. These delegations are also the occasion of Ignatius’s most insistent teaching on church order — the bishop, presbyters, and deacons as the visible structure of the one church (see Monepiscopacy; Unity around the Eucharist).

The Four Letters Written at Smyrna

From Smyrna, then, Ignatius wrote four letters, three of them to the very churches whose envoys had come to him — Ephesus, Magnesia, and Tralles — and the fourth ahead of him to Rome. That all four were written at Smyrna is established by Ignatius’s own statement and by the logic of the delegations. To the Magnesians he writes explicitly: “The Ephesians from Smyrna salute you, from whence also I write to you. They are here with me for the glory of God… together with Polycarp bishop of the Smyrnaeans” (Ignatius, To the Magnesians 15; trans. Lightfoot) — naming the city of composition, the Ephesian delegation present with him, and Polycarp in one sentence.

To the Romans belongs to the same Smyrnaean cluster and is internally dated: Ignatius writes it “on the ninth day before the Kalends of September” (Ignatius, To the Romans 10), i.e. 24 August, asking the Roman Christians not to obstruct his coming martyrdom (see The Letter to the Romans; Presides in Love). The four Smyrna letters thus are: to the Ephesians, to the Magnesians, to the Trallians, and to the Romans. Eusebius, summarizing the corpus two centuries later, records exactly this grouping — that at Smyrna Ignatius wrote to Ephesus, Magnesia, and Tralles, and also to the church at Rome beseeching it not to deprive him of martyrdom (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.36; trans. NPNF).

On to Troas: The Three Further Letters

From Smyrna the escort moved Ignatius northward up the coast of Asia to Troas, the port near the site of ancient Troy from which crossings to Macedonia were made. The stay at Troas is the second literary station of the journey, and it is here that the news already discussed arrives: that the church at Antioch in Syria has been restored to peace (see Arrest and Condemnation). This report reorients the three letters Ignatius now writes, each of which contains his request that the church congratulate Antioch on its recovered peace by sending a delegate.

At Troas he wrote: to the Philadelphians, to the Smyrnaeans, and to Polycarp personally. To the Philadelphians: “It hath been reported to me that the church which is in Antioch of Syria hath peace… appoint a deacon to go thither as God’s ambassador” (Ignatius, To the Philadelphians 10; trans. Lightfoot). To the Smyrnaeans, the same petition that they send “an ambassador of God… as far as Syria” to rejoice that Antioch is “at peace, and have recovered their proper stature” (Ignatius, To the Smyrnaeans 11; trans. Lightfoot). And to Polycarp, that he appoint a “courier of God” to carry the congratulation into Syria (Ignatius, To Polycarp 7; trans. Lightfoot). The presence of this Antioch-peace motif in all three Troas letters and its absence from the four Smyrna letters is itself a chronological marker: the news reached Ignatius between Smyrna and Troas (Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, Part II, vol. 2). Eusebius again preserves the grouping, noting that from Troas Ignatius wrote to the Philadelphians, to the Smyrnaeans, and to Polycarp (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.36).

The companions named in these letters belong to the Troas stage: the deacon Philo of Cilicia and Rheus Agathopus, who had followed Ignatius from Syria and Cilicia and ministered to him, bearing witness to the churches (Ignatius, To the Philadelphians 11; To the Smyrnaeans 13). The whole seven-letter corpus is thus distributed across exactly two writing-stations, and the mapping is crisp: Smyrna → Ephesians, Magnesians, Trallians, Romans; Troas → Philadelphians, Smyrnaeans, Polycarp (see The Corpus).

From Troas to Europe

Ignatius’s departure from Troas was abrupt. He tells Polycarp that he could not write to all the churches as he wished, “by reason of my sailing suddenly from Troas to Neapolis, as the Divine will enjoineth” (Ignatius, To Polycarp 8; trans. Lightfoot), and asks Polycarp to write on his behalf to the churches he had no time to address. The named port of crossing, Neapolis, is the harbor of Philippi in Macedonia — the same crossing Paul had made a generation or two earlier. From Neapolis the road led inland to Philippi, and the journey then continued overland across Macedonia along the Via Egnatia toward the Adriatic and, ultimately, Italy and Rome.

The Philippian stage leaves an important external trace, and it is the one point at which a source other than Ignatius’s own letters touches the itinerary. Polycarp of Smyrna, writing soon afterward to the Philippians, refers to Ignatius and his companions having passed through Philippi and asks for news of them; and he tells the Philippians that he is sending them the letters of Ignatius that they had requested: “The letters of Ignatius which were sent to us by him, and others as many as we had by us, we send unto you, according as ye gave charge; the which are subjoined to this letter; from which ye will be able to gain great advantage” (Polycarp, To the Philippians 13; trans. Lightfoot). This notice is doubly valuable. It independently confirms that Ignatius really passed through Philippi on his way west, exactly as the To Polycarp sailing-notice implies; and it is the earliest evidence for the collection of Ignatius’s letters into a corpus — Polycarp gathering and forwarding them at Philippi’s request, the first step in the transmission that would eventually produce the recensions (see The Recension Problem; The Apostolic Fathers).

Beyond Philippi the trail of contemporary evidence goes cold. The seven authentic letters end, and the further stages — the land journey across the Balkans, the sea crossing to Italy, the arrival and death at Rome — are narrated only by the later, non-eyewitness Martyrium Ignatii, which must be used with great caution and never quoted as fact (see Arrest and Condemnation). What the letters give us, and what the standard reconstruction from Lightfoot onward secures, is a remarkably coherent map of a condemned bishop’s last journey through Asia: the northern road to Smyrna, the gathering of the churches there, four letters; then Troas, the news of Antioch’s peace, three more letters; then the sudden sailing for Macedonia — and a body of writing that the church would treasure long after the man himself had reached the beasts of the Roman arena.

See Also

References

  • Ignatius of Antioch. To the Ephesians, To the Magnesians, To the Trallians, To the Romans, To the Philadelphians, To the Smyrnaeans, To Polycarp. In The Apostolic Fathers, ed. and trans. J. B. Lightfoot. London: Macmillan, 1885–1890. Greek text and English translation; “middle recension.” Online: https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/ignatius.html
  • Polycarp of Smyrna. To the Philippians 13. In The Apostolic Fathers, ed. and trans. J. B. Lightfoot. Online: https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/polycarp-lightfoot.html
  • Eusebius of Caesarea. Ecclesiastical History 3.36. Trans. NPNF, 2nd ser., vol. 1. Online: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250103.htm
  • J. B. Lightfoot. The Apostolic Fathers, Part II: S. Ignatius, S. Polycarp, 2nd ed., 3 vols. London: Macmillan, 1889. The classic reconstruction of the itinerary and the dating of the letters by writing-station (Smyrna; Troas).
  • Michael W. Holmes, ed. and trans. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007. Introductions to the Ignatian letters and their order of composition.