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ROMAN TRADITIONS OF PETER AND PAUL. 2/9
neous revelation, receive instruction and calling to be an
apostle, proclaim the Word of Christ, love His apostles,
and do not strive with me, who long was His compan-
ion."
This author it is, who published in wider circles the
story that Simon Magus came to Rome, strove with the
apostles, and undertook an ill-fated ascension. Although
none of imperial Rome’s chroniclers, otherwise so avid of
anecdotes and wonders, have said anything of Simon
Magus, his relation with Nero, or his miracles in Rome,
the story won much credence; and even Justin Martyr
seeks to prop it up, by the assurance that he himself,
during a visit to Rome, had seen on the Tiber island a
statue to the magician, with the inscription SimoJii Sancto,
(to Saint Simon.) A stronger proof that Simon INIagus
had been in Rome, could hardly be brought forward.
But on the Tiber island, as we know, both in the days of
the republic and under the empire, stood a temple dedi-
cated to the Sabine god Semo Sancus ; and this had a
statue with the inscription SemoJii SaJico, to Semo San-
cus. It was this figure, the credible and truth-loving
Justin saw, and this inscription he, a stranger from the
East, had pardonably enough misunderstood.
Entirely without historic substance, however, these
stories probably are not. Especially may one or another
told of Paul, rest on actual memories, and it is certainly
not improbable that he suffered martyrdom in the man-
ner and on the spot given by the tradition. But in that
case, truth and fiction have so grown together, that the
whole resembles that chain which on solemn occasions is
shown in the church of 5. Pictro in vincoli, and of which
the following is narrated, at Rome. Bishop Julian in
Jerusalem presented the empress Eudoxia with this
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