The Martyrdom of Polycarp
The Church of Smyrna
Edition & AttributionTranscribed from a dated scan; artifacts may remain. Translator, publisher and source details.
- Text source
- OCR-derived transcription
- Translator
- Kirsopp Lake
- Series
- The Apostolic Fathers, Volume II (Loeb Classical Library)
- Editor
- Kirsopp Lake (Loeb Classical Library facing-text edition)
- Publisher
- William Heinemann (London) and G. P. Putnam's Sons (New York)
- Year
- 1913 (this printing 1917)
- Revision
- Transcribed from the OCR of the dated scan, English recto pages only (the edition is facing-page Greek/English). THE AUTHOR IS THE CHURCH OF SMYRNA, NOT POLYCARP, who is the subject: Lake's introduction describes the work as "an obviously genuine and contemporary account of the martyrdom of Polycarp, in the form of a letter from the Church of Smyrna to the Church of Philomelium", and the salutation opens in that church's own voice. The letter names Evarestus as the one "who wrote the letter" (XX.2) and records its own chain of copyists -- Gaius from a manuscript of Irenaeus, then Socrates at Corinth, then Pionius (XXII.2-3) -- none of whom is its author. The salutation carries no verse number in the printed edition and is stored as the unnumbered prescript rather than as 1:1. AFTER CHAPTER XXII THIS EDITION PRINTS A SECOND, ALTERNATIVE ENDING headed "Another Conclusion from the Moscow Manuscript" (printed pp. 343-345), whose sections it numbers 2-6 under no chapter numeral at all; it is kept here as a unit of its own, with its printed numbering unchanged, because renumbering it 1-5 would edit the edition and folding it into chapter XXII would give that chapter two doxologies. Two spellings that look like OCR damage are the edition's own and are left alone: "martydom" at the Moscow conclusion 3 and "martrydom" at 5, both read off the printed pages.
- Rights
- Public Domain
- Accessed
- 2026-09-23
- License
- public-domain-base
- Public-domain basis
- Pre-1930 publication, simultaneously UK (Heinemann, London) and US (G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York); first printed 1913, this printing 1917. Term long expired. Title page and printing statement read off the page images; see the rights dossier for volume II (2026-08-11).
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