Le martyre de Pionios, pretre de Smyrne.

The Martyrdom of Pionius, the bishop of Smyrna who was martyred on 12 March 250, provides primary evidence both for the Decian persecution and for the city of Smyrna in the third century. It appears to have been Henri Gregoire's absurd and paradoxical thesis that Pionius was in fact executed in the reign of Marcus Aurelius which first kindled Louis Robert's interest in the Martyrdom as a historical document. He delivered lectures on it in Smyrna in 1960, Athens in 1961, and Warsaw in 1968, commented on its date and its value for the topography of Smyrna in 1960 and 1962, began to prepare an edition with full commentary, and on occasion discussed specific passages (the relevant references are collected on pp. viii-ix of the volume under review). Unfortunately, when Robert died in 1985, the commentary had not advanced beyond the stage of preliminary and disjointed, though abundant, annotation. Robert had, however, prepared a Greek text of his own with a French translation and had obtained from Andre Vaillant a handwritten French translation of the Old Church Slavonic version of the Martyrdom. After his death, his widow, Jeanne Robert, invited Glen Bowersock and Christopher Jones to complete the unfinished project: the result is a monument of exact scholarship and devoted friendship.

The volume under review includes an …