INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. ERPETUA and Felicitassufferedmartyrdom in the reignof Septimius Severus,about the year 202 a.d. Tertullianmentions Perpetua; and a furtherclue to the date is given in the allusion to the birth-dayof " Geta the Caesar,"the son of Septimius Severus. There is,therefore,good reasonforrejectingthe opinionheldby some,that they sufferedunder Valerianand Gallienus. Some thinkthatthey sufferedat Tuburbium in Mauritania; but the more general opinionis,that Carthage was the sceneof theirmartyrdom. The Acta, detailingthe sufferingsof Perpetua and Feli citas,has been held by allcriticsto be a genuine document of antiquity.But much differenceexistsas to who was the compiler. In the writingitself,Perpetua and Saturus are mentioned as having writtencertainportionsof it; and there is no reasonto doubt the statement. Who the writerof the remaining portionwas, is not known. Some have assigned the work to Tertullian; some have maintainedthat,whoever the writerwas, he was a Montanist; and some have triedto show thatboth martyrsand narratorwere Montanists. The narratormust have been a contemporary; accordingto many critics,he was an eye-witnessof thesufferingsof themartyrs. And he must havewrittenthenarrativeshortlyaftertheevents. Dean Milman says," There appearstrongindicationsthat the acts of these African martyrs are translatedfrom the Greek; at leastit is difficultotherwiseto account for the frequent untranslatedGreek words and idiomsin the text" (Hist,of Christianity,vol.i.ch.viii.). The Passionof Perpetuaand Felicitaswas editedby Petrus Possinus,Borne 1663 ; by Henr. Valesius,Paris 1664 ; and the Bollandists.The bestand latesteditionis by Ruissart, whose text isadopted in Gallandi'sand Migne's collections of the Fathers. 275