Talk:Titus Flavius Clemens (consul)

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This article does not appear to be based on historical fact, but on perhaps legendary sources concerning the life of one Rabbi Akiva. I question the point of view. What are the sources? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Probus Manlius (talk • contribs)

Needs serious work to find out which stories are Talmudic and which Christian and which from classical sources. User&#124;Neddyseagoon 17:11, 3 November 2006 (UTC)


 * One place to start, which is more recent than the secondary sources alluded to here, is E. Mary Smallwood, "Domitian's Attitude toward the Jews and Judaism", Classical Philology, 51 (1956), pp. 1-13. She reviews the material about Clemens, his wife, as well as Domitian's third named victim, Manius Acilius Glabrio, & concludes that the evidence for anyone being a Christian is very thin. (Jerome is one of the earliest sources to claim that Clemens' wife was a Christian, writing about 300 years after the fact.) More likely Clemens & Flavia were Jewish converts, & most likely they were "God-fearers" -- "gentiles on the fringe of Judaism who were attracted by that religion to the extent of adopting its monotheism and moral code and of conforming to the major requirenments of the Jewish Law", but had not completely embraced that religion. I am still trying to unravel the fact from the legends & myths around Clemens, Flavia, Acilius Glabrio & Acilia Priscilla. -- llywrch (talk) 07:26, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Titus Flavius Sabinus III or Titus Flavius Sabinus II
Titus Flavius Clemens was son of Titus Flavius Sabinus III, consul suffectus in AD 69. Titus Flavius Sabinus III was son of Titus Flavius Sabinus (consul AD 47). — Андрей Бондарь (talk) 17:53, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Merger proposal
Someone tagged this and "Flavius Clement" for merger. The latter article is much shorter than this (about two lines), confuses him with his father, and seems to imply unequivocally that he was a Christian martyr, although the evidence for this is ambivalent. Otherwise it clearly is about the same person, and presumably should be merged, although there's not much that would need to be added to the present article. P Aculeius (talk) 14:54, 27 January 2019 (UTC)
 * As I noted above, centuries later many Christians believed some Senators converted to Christianity; however, there are no clear examples of Senators converting to Christianity prior to the 4th century. (Depending on how much one wants to trust the average saint's life, there are a few possible examples.) About all one could do in merging these two articles would be to add a paragraph detailing that a later Christian writer -- Jerome & Eusebius tend to be the usual suspects -- believed this person had converted to Christianity without providing any evidence. (I've had a problem finding any information whether the belief Glabrio Acilius was Christian extends before the 19th century, when a number of archeological finds suggested he may have been part of the Early Christian community. If so, then there is a slim possibility this might be so; but from what I've found so far, this belief arose after those materials were recovered.) -- llywrch (talk) 20:06, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
 * There isn't really anything to merge from Flavius Clement: that he was executed for his Christianity is at best unproven, and the possibility is already discussed in the target article; that he was the brother of Vespasian appears to be wrong; and that he was married to Flavia Domitilla is already mentioned in the target. So I have simply turned that article into a redirect to this one. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:13, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Statement on Clemens' Religious Status Is Misleading; Also, Sources Are Incorrect
There are several problems with this article: Mwidunn (talk) 19:28, 21 March 2022 (UTC)
 * The article states that Cassius Dio's statement refers to Titus Flavius Clemens (TFC) probably having become a Jew and being circumcised. No sources are used to back this up, however.
 * Further, Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology contradicts this interpretation, taking it precisely to mean Christianity -- not Judaism: Dion Cassius says . . . that  Clemens  was  put  to  death  on  a charge  of  atheism,  for  which,  he  adds,  many  others who  went  over  to  the  Jewish  opinions  were  executed. This  must  imply  that  he  had  become  a Christian;  and  for  the  same  reason  his  wife  was banished  to  Pandataria  by  Domitian.https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofgree01smit/page/788/mode/2up (Though, it is to be noted that the Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World does interpret Dio's "drifting into Jewish ways" as meaning actual Judaism.  In my humble opinion, a charge of "atheism" or "impiety" would be harder to square with Judaism than with Christianity [seen as an illegitimate offshoot of the former] at that time.).
 * The reference to Jerome is wrong; it should be: Ep. CVIII.7.
 * The reference to Eusebius should be given rather as: Hist. Eccl. III.18.5.


 * Checked the citations to Eusebius and Jerome, and corrected them accordingly. They were incorrect in the original—an unusual rate of error, but who knows how carefully the citations were proofread—or whether the editors actually had all of the cited sources at hand to proofread them.  Cassius Dio says what the DGRBM does.  He doesn't mention Christianity, but that's by far the more reasonable and logical interpretation of what he says.  That's all that this article said about it when I originally revised it—then someone came along and added the part about Judaism being more likely, accompanied by circumcision.  This was originally cited to the Jewish Encyclopedia's article on circumcision—for some reason, perhaps accidentally, I deleted the citation some time ago, but left the claim.  I just checked what the Jewish Encyclopedia says:
 * "Thus Flavius Clemens, a nephew of the emperors Titus and Domitian, when with his wife Domitilla he embraced the Jewish faith, underwent circumcision, for which he suffered the penalty of death (see Grätz, 'Gesch.' iv. 403 et seq., 702)."
 * Now this alone really doesn't inspire much faith, in that it merely asserts the claim without explanation. The Grätz cited is Heinrich Grätz, and his work is the monumental Geschichte der Juden, much of which is available through Archive.org, but unfortunately I was unable to locate the correct volume and page cited.  However, because I think that the claim is improbable—and potentially a misreading of Cassius Dio, or an example of "wishful thinking"—I have deleted it, with the reservation that it could possibly be explained, and restored in some fashion to this article, if someone can find the right passages in Grätz.  If he doesn't explain why his interpretation differs from that of George Edward Lynch Cotton in the DGRBM, then I would judge this to be an misinterpretation on his part, and leave it out permanently.  But it's certainly worth checking, if someone can locate the right passages in Grätz.  P Aculeius (talk) 21:10, 21 March 2022 (UTC)