Die syrische HS schickt voraus: Ferner die Apologie, die der Philosoph Aristides an Kaiser Hadrian wegen der Gottesverehrung richtete. ↩

The superscription seems to be duplicate in the Syriac. It is absent from the Greek as we have it; the Armenian has "To the Emperor Caesar Hadrian from Aristides." Various explanations are offered. (a) Both emperors, as colleagues, may be meant. In support of this the Syriac adjectives for "venerable and merciful" are marked plural; the phrase "Your majesty" occurring later has a plural suffix; and two Imperatives, "Take and read," are plural. On the other hand "O King" occurs constantly in the singular; and the emperors were colleagues only for a few months in the year a.d. 138. (b) The longer heading is the true one--the shorter being due perhaps to a scribe who had a collection of works to copy. In that case the word "Hadrian" has been selected from the full title of Antonine, and the two adjectives "venerable and merciful" are proper names, Augustus Pius. (Harris.) (c) The shorter heading has the support of Eusebius and the Armenian version; and the translator into Syriac may have amplified. () Almighty is separated from the word for "God" by a pause, and is not an attribute which a Christian would care to apply to a Roman emperor. pantokrator may have been confounded with au tokrator. Raabe supplies giving the sense "qui imperium (postatem) habet," as an epithet of Caesar. If *** ="Renewed, or dedicated again to...Antoninus Pius," could be read, both headings might be retained. ↩