Note 15 — PART II
Reading edition
Bishop Lightfoot discusses at some length the great probability of the accuracy of this definite statement of S. Hilary of Poitiers, and decides that the absence of any mention of Vespasian among the persecutors in Melito and Tertullian by no means invalidates Hilary’s mention; no systematic record was kept of the persecutions; the knowledge possessed by each individual writer was accidental and fragmentary. Lightfoot, Ignatius and Polycarp, vol. i. pp. 15, 16.