While preparing next year’s book and reading and thinking about the one I just reviewed (Margaret Williams on Early Classical Authors on Jesus), I have evolved in my thinking about the rhetorical sense behind the “persecution” section in the Epistle of 1 Clement, and realized I should spell this out more coherently in an article, particularly as it exposes some points on which I very much disagree with Williams. Indeed, I am surprised that, as a classicist, she hasn’t come to some of the same realizations. She seems to be just gullibly believing the Christian apologetic line about this text and its content. A more objective look is needed. So to spell out my critique of Williams on this one last obscure detail, I’m building it out here.

The occasion is Margaret Williams’ belief that a certain reference in 1 Clement corroborates Tacitus’s account of Nero’s persecution by describing “fabulous murders,” executions carried out by dressing Christians up and killing them in bizarre ways to reenact ancient myths and fables. She didn’t make that up. She gets it from prior Christian apologetical literature. Hence I’ve heard it before and never found it convincing. Now a closer look as to why she shouldn’t, either, is warranted. But before I get to that, I have to survey a different debate: whether Clement mentions anyone being killed at all. Because the evidence that he did is important to the question, since that evidence conspicuously does not exist for the passages she is talking about. And here I correct some of my previous commentary on this letter, with one more considered.

When Did ‘Witnessing’ Mean Dying?

In comments on my previous article on 1 Clement (How We Can Know 1 Clement Was Actually Written in the 60s AD) someone asked why we trust tendentious modern Christian translations that imagine Clement describing violent deaths for Peter and Paul, since he never explicitly says that. Which is true. He is rhetorical and florid, speaking in metaphors and similes. It has also been asked why we trust that the word “witness” (martus, hence “martyr”) already can mean “dying” so early as the 60s AD. You can see examples of the two concepts being separated still in the 90s AD in Revelation 2:13, where we hear of “Antipas, my witness, my faithful one, who was killed.” So didn’t the idea of simply assuming “martyr” meant “dying” rather than simply testifying (its normal meaning) arise later than Clement’s generation? The concept does derive from pre-Christian lore, e.g. in Jubilees 1:12 we learn that God “will send witnesses to them so that I may testify to them, but they will not listen and will kill the witnesses,” where the assumption is that witnessing will be fatal (there are many other examples: see Alison Trites, The New Testament Concept of Witness). But that text still does not use the word “witnessed” as a synonym of “was killed.” The meaning has to follow from the context.

As it happens, this is also what we find in 1 Clement: nowhere does Clement simply use “witnessed” to mean “was killed.” That it ended in being killed is always made clear by context. Clement thus falls exactly in the middle period where the word was often associated with paying a fatal price, but this still had to be signaled as a contextual meaning, it couldn’t simply be assumed. There is therefore nothing anachronistic about Clement’s usage. Meanwhile, the later, eventual equation of the two senses was not some attempt to veil a death, but rather to glorify it and set it in the context of prophecy (particularly Jubilees). By saying someone witnessed as in submitted to death for the faith, Christians could elevate their fate as heroic and as particularly ordained prophetically by God, and associate that death with spreading or proving the faith as a marketing move (“the blood of martyrs is seed”). Which also reversed the intended effect of the violence (to terrorize into compliance). As I note in Not the Impossible Faith, Christians (from Paul through Tertullian) had adopted an entire war vocabulary for this. But the complete transformation in sense, where one could just say “martyred” and be understood as having said “killed,” had not yet happened when Clement wrote. For him, that sense has to arise from a supplied context.

I will use here, for both the English and Greek, the most recent Clayton Jefford’s edition in Apostolic Fathers and the New Testament, 3rd ed. (Baker Academic 2006). In the key passage in question (1 Clem. 5), Clement says (emphasis mine):

But to pass from the examples of ancient times, let us come to those champions who lived nearest to our time. Let us consider the noble examples that belong to our own generation. Because of jealousy and envy the greatest and most righteous pillars were persecuted and fought to the death. Let us set before our eyes the good apostles. There was Peter, who because of unrighteous jealousy endured not one or two but many trials, and thus having given his testimony went to his appointed place of glory. Because of jealousy and strife Paul showed the way to the prize for patient endurance. After he had been seven times in chains, had been driven into exile, had been stoned, and had preached in the East and in the West, he won the genuine glory for his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world and having reached the farthest limits of the West. Finally, when he had given his testimony before the rulers, he thus departed from the world and went to the holy place, having become an outstanding example of patient endurance.

The phrases in bold are:

• ἐδιώχθησαν καὶ ἕως θανάτου ἤθλησαν, lit. Peter and Paul “were pursued, and competed up to death.” The word “pursued” can mean everything from that to legally prosecuted to socially persecuted (like hounded/harassed). The word “competed” implies athletic contests (like wrestling), and thus (by metaphor) struggling and competing with others. And the specific prepositional phrase “until” death can just mean they kept at it until they died naturally of old age. But either way the context of the end result has been established as their deaths.
• καὶ οὕτω μαρτυρήσας ἐπορεύθη εἰς τὸν ὀφειλόμενον τόπον, lit. “and in this way [Peter], once he gave his testimony, went to his deserved place.” Now we have “gave testimony” in an aorist participle, meaning a specific event (not an ongoing behavior) and οὕτω meaning “therefore” in a causal sense. The clear implication in the Greek is that the testimony caused or led to his death, not that he kept enduring trials until he naturally died. The sense is closer to the English “to such an extent having testified once that he died.” Note the word “trials” here does not mean in court, but more in the sense of struggles and challenges, and unlike the next line about Paul no reference is made to state involvement, implying an extrajudicial action led to his death (such as being killed by a mob or an assassin, both threats being illustrated for various figures in stories in Acts, albeit fantastically).
• καὶ μαρτυρήσας ἐπὶ τῶν ἡγουμένων, οὕτως ἀπηλλάγη τοῦ κόσμου, lit. Paul, “once he gave his testimony before the rulers” (identical word and form), “in this way” (identical word) “he was rid of the world.” Again, we have an aorist participle and the idea of that “therefore” resulting in the outcome. And the outcome is dying (“departing the world”). Here alone we have a reference to state execution (it was testifying “to the authorities” that led to his death).

So the Greek is highly poetical (one might even say pompous), but the reason we can conclude that Clement is talking about these guys being killed for the faith (in the one case, by murder; in the other, execution) is that Clement says they died as a result of some specific event of witnessing. Note that Clement never uses “witness” to mean dying; he always adds a clause stating and connecting the death (as with Jubilees and Revelation). And it is only the grammatical construction he chooses (identical in both cases) that connects that death to a singular event of testifying (and not to just their general life of testifying).

One can query the role of “envy” in his account. Whose envy? And how did that cause their struggles and (eventually) deaths? That has been most aptly explained by David Eastman in “Jealousy, Internal Strife, and the Deaths of Peter and Paul: A Reassessment of 1 Clement,” Journal of Ancient Christianity 18.1 (2014). His conclusion (based on the context, which includes the surrounding material of 1 Clem. 4 and 6) is that fellow Christian jealousy is most likely being invoked here; brother against brother (as several of Clement’s other examples indicate, as we’ll see). But the implication is not Christians killing each other, but riling up other crowds or authorities (such as with false or exaggerated accusations or diplomatic machinations), resulting in Peter and Paul’s death (making this an early complaint about stochastic terrorism).

This is what justifies even modern Christians translating “witnessed” as “martyred” in the sense of “killed.” Not because Clement is using “witnessed” directly as the word “killed,” but because he is contextualizing it that way. Clement clearly isn’t saying “these guys tired themselves out so much witnessing that they just dropped dead from it,” or that “they witnessed and witnessed for years and years until they died peacefully in their sleep.” Clement is talking about envy, and some ultimately resulting violence, having led to their death. That’s the entire argument Clement is making.

Analyzing the Passage

Another way to illustrate this is to look closely at the structure of Clement’s whole sentence about Paul. It consists of a series of nominative aorist participles (singular completed actions), with conjunctions, ending with an aorist finite verb, indicating that we are being given either a causal or temporal sequence (amounting to the same thing) leading up to that final verbal action (of dying). In Greek (I have lettered the rhetorical sections in brackets for convenience):

[A] δικαιοσύνην διδάξας ὅλον τὸν κόσμον [B] καὶ ἐπὶ τὸ τέρμα τῆς δύσεως ἐλθὼν [B’] καὶ μαρτυρήσας ἐπὶ τῶν ἡγουμένων, [A’] οὕτως ἀπηλλάγη τοῦ κόσμου…

Which we can literally render either this way:

[After he taught][the whole][world][righteousness][and][after he came][to][the terminus][of the West][and][after he witnessed][to those in power], [in this way/because of this][he was removed][from the world]

Or this way:

[Because he taught][the whole world][righteousness][and][because he came][to][the terminus][of the West][and][because he witnessed to those in power], [in this way][he was removed from the world]

Either way, the sequence is: Paul taught the whole world, went to the end of it, and witnessed, and in consequence died. The chiastic structure is also evident: parts [A] both reference “the world” and either righteousness or its reward; parts [B] both begin with “and” and lead “unto” something (the end of the world or the rulers of it). The implication is that parts [B] are causally connected (it is “unto the end of the world” that Paul witnessed “unto the rulers”), and the closing part [A] is the result of that final action, while the getting to the end of the world is the result of the opening part [A]. And yes, I think the figurative pun between Paul “going to the end of the world” and “arriving at the end of his life” there is intentional. That’s why Clement chose to refer to Spain (the actual Western terminus of the Roman Empire, which Paul said he was traveling to in his last extant letter) in such an oblique way, to bring in the nice conceptual alliteration between the “ends” of things. This further signifies that Clement understood Paul to have died there; and “the rulers” to have been state officials there (not in Rome).

That’s why Clement’s choice of οὕτως is important: Peter and Paul didn’t just witness and then die; they witnessed and in this way died. A causal connection is indicated. This is further established by the choice of aorist participles for “witnessed,” signaling a specific completed event rather than an ongoing one, and thus connecting οὕτως to a specific event that occurred relative to the outcome described (the role of a participle in such constructions), and hence not just to a life lived a certain way. Hence in Clement’s view, Paul did not just “bear witness before the authorities,” but rather, “in this way” he was removed from the world.

This sense is further confirmed by the fact that these are “modern” examples Clement says are analogous to the “ancient” ones he had just enumerated before this, which are: Cain’s murder of his brother Abel (1 Clem. 4:1–7, ending with “You see, brothers, jealousy and envy brought about a brother’s murder”); Esau’s attempted murder of his brother Jacob (1 Clem. 4:8); the planned murder of Joseph by his brothers (1 Clem. 4:9, putting it as Joseph being “persecuted nearly to death”); Moses escaping his murder by Pharaoh (1 Clem. 4:10); and then “because of jealousy” Aaron and Miriam were nearly killed by their exile (1 Clem. 4:11); and “Jealousy brought Dathan and Abiram” literally into Hell (1 Clem. 4:12); and “because of jealousy” David had to escape the murderous intentions of Saul (1 Clem. 4:13). In every case, death is at issue, and as the causal outcome of envy (either actually happening, or in danger of it); and in almost every case, by one’s own brothers or kin.

This context entails the “modern” examples of the same moral message must have encompassed the same sequence of events: a threat of death or an actual one, resulting from others’ envy. The deaths of Peter and Paul make no sense in this context as natural quiet deaths; Clement’s unmistakable point is that those deaths resulted from others’ envy in some way, just as for Abel and Dathan and Abiram, and almost for Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Miriam, and David. Clement’s entire rhetorical point guarantees he means Peter and Paul were killed. The notion is that envy activates violence rather than peace. And Clement summons both Old Testament and Apostolic examples of that fact. So we know violence is what he is referring to. It obviously makes no sense to imagine Clement is saying here, “And after all those ancient examples ending in violence, look at recent examples: Peter and Paul struggled and lived long successful lives and died in their sleep.”

Indeed, the entire letter’s purpose implies a sinister context. Clement is arguing that the younger generation’s attempting to take over the church at Corinth from the elders who had been running it will have evil consequences and should not be desired; that they should surrender control back. With Clement’s extended list of examples of envy resulting in murder, he is implying something about the usurpers’ actions is dangerous to the deposed (or even themselves). They envied the status of the elders they deposed at Corinth; but the actions they took in result of that envy could get someone killed. He does not elaborate on how. And he might just be exaggerating for rhetorical effect. But in the analysis of Eastman the suggestion is that this internecine conflict could draw the attention of the authorities in some undesirable way; or that the usurpers were even using political or legal leverage to get their way, and thus even hoping to use the state to eliminate their rivals.

This is much as one might suspect was happening to Pliny the Younger: though the accusers in that case are unlikely to have been Christians themselves, their intention must have been similar, otherwise they’d not have acted anonymously—it’s as if they hoped to get rid of, say, commercial or romantic rivals, or whomever they had a grudge against, by “ratting them out” to the police for whatever crime they could conjure. We can’t really know. Clement is so flowery, figurative, and rhetorical throughout that we could just be looking at histrionics. But what matters is the message Clement wanted to convey. Maybe no one was in danger of being killed at Corinth; but Clement definitely wants them to fear that they could, or some outcome that could be exaggerated that way (some proverbial “fate worse than death”).

But What about the Next Bit?

Clement goes on to say, again according to Jefford’s translation (1 Clem. 6):

To these men who lived holy lives there was joined a vast multitude of the elect who, having suffered many torments and tortures because of jealousy, set an illustrious example among us. Because of jealousy women were persecuted as Danaids and Dircae, suffering in this way terrible and unholy tortures, but they safely reached the goal in the race of faith and received a noble reward, their physical weakness notwithstanding. Jealousy has estranged wives from their husbands and annulled the saying of our father Adam, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Jealousy and strife have overthrown great cities and uprooted great nations.

Here I believe Jefford has dropped the ball and not rendered the Greek faithfully but more in defense of faithlore. The last half is correct. But a more accurate translation of the first half (absent tendentious assumptions) would be (and here I indicate where the text may have become corrupt because necessary grammatical connectors are missing):

To these men who conducted themselves piously there has been gathered a great number of the elect, those who, after suffering many assaults and tests because of envy, became a beautiful example among us. Because of jealousy, women, having been pursued [as/like/being?] Danaids and Dircae, [and?] having suffered terrible and profane outrages, [finally?] met upon the steady course of faith, receiving a noble gift, who [were by then?] feeble in body. {Then Clement continues:} Jealousy has [e.g. broken up marriages]. Jealousy has [e.g. destroyed cities and nations].

The grammar is actually broken in the middle sentence in the received material here, so we know the text has become corrupted over time. I have done my best to suggest the least presumptuous missing particles. But the significant thing here is that all the markers of violent death that were present in Clement’s descriptions of the fates of Peter and Paul are missing here; and in their place are very different ones (there is also no mention of witnessing). For one thing, the second sentence here actually does imply dying of old age rather than violence (they lived a “steady course” of faith, and got their “gift” only when they were “weak in body,” i.e. elderly). And the following sentence completely drops any notion of death at all—just the breaking up of marriages, which carries a theme of combining (through the notion of tragically separating) men and women, right after two sentences were just given, one about men (the “elect,” οἵτινες being in the masculine), the other about women (γυναῖκες). So these four examples of envy-induced harm (men; women; marriages of men and women; entire cities and nations) trace a logical theme, and they appear now to move from specifically violent outcomes (the ancient examples, and then their “modern” counterparts in Peter and Paul) to more political ones (the dissolution of marriages, cities, and nations).

This path begins its transition with the men, who are described in the past tense and so certainly deceased, but it is left vague whether they died from violence or not. Probably the category is meant to include both—just any faithful endurers of outrages and assaults. What is being described is now no one in particular, but the entire general category of Christian men being harassed for their faith since the beginning, out of “envy.” Jefford goes beyond the text when he renders this as “suffer[ing] many torments and tortures.” The Greek words actually are not so specific. Basanois more basically means “tests, trials,” and only means “tortures” when context requires, and no context is given here. Aikiais more basically means just any insulting treatment; again, only “tortures” when context requires (torture is “an” aikia; most aikiai are not tortures; just as torture is “a” basanos; most basanoi are not tortures). So I do not believe here we should be assuming Clement means specific things, but rather the general category of all things that would rate. We should think of this more like a Jewish writer lamenting how Jews are constantly assaulted and harassed out of antisemitic jealousy, but endure it patiently. No specific incident or outcome is in mind, but all of them. So, being killed for the faith is included; but also, just being harassed.

Then we move away from the men to the women, and here we get something more oddly specific, but again about just general women, not any specific ones (there is no definite article, and the names given are in the plural and thus refer to types of women, not specific individual women: more on this point next). I suspect the same ambiguity regarding violence is intended—all outrages are meant. And since these women are imagined to live out their lives into old age, I suspect what is being described is rape, or other sexual abuses, a particularly gendered way to “harass” the women of a group, which does often leave them alive. And the names assigned to them may signal here (more on that below).

Thus, we are still in the realm of ambiguous violence, but not as resulting in death exclusively (for the men); then not resulting in death at all (for the women); and then (finally) men and women are put together (even poetically by reference to Genesis) in a context not even about violence at all (but broken marriages). The concluding line wraps up the overall point by referencing the “death” of cities and nations (not specifically their inhabitants) from conflict. The analogy to the entire Christian community by this point would be clear to Clement’s audience. And his whole litany of terrible outcomes will by this point have had its rhetorical effect as it is read out to his audience, whom he is trying to persuade with all this to end an internal “civil war” in the Corinthian church.

Versus Margaret Williams

So that’s where I fall now on reading this material. Which brings me to where I also disagree with Margaret Williams on the reading and dating of 1 Clement (ECAJ, pp. 72–73; on which see my last article). First, I think she is over-trusting Christian apologetics in concluding it was written under Domitian and refers to the fire (or even just persecution) at Rome under Nero (which on that account would be thirty years earlier, not a recent event). It mentions neither. It does not even say Paul died in Rome, but in Spain (a fact routinely overlooked in the scholarship); and it does not say where Peter died (though were it Rome, surely an author writing from Rome would have remarked on it; as also regarding Paul, or any of the others it references). It locates no other “persecutions” it relates; at all, much less to Rome. And it contains nothing about Nero or the fire.

This letter probably did originate the “legend” that Nero killed Peter and Paul (and perhaps some of their companions) in Rome (that actually being merely from where Clement wrote)—which, Williams does not mention, is the only thing any early Christian sources ever refer to when they discuss Nero’s “persecution” of Christians, which is how we know no persecution in relation to the Neronian fire can have happened (much less have been understood in 1 Clement). All those second century legends never mention the fire or relate any similar event at all. They appear to have been spun out of a mere telephone-game garbling of what Clement actually said. Which is one reason why several authors now are coming to doubt any such persecution of Christians occurred (or at least, not in any connection with the fire): see, for example, Chris Hansen, “The Number of the Myth: A Defence of the Ahistoricity of the Neronian Persecution,” Journal of Early Christian History (18 July 2023), pp. 1–21; Robert Drews, “Judaean Christiani in the Middle Decades of the First Century,” Journal of Early Christian History 13.2 (2023), pp. 48-67; and Brent Shaw, “Response to Christopher Jones: The Historicity of the Neronian Persecution,” New Testament Studies 64.2 (2018), pp. 231–242.

1 Clement far more probably dates to the 60s A.D. (literally all the actual evidence indicates this, rather than late unsourced legends from unreliable sources: see How We Can Know 1 Clement Was Actually Written in the 60s AD), so it could have given us good intel on Neronian persecutions. But it does not actually itself refer to any persecutions in Rome. It does strongly imply Christian deaths were the result of internecine strife (as Williams argues, p. 73; and I cited Eastman’s astute study on the point above). But it is not clear that it means some mass event. Read without prejudice or assumption, it sooner implies scattered occasions in disparate places. And in no way does it “confirm” anything else.

The Danaids and Dircae

Which is important, because Williams wants to sell the apologetical argument that, because 1 Clement 6 mentions women as “Danaids and Dircae,” this connects with Tacitus referring to fantastical executions by Nero. But it is not even clear that that sentence is even referring to executions at all. That has long been only an apologetical assumption; and as I just outlined, this sentence lacks the conspicuous markers of referring to any violent end that we find in the preceding sentences about Peter and Paul (much less the Old Testament examples), and contains instead a very different denouement, one sooner implying death by old age.

There has been a lot of handwringing over the mysterious injection here (missing even expected grammatical particles) of this sudden phrase “Danaids and Dircae,” with scholarly opinions ranging from a textual corruption for something else entirely or an accidentally inserted gloss, to these being the names of some actual women, or even, indeed, Nero’s victims, some of whom, we’re told, were dressed in hides and had dogs set upon them. But this does not connect with anything to do with either the mythical Danaids or Dirce. None were eaten by dogs, The Danaids didn’t even die in any particular way (they were, akin to Sisyphus, condemned to carry water in leaky buckets for eternity); and Dirce was tied to a bull or stag and dragged to death. No hides. No devouring by dogs.

This is why it matters that the very next line gives, as a comparable example, the breaking up of marriages, which implicates no deaths, or even persecutions. And it climaxes from that with the analogy of civil war—and is thus referencing troubles within the church, not from without. Though Peter and Paul’s outcomes are clearly imagined to be untimely deaths (1 Clem. 5), as with most of the Old Testament examples setting up their mention and equation (1 Clem. 4), the closing sentences about certain men and women suffering does not contain any of the same terminology indicating these people were killed. It just implies that they endured a lot before they died—which may simply mean, of old age or weariness. So I think we should not be looking at how the Danaids and Dirce died in their respective myths; I think we should be looking at the myths themselves. Far more relevant must be how these mythical figures lived, and in what respect envy could have been involved—the only reason for Clement to cite them as an analogy.

The Danaids were women sold into unwanted marriages or traded as prizes (they also killed their husbands, and then suffered for it by being beset by burdens rather than deaths). This reference for Clement most readily implies something more like the social politics of arranged marriages and matrimonial manipulation (women being pursued and traded), not persecution, beyond sexual (from his wording, rape being likely foremost on Clement’s mind). Likewise, the story of Dirce (which Clement has made plural, and thus into a type of woman) is about a woman abused and killed out of revenge, not envy; although her own crimes (leading to her murder) were born of envy. Yes, she happened to famously be killed by being tied to a beast and dragged to death. But Clement is looking for the analogy of envy in his stories (as he did with the Old Testament), and that doesn’t connect to the incidental means of Dirce’s death, but to how she lived, and why she was killed. A metaphor may have been intended (e.g., being dragged by a beast as the misery of envy-born family strife). But either way, the shared context between Dirce and the Danaids is sexual and filial politics, not fantastical murders.

As I already noted, tendentious translations will imply Clement is talking about things like “torture” here (and the declining into “weakness of body” being some strangely elaborate way of referring to them being worn out by it, or a reference to the general weakness of women). But the underlying Greek is not so specific. The first line, where holy men “furnished us with a most excellent example,” does not list their death as the example, just their endurance of “indignities and trials.” Here Clement does appear to mean merely “until they died,” naturally or not. That’s why it matters that the word translated as “torture” here actually means “trials” or “tests” (and hence means torture only when specific context entails that). As I mentioned, this sounds more like holy men merely being harassed or bullied for their faith.

Similarly, when some translators have Clement say, “Through envy, those women, the Danaids and Dircæ, being persecuted, after they had suffered terrible and unspeakable torments, finished the course of their faith with steadfastness, and though weak in body, received a noble reward,” the Greek actually reads: “Through envy, women were pursued, Danaids and Dircae, met with awful outrages and unholy sufferings,” and only finished their course of life weak in body before passing away. Which does not entail persecution or execution or even violence (beyond the ordinary and lamentable violence of ancient sexual politics). Yes, the words can mean what translators usually render, but only if we import the very assumptions into the text that Williams is trying to extract from them, which renders her entire approach circular.

Conclusion

This does not mean my understanding of Clement’s references here are correct; rather, that they are plausible (and maybe even more so) undermines Williams’ (and Christian apologists’) circular reliance on modern apologetical readings of this text to pull a Christian attestation to the Neronian arson case out of a hat, like a rabbit. The text of 1 Clement simply cannot bear this load. By contrast, the extensive evidence of Christians never having heard of it cannot be explained even by Williams’ own desperate conjecture here. How is it that Clement is supposed to vaguely know about that event, but no other Christian ever did, not even Christians narrating Nero’s persecution of Christians? Indeed, not even Christians familiar with the Annals of Tacitus!

I already covered that problem last time. My point here is that I think there are good reasons to suspect Christian interpreters have long been misreading what Clement meant, by circularly presuming he meant what they want him to, so as to extract from that evidence that he did. By contrast, there are no good reasons to believe Clement has any knowledge of what Tacitus is talking about in Annals 15.44. He never places any persecution in Rome; none of them even in the same location at all. And he never says anything that connects to anything in Tacitus’s account. A mythical woman dragged to death simply does not invoke people being hided and eaten by dogs. And anything that really would do that (like references to being falsely accused of arson, or any of this happening in Rome) isn’t there. I think it’s time to let this apologetic bromide go.