© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi : 10. 1163/ 15700720- 12341410 Vigiliae Christianae 74 ( 2020 ) 237 - 264 brill.com/vc Vigiliae Christianae Chrestiani, Christiani, Χριστιανοί: a Second Century Anachronism? John Granger Cook Department of Religion & Philosophy, LaGrange College, LaGrange, GA, USA jcook@lagrange.edu Abstract Brent D. Shaw has questioned the historicity of the Neronian persecution based on two arguments from silence: Tacitus’s use of the term “Christians” is an anachronism; and Suetonius knows of no connection between the fire in Rome and Nero’s police actions against the Christians. Both of these untestable arguments from silence are inherently weak logically. One can make a good case for the claim that Chrestianus, Christianus, and Χριστιανός are not creations of the second century and that Roman officials were probably aware of the Chrestiani in the 60s. Tacitus’s and Suetonius’s accounts of the persecution are fundamentally reliable. Keywords Chrestiani – Christiani – Neronian persecution Brent D. Shaw has recently mounted an impressive frontal assault against the historicity of the Neronian persecution.1 One of his primary arguments is that Tacitus’s use of the word “Christians” is a “manifest anachronism,” because sec- ond century Roman writers (including Suetonius and Pliny) are responsible for 1  Tacitus, Ann. 15.44.1-5. B. D. Shaw, “The Myth of the Neronian Persecution,” JRS 105 (2015) 73- 100 and idem, “Response to Christopher Jones: The Historicity of the Neronian Persecution,” NTS 64 (2018) 231-242. Cf. C. P. Jones, “The Historicity of the Neronian Persecution: A Response to Brent Shaw,” NTS 63 (2017) 146-152.