Pope Caius
?–296 CE · Rome
Caius (Gaius) served as Bishop of Rome from 283 to 296, during a relative lull in persecution under the emperor Diocletian before the Great Persecution of 303. Reliable contemporary records of his pontificate are very sparse. Later tradition, drawn largely from the unreliable Liber Pontificalis, assigns him a Dalmatian origin and a kinship to Diocletian and credits him with organizing the Roman clergy into grades, but these details are historically doubtful. He is traditionally venerated as a martyr, though the circumstances are unattested by early sources. He should not be confused with the earlier Roman writer Gaius (fl. c.198-217).
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RomeרומאItaly
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Rome in this era
Governed by the Roman emperors from the Antonines through the Tetrarchy, Rome housed a bishop's see of growing prestige, was the scene of periodic persecutions, and saw theologians such as Justin Martyr debate and die for the faith in the second century.
About Rome
Rome, on the Tiber in central Italy, grew from an Iron Age settlement into the capital of the Roman Republic and then of an empire that by the 1st century CE ruled the whole Mediterranean. Its Jewish community, attested from the 2nd century BCE, is among the oldest in Europe. Christian tradition holds that the apostles Peter and Paul died there, and the city became the seat of the popes. After the Western Empire ended in 476 it passed to Gothic kings, to Byzantium and then to papal rule as capital of the Papal States, until it became the capital of unified Italy in 1871. Vatican City, independent since 1929, lies within it.
In Rome at the same time
Across the traditions, in Rome at the same time
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Pope Caius’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
Across the traditions
In the same tradition
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Pope Caius’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.