Flavia Domitilla the Younger
In all likelihood, these two “Flavia Domitillas,” both banished for either “drifting into Jewish ways” or making a “testimony to Christ,” are in fact the same person.
Revealingly, the Christian historian Eusebius directly follows his account of Domitilla’s banishment with Domitian ordering the execution of all of the relatives of Christ’s own family, and all those of King David’s royal line, i.e., all potential “messianic” claimants to his throne. (5) If we may safely identify the two “Flavia Domitillas” as one person, then the 1st Century Pope, St. Clement, is our Titus Flavius Clemens (her husband). After his cousin Titus’s death, Clemens was probably the highest-ranking Christian of his time.
In addition to the various similarities between Titus Flavius Clemens and St. Clement in name, time, place, “Judaizing ways,” and fate, the Church of St. Clement of Rome, built during the 5th Century, once contained an inscription dedicating it to “Flavius Clemens, martyr,” according to a 1725 report by Cardinal Annibal Albani that has survived. (6)
The later St. Clement (of Alexandria) also bore the name “Titus Flavius Clemens.” Since there may well have been a real family relationship between these two sainted Christians, the latter might provide us with yet another Flavian Christian. This could explain why he promoted both fish and anchors as Christian symbols, and why he understood them to first come from Seleucus, the pagan Hellenistic king.
As it turns out, the symbol associated with St. Clement of Rome turns out to be an anchor. The later tradition that St. Clement of Rome was martyred early in the reign of Trajan (c. 99 CE) by being attached to an anchor and drowned may be a thinly veiled reference to the crucifixion and, for that reason, untrustworthy. However, the Titus Flavius Clemens put to death by Domitian can safely be said to have expired in the year 95 CE, not in the time of Trajan.
Whether it is true or not, the symbolism of St. Clement being killed by an anchor resembles the tradition that Titus died by eating a fish. That Titus and Clement died by fish and by anchor, respectively, could be satiric echoes of early Christian symbolism. Or, however unlikely, perhaps Domitian possessed such a black streak of irony that he personally selected these methods to eliminate his Judaizing rivals to the throne.
The fact that the anchor is a symbol of both the Flavian Emperor Titus and the pope, St. Clement of Rome, appears to confirm again that Titus’s nephew Clemens and Christianity’s St. Clement of Rome are the same person. It was certainly natural that Clemens would share the symbolic anchor image of his imperial relatives, whatever the actual manner of his death.
Here, St. Clement is shown in stained glass holding both a Cross and an anchor:
St. Clement
And, here, again, we see him martyred with an anchor:
The Martyrdom of St. Clement of Rome
About the same time that Domitian executed Clemens he also executed a man named Epaphroditus. Epaphroditus was the imperial secretary of Nero that we mentioned earlier as a possible associate of St. Paul, who gave such warm greetings to “Epaphroditus” in his letter.
We will learn more about Epaphroditus shortly, but the coincidence of his execution along with Clemens suggests that the high-ranking freedman Epaphroditus who served Nero, Vespasian, and Titus may have been involved with Clemens in some kind of conspiracy suspected by Domitian, in addition to associating with St. Paul. This alone is noteworthy. (7)
What is more, in the same letter in which Paul praises “Epaphroditus” he also mentions a “Clement” among his “co-workers, whose names are in the book of life.” (8)
Of course, if Paul’s friend Clement was an adult around 60-63 CE, when Paul is thought to have written this letter, then this Clement could not be the same person. The Titus Flavius Clemens we are talking about would have been a child at that time.
However, as with nearly all Roman family names, his family name was freely given out among his relatives. The naming conventions of ancient Rome were rigid, but not perfectly so. The eldest son typically bore the exact same name as his father, while all of the daughters bore the family name as their own. “Julia” was included in the name of every daughter of the Julii, for example. Younger sons often adopted a name or a modified version of a name from their mother’s family. This is why adding modifiers like “the Younger” and “the Elder” is necessary when referring to Romans. In this case, Titus Flavius Clemens’s maternal uncle was the consul Arrecinus Clemens. He was a “Clement” who could have known Paul in Rome. And, as it turns out, he, too, was sentenced to death by the purging Domitian. (9)
By the time of the early Christian scholar Eusebius in the 4th Century, Christians themselves would have been at a loss to explain how it was that a great-nephew of a Roman emperor could also be a 1st Century pope. It is so baffling that we can understand why they might have created separate traditions for two separate historical figures in order to avoid confronting the paradox. The niece of Titus and Domitian was also moved further away from the throne, becoming the “niece” only of Clemens, her husband, even as she is freely described as a Christian.
However, since these steps appear to be purely artificial when weighed against all the other sources, we are left staring at the same extraordinary mystery that early Christians must have confronted.
To this day, the anchor is associated with St. Clement of Rome, who was almost certainly Titus Flavius Clemens, a victim of Domitian's apparent purge of those associated with Titus’s semi-Jewish cult of “Christianity” that recognized the emperor as both a Jewish messiah and a literal “prince of peace.”
We know Domitian quickly discontinued the dolphin-and-anchor motif used by his brother when he became emperor and began associating himself instead with traditional Roman gods on his coins and monuments. Twelve years younger than Titus, Domitian had remained a world apart from his heroic brother and father and their triumphs in Judea.
We have mentioned the Catacombs of St. Domitilla, the oldest known Christian burial site with perhaps the oldest known archeological evidence of Christianity in the world. One of the original inscriptions that identified this archeological site suggests that it was not only the original burial place of the “St. Flavia Domitilla” who is mentioned by Eusebius, but also of the Flavian family. This was the inscription that identified it as the Flavian family’s sepulcher:
Inscription from the Catacombs of St. Domitilla with anchor
Known today as the Catacombs of St. Domitilla, it also contains the very first acknowledged Christian use of the anchor-and-fish symboclass="underline"