NARCISSUS. St. Paul in his Epistle to Rom. xvi. 11. Phil. iv. 22.the Romans, says, Greet them that be of the Houshold of Narcissus, which are in the Lord. This Passage cannot prove that Narcissus was a Christian, any more than that in the Epistle to the Philippians, in which he salutes those that are of Cæsar’s Houshold, that is probably those of Nero’s Family. Origen1 pretends, that this Expression, the Houshold of Narcissus, proves that this Family was not all Christian. Grotius thinks that Narcissus was a Pagan, but others will have him to have been a Christian. But as these maintain him to have been Narcissus, the famous Freed-man of Claudius the Emperor, they must certainly be mistaken, since this Narcissus was never a Christian, and besides he was dead some Years before St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Romans. The Pseudo-Ambrosius says,2 that some Copies make Narcissus to have been a Priest, and that if St. Paul does not salute him, ‘tis because perhaps he then happened to be absent. The Greeks say he was Bishop of Athens, and a Martyr, give him the Title of an Apostle, and place him in the Number of the seventy Disciples.3 Baronius has accordingly inserted him in the Roman Martyrology, on 31 of October.
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