Athenagoras

One of Melito’s contemporaries was a Christian writer named Athenagoras, of whom almost nothing is known save what can be gathered from the text of his Embassy [or Plea: πρεσβεία] on Behalf of the Christians. This work, unknown to Eusebius but rescued from obscurity in the tenth century, is addressed to Marcus Aurelius and his son and co-emperor Commodus and dates from the period 176–80. Athenagoras – who is described as an Athenian, a philosopher and a Christian in the title of his work – penned an address in the accepted manner of forensic oratory.

Richard A. Norris Jr., “The Apologists,” in The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, ed. Frances Young, Lewis Ayres, and Andrew Louth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 42.