having without cause exiled and confiscated the property of a great many other illustrious men, finally became a successor of Nero [Gk. neronos] in his hatred and enmity toward God. He was in fact the second that stirred up a persecution against us, although his father Vespasian had undertaken nothing prejudicial to us. 3Euseb. 18:1 ¶ It is said that in this persecution the apostle and evangelist John, who was still alive, was condemned to dwell on the island of Patmos in consequence of his testimony to the divine word. 3Euseb. 18:2 Irenaeus, in the fifth book of his work Against Heresies, where he discusses the number of the name of Antichrist which is given in the so-called Apocalypse of John, speaks as follows concerning him. 3Euseb. 18:3 “If it were necessary for his name to be proclaimed openly at the present time, it would have been declared by him who saw the revelation. For [he or it] was seen not long ago, but almost in our own generation, at the end of the reign of Domitian [Gk. dometianou].” 3Euseb. 18:4 To such a degree, indeed, did the teaching of our faith flourish at that time that even those writers who were far from our religion did not hesitate to mention in their histories the persecution and the martyrdoms which took place during it. 3Euseb. 18:5 And they, indeed, accurately indicated the time. For they recorded that in the fifteenth year of Domitian [Gk. dometianou], Flavia Domitilla, daughter of a sister of Flavius Clement, who at that time was one of the consuls of Rome, was exiled with many others to the island of Pontia in consequence of testimony borne to Christ. 3Euseb. 19:1 ¶ But when this same Domitian [Gk. dometianou] had commanded that the descendants of David should be slain, an ancient tradition says that some of the heretics brought accusation against the descendants [Gk. apogonos, male offspring] of Jude (said to have been a brother of the Savior according to the flesh), on the ground that they were of the lineage of David and were related to Christ himself. Hegesippus relates these facts in the following words. 3Euseb. 20:1 ¶ “Of the family of the Lord there were still living the grandsons [Gk. uionos] of Jude, who is said to have been the Lord’s brother according to the flesh. Information was given that they belonged to the family of David, and they were brought to the Emperor Domitian [Gk. dometianon kaisara] by the Evocatus. For he [Domitian] feared the Parousia of Christ as Herod also had feared it.
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Note this connection between Domitian and Herod – this points to some emperor before AD 70 when the fear of the Parousia would have been much greater, as we see with Felix in the book of Acts 24:25. Fear of the Parousia or of an uprising by a Jewish messianic contender would not have been significant after the fortresses of Judea had been demolished and all the resistance put to death. This clearly points to a time before the war under Nero Domitius [Gk DOMETION in Antiq. 20.149 (20.8.1)], and not under the Flavian Domitian [Gk DOMETIANOS in Life 429 (76); War 7.8588 (7.4.2); War 7.152 (7.5.5)]. Notice the difference in spelling of the two names in the Greek. Here is the story of Jude’s grandsons in Eusebius:
3Euseb. 20:2 And he asked them if they were descendants of David, and they confessed that they were. Then he asked them how much property they had, or how much money they owned. And both of them answered that they had only nine thousand denarii, half of which belonged to each of them; and this property did not consist of silver, but of a piece of land which contained only thirty- nine acres, and from which they raised their taxes and supported themselves by their own labor.” 3Euseb. 20:3 Then they showed their hands, exhibiting the hardness of their bodies and the callousness produced upon their hands by continuous toil as evidence of their own
