Thus we are left to infer the date of Papias entirely from the notices of his friends and contemporaries; but these will assist us to a very fair approximation. (1) He was a hearer of at least two personal disciples of Christ, Aristion and the Presbyter John. If we suppose that they were among the youngest disciples of our Lord, and lived to old age, we shall be doing no violence to probability. Obviously there were in their case exceptional circumstances which rendered intercourse with them possible. If so, they may have been born about A.D. 10 or later, and have died about A.D. 90 or later. In this case their intercourse with Papias may be referred to the years A.D. 85-95, or thereabouts. (2) He was acquainted with the daughters of Philip, who dwelt with their father at Hierapolis, where they died in old age. Whether this Philip was the Apostle, as the earliest writers affirm, or the Evangelist, as others suppose [149:3], is a question of little moment for my immediate purpose--the date of Papias. In the latter case these daughters would be the same who are mentioned at the time of St Paul's last visit to Jerusalem, A.D. 58, apparently as already grown up to womanhood [149:4]. On the former supposition they would belong to the same generation, and probably would be about the same age. As a very rough approximation, we may place their birth about A.D. 30, and their death about A.D. 100-110. (3) Papias is called by Irenæus a 'companion' of Polycarp, whose life (as we saw) extended from A.D. 69 to A.D. 155 [150:1]. The word admits a certain latitude as regards date, though it suggests something approaching to equality in age. But on the whole the notices affecting his relations to Polycarp suggest that he was rather the older man of the two. At all events Eusebius discusses him immediately after Ignatius and Quadratus and Clement, _i.e._ in connection with the fathers who flourished in the reign of Trajan or before; while the notice of Polycarp is deferred till a much later point in the history, where it occurs in close proximity with Justin Martyr [150:2]. This arrangement indicates at all events that Eusebius had no knowledge of his having been martyred at the same time with Polycarp, or indeed of his surviving to so late a date. Otherwise he would naturally have inserted his account of him in this place. If it is necessary to put the result of these incidental notices in any definite form, we may say that Papias was probably born about A.D. 60-70.