How did Saint Ignatius of Antioch die?

According to an early Christian tradition from a medieval document, Martyrium Ignatii, and the many letters originally attributed to Ignatius, he was apprehended in his native Antioch, interrogated by Emperor Trajan himself, and sent to Rome for public execution by being thrown to wild animals. Along the way, Ignatius wrote many letters, of which seven are generally thought to be genuine, to various congregations. One letter which Ignatius wrote was sent ahead to the Christians of Rome, which among other things begged them not to interfere with his approaching execution or intercede on his behalf.

Igantius' epistle to the Romans is problematic. Either Trajan did not personally order the execution of Ignatius, casting doubts on its authenticity, or its plea that the Romans not intercede on his behalf (the purpose of this letter) is not authentic. An appeal was possible from a lower tribunal, but not from the emperor's, so that it would have been useless for him to forbid the Roman Christians to intercede in his behalf.

Such a long and elaborate trip halfway across the Roman Empire would have been expensive — especially with all of the lengthy stopovers when Ignatius' supposedly brutal guards gave him every opportunity to spend time with his friends. We know that Romans did not ship prisoners of ordinary status around the Empire for execution, so this journey seems a fable. Furthermore, given what we know of Trajan, it does not seem likely that he personally interrogated Ignatius and then ordered his execution based upon his Christianity. In his subsequent correspondence with Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia , Trajan appears never to have heard of Christians, and took the very moderate position of ordering that they not be rooted out, and executed only if exposed and then only if they refused to make obeisance to the Roman deities.

Scholars dismiss the Martyrium as a fable that flies in the face of plausibility, although it can not be absolutely ruled out. We do not really know whether Ignatius of Antioch was a real, historical person, nor how he died.