viii. 197-210) with great indignation on an instance of a patrician

fighting.

513 “Quis mediocris gladiator ingemuit, quis vultum mutavit unquam?”—Cic. _Tusc. Quæst._ lib. ii.

514 E.g. Clem. Alex. _Strom._ iii. There is a well-known passage of this kind in Horace, _Ars Poet._ 412-415. The comparison of the good man to an athlete or gladiator, which St. Paul employed, occurs also in Seneca and Epictetus, from which some have inferred that they must have known the writings of the Apostle. M. Denis, however, has shown (_Idées morales dans l’Antiquité_, tome ii. p. 240) that the same comparison had been used, before the rise of Christianity, by Plato, Æschines, and Cicero.

_ 515 Confess._ vi. 8.

516 “[Servi] etsi per fortunam in omnia obnoxii, tamen quasi secundum hominum genus sunt.”—Florus, _Hist._ iii. 20.

517 Macrinus, however, punished fugitive slaves by compelling them to fight as gladiators. (Capitolinus, _Macrinus_.)

518 Tacit. _Annal._ xii. 56. According to Friedlænder, however, there were two classes of criminals. One class were condemned only to fight, and pardoned if they conquered; the others were condemned to fight till death, and this was considered an aggravation of capital punishment.

519 “Ad conciliandum plebis favorem effusa largitio, quum spectaculis indulget, supplicia quondam hostium artem facit.”—Florus, iii. 12.

_ 520 Tusc. Quæst._ ii. 17.

521 See his magnificent letter on the subject. (_Ep._ vii.)

522 In his two treatises _De Esu Carnium_.

523 Pliny. _Ep._ iv. 22.

524 Xiphilin, lxxi. 29. Capitolinus, _M. Aurelius_. The emperor also once carried off the gladiators to a war with his army, much to the indignation of the people. (Capit.) He has himself noticed the extreme weariness he felt at the public amusements he was obliged to attend. (vii. 3.)

525 Sueton. _Titus_, viii.

526 “Visum est spectaculum inde non enerve nec fluxum, nec quod animos virorum molliret et frangeret, sed quod ad pulchra vulnera contemptumque mortis accenderet.”—Pliny, _Paneg._ xxxiii.

527 “Præterea tanto consensu rogabaris, ut negare non constans sed durum videretur.”—Plin. _Epist._ vi. 34.

528 Symmach. _Epist._ ii. 46.

529 Sueton. _Domitian_, iii. It is very curious that the same emperor, about the same time (the beginning of his reign), had such a horror of bloodshed that he resolved to prohibit the sacrifice of oxen. (Suet. _Dom._ ix.)

530 “Pendant qu’il restait au logis, il n’était incommode à personne; il y passait la meilleure partie de son temps tranquillement dans sa chambre.... Il se divertissait aussi quelquefois à fumer une pipe de tabac; ou bien lorsqu’il voulait se relâcher l’esprit un peu plus longtemps, il cherchait des araignées qu’il faisait battre ensemble, ou des mouches qu’il jetait dans la toile d’araignée, et regardait ensuite cette bataille avec tant de plaisir qu’il éclatait quelquefois de rire.”—Colerus, _Vie de Spinoza_.

531 This is noticed by George Duval in a curious passage of his _Souvenirs de la Terreur_, quoted by Lord Lytton in a note to his _Zanoni_.

_ 532 Essay on Goodness._

533 This contrast has been noticed by Archbishop Whately in a lecture on Egypt. See, too, Legendre, _Traité de l’Opinion_, tome ii. p. 374.

534 Tacit. _Annal._ xiv. 45.

535 Senec. _De Clemen._ i. 14.

536 Val. Max. ii. 9. This writer speaks of “the eyes of a mistress delighting in human blood” with as much horror as if the gladiatorial games were unknown. Livy gives a rather different version of this story.

537 Tacit. _Annal._ i. 76.

538 Sueton. _Calig._ xi.

539 Spartian. _Caracalla._ Tertullian mentions that his nurse was a Christian.

540 Capitolinus, _Marcus Aurelius_. Capitolinus, who wrote under Diocletian, says that in his time the custom of spreading a net under the rope-dancer still continued. I do not know when it ceased at Rome, but St. Chrysostom mentions that in his time it had been abolished in the East.—Jortin’s _Remarks on Ecclesiastical History_, ii. 71 (ed. 1846).

541 Tacit. _Ann._ iii. 55.

542 Champagny, _Les Antonins_, tome ii. pp. 179-200.

543 πολιτεύεσθαι.—Diog. Laërt. _Zeno_.

544 Thus Tigellinus spoke of “Stoicorum arrogantia sectaque quæ turbidos et negotiorum appetentes faciat.”—Tacit. _Ann._ xiv. 57. The accusation does not appear to have been quite untrue, for Vespasian, who was a very moderate emperor, thought it necessary to banish nearly all the philosophers from Rome on account of their factiousness. Sometimes the Stoics showed their independence by a rather gratuitous insolence. Dion Cassius relates that, when Nero was thinking of writing a poem in 400 books, he asked the advice of the Stoic Cornutus, who said, that no one would read so long a work. “But,” answered Nero, “your favourite Chrysippus wrote still more numerous books.” “True,” rejoined Cornutus, “but then they were of use to humanity.” On the other hand, Seneca is justly accused of condescending too much to the vices of Nero in his efforts to mitigate their effects.

545 The influence of Stoicism on Roman law has been often examined. See, especially, Degerando, _Hist. de la Philosophie_ (2nd ed.), tome iii. pp. 202-204; Laferrière, _De l’Influence du Stoïcisme sur les Jurisconsultes romains_; Denis, _Théories et Idées morales dans l’Antiquité_, tome ii. pp. 187-217; Troplong, _Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit civil des Romains_; Merivale, _Conversion of the Roman Empire_, lec. iv.; and the great work of Gravina, _De Ortu et Progressu Juris civilis_.

546 Cic. _De Legib._ ii. 4, 23.

547 There were two rival schools, that of Labeo and that of Capito. The first was remarkable for its strict adherence to the letter of the law—the second for the latitude of interpretation it admitted.

_ 548 Dig._ lib. i. tit. 17-32.

549 Ibid. i. tit. 1-3.

550 Ibid. i. tit. 1-4.

_ 551 Dig._ lib. i. tit. 4-5.

552 Laferrière, p. 32. Wallon, _Hist. de l’Esclavage dans l’Antiquité_, tome iii. pp. 71-80. M. Wallon gives many curious instances of legal decisions on this point.

553 To prove that this is the correct conception of law was the main object of Cicero’s treatise _De Legibus_. Ulpian defined jurisprudence as “divinarum atque humanarum rerum notitia, justi atque injusti scientia.”—_Dig._ lib. i. tit. 1-10. So Paul “Id quod semper æquum ad bonum est jus dicitur ut est jus naturale.”—_Dig._ lib. i. tit. 1-11. And Gaius, “Quod vero naturalis ratio inter omnes homines constituit ... vocatur jus gentium.”—_Dig._ lib. i. tit. 1-9. The Stoics had defined true wisdom as “rerum divinarum atque humanarum scientia.”—Cic. _De Offic._ i. 43.

554 Cicero compares the phraseology of the Stoics with that of the Peripatetics, maintaining that the precision of the former is well adapted to legal discussions, and the redundancy of the latter to oratory. “Omnes fere Stoici prudentissimi in disserendo sint et id arte faciant, sintque architecti pene verborum; iidem traducti a disputando ad dicendum, inopes reperiantur: unum excipio Catonem.... Peripateticorum institutis commodius fingeretur oratio ... nam ut Stoicorum astrictior est oratio, aliquantoque contractior quam aures populi requirunt: sic illorum liberior et latior quam patitur consuetudo judiciorum et fori.”—_De Claris Oratoribus._ A very judicious historian of philosophy observes: “En général à Rome le petit nombre d’hommes livrés à la méditation et à l’enthousiasme préférèrent Pythagore et Platon; les hommes du monde et ceux qui cultivaient les sciences naturelles s’attachèrent à Épicure; les orateurs et les hommes d’État à la nouvelle Académie; les juris-consultes au Portique.”—Degerando, _Hist. de la Philos._ tome iii. p. 196.

555 See a very remarkable passage in Aulus Gellius, _Noct._ ii. 15.

556 “Fere enim nulli alii sunt homines qui talem in filios suos habeant potestatem qualem nos habemus.”—Gaius.

557 A full statement of these laws is given by Dion. Halicarn. ii. 4. It was provided that if a father sold his son and if the son was afterwards enfranchised by the purchaser, he became again the slave of his father, who might sell him a second, and, if manumission again ensued, a third time. It was only on the third sale that he passed for ever out of the parental control. A more merciful law, attributed to Numa, provided that when the son married (if that marriage was with the consent of the father), the father lost the power of selling him. In no other way, however, was his authority even then abridged.

558 Velleius Paterculus, ii. 67. A great increase of parricide was noticed during the Empire (Senec. _De Clem._ i. 23). At first, it is said, there was no law against parricide, for the crime was believed to be too atrocious to be possible.

559 Numerous instances of these executions are collected by Livy, Val. Maximus, &c.; their history is fully given by Cornelius van Bynkershoek, “De Jure occidendi, vendendi, et exponendi liberos apud veteres Romanos,” in his works (Cologne, 1761).

560 This proceeding of Hadrian, which is related by the lawyer Marcian, is doubly remarkable, because the father had surprised his son in adultery with his stepmother. Now a Roman had originally not only absolute authority over the life of his son, but also the right of killing any one whom he found committing adultery with his wife. Yet Marcian praises the severity of Hadrian, “Nam patria potestas in pietate debet, non atrocitate, consistere.”—_Digest._ lib. xlviii. tit. 9, § 5.

561 Valer. Max. vii. 7.

562 See, on all this subject, Gibbon, _Decline and Fall_, ch. xliv.; Troplong, _Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit_, ch. ix.; Denis, _Hist. des Idées morales_, tome ii. pp. 107-120; Laferrière, _Influence du Stoïcisme sur les Jurisconsultes_, pp. 37-44.

563 Ælian, _Hist. Var._ vi. 7.

564 Livy, ii. 36; Cicero, _De Divin._ ii. 26.

565 Cicero, _De Legibus_, ii. 8-12. Cato, however, maintained that slaves might on those days be employed on work which did not require oxen.—Wallon, _Hist. de l’Esclavage_, tome ii. p. 215.

566 See the _Saturnalia_ of Macrobius.

567 See his _Life_ by Plutarch, and his book on agriculture.

568 The number of the Roman slaves has been a matter of much controversy. M. Dureau de la Malle (_Econ. politique des Romains_) has restricted it more than any other writer. Gibbon (_Decline and Fall_, chap. ii.) has collected many statistics on the subject, but the fullest examination is in M. Wallon’s admirable _Hist. de l’Esclavage_. On the contrast between the character of the slaves of the Republic and those of the Empire, see _Tac. Ann._ xiv. 44.

569 Tacit. _Annal._ xiii. 32; xiv. 42-45. Wallon, _Hist. de l’Esclav._ ii. 293. I have already noticed the indignant rising of the people caused by the proposal to execute the 400 slaves of the murdered Pedanius. Their interposition was, however (as Tacitus informs us), unavailing, and the slaves, guarded against rescue by a strong band of soldiers, were executed. It was proposed to banish the freedmen who were in the house, but Nero interposed and prevented it. Pliny notices (_Ep._ viii. 14) the banishment of the freedmen of a murdered man.

570 See all this fully illustrated in Wallon. The plays of Plautus and the Roman writers on agriculture contain numerous allusions to the condition of slaves.

571 Wallon, tome ii. pp. 209-210, 357. There were no laws till the time of the Christian emperors against separating the families of slaves, but it was a maxim of the jurisconsults that in forced sales they should not be separated. (Wallon, tome iii. pp. 55-56.)

572 Ibid. tome ii. pp. 211-213.

573 Plin. _Epist._ viii. 16. It was customary to allow the public or State slaves to dispose of half their goods by will. (Wallon, tome iii. p. 59.)

574 Wallon, tome ii. p. 419. This appears from an allusion of Cicero, _Philip._ viii. 11.

575 Senec. _De Clem._ i. 18.

576 Ibid. _Ep._ xlvii.

577 Pliny, _Ep._ viii. 16.

578 Spartianus, _Hadrianus_.

579 Compare Wallon, tome ii. p. 186; tome iii. pp. 65-66. Slaves were only to be called as witnesses in cases of incest, adultery, murder, and high treason, and where it was impossible to establish the crime without their evidence. Hadrian considered that the reality of the crime must have already acquired a strong probability, and the jurisconsult Paul laid down that at least two free witnesses should be heard before slaves were submitted to torture, and that the offer of an accused person to have his slaves tortured that they might attest his innocence should not be accepted.

580 Numerous and very noble instances of slave fidelity are given by Seneca, _De Benefic._ iii. 19-27; Val. Max. vi. 8; and in Appian’s _History of the Civil Wars_. See, too, Tacit. _Hist._ i. 3.

581 Aristotle had, it is true, declared slavery to be part of the law of nature—an opinion which, he said, was rejected by some of his contemporaries; but he advocated humanity to slaves quite as emphatically as the other philosophers (_Economics_, i. 5). Epicurus was conspicuous even among Greek philosophers for his kindness to slaves, and he associated some of his own with his philosophical labours. (Diog. Laërt. _Epicurus_.)

_ 582 De Benef._ iii. 18-28; _De Vita Beata_, xxiv.; _De Clem._ i. 18, and especially _Ep._ xlvii. Epictetus, as might be expected from his history, frequently recurs to the duty. Plutarch writes very beautifully upon it in his treatise _De Cohibenda Ira_.

583 Diog. Laërt. _Zeno_.

584 Bodin thinks it was promulgated by Nero, and he has been followed by Troplong and Mr. Merivale. Champagny (_Les Antonins_, tome ii. p. 115) thinks that no law after Tiberius was called _lex_.

585 Sueton. _Claud._ xxv.; Dion Cass. lx. 29.

586 See Dumas, _Secours publics chez les Anciens_ (Paris, 1813), pp. 125-130.

587 Senec. _De Clem._ i. 18.

588 Senec. _De Benef._ iii. 22.

589 Spartian. _Hadrianus._ Hadrian exiled a Roman lady for five years for treating her slaves with atrocious cruelty. (_Digest._ lib. i. tit. 6, § 2.)

590 See these laws fully examined by Wallon, tome iii. pp. 51-92, and also Laferrière, _Sur l’Influence du Stoïcisme sur le Droit_. The jurisconsults gave a very wide scope to their definitions of cruelty. A master who degraded a literary slave, or a slave musician, to some coarse manual employment, such as a porter, was decided to have ill-treated him. (Wallon, tome iii. p. 62.)

591 Thus, e.g., Livia called in the Stoic Areus to console her after the death of Drusus (Senec. _Ad Marc._). Many of the letters of Seneca and Plutarch are written to console the suffering. Cato, Thrasea, and many others appear to have fortified their last hours by conversation with philosophers. The whole of this aspect of Stoicism has been admirably treated by M. Martha (_Les Moralistes de l’Empire Romain_).

592 We have a pleasing picture of the affection philosophers and their disciples sometimes bore to one another in the lines of Persius (_Sat._ v.) to his master Cornutus.

593 Grant’s _Aristotle_, vol. i. pp. 277-278.

594 Champagny, _Les Antonins_, tome i. p. 405.

595 Arrian, iii. 22. Julian has also painted the character of the true Cynic, and contrasted it with that of the impostors who assumed the garb. See Neander’s _Life of Julian_ (London, 1850), p. 94.

596 Seneca the rhetorician (father of the philosopher) collected many of the sayings of the rhetoricians of his time. At a later period, Philostratus wrote the lives of eminent rhetoricians, Quintilian discussed their rules of oratory, and Aulus Gellius painted the whole society in which they moved. On their injurious influence upon eloquence, see Petronius, _Satyricon_, i. 2. Much curious information about the rhetoricians is collected in Martha, _Moralistes de l’Empire Romain_, and in Nisard, _Etudes sur les Poëtes Latins de la Dècadence_, art. Juvenal.

597 “Cependant ces orateurs n’étaient jamais plus admirés que lorsqu’ils avaient le bonheur de trouver un sujet où la louange fut un tour de force.... Lucien a fait l’éloge de la mouche; Fronton de la poussière, de la fumée, de la négligence; Dion Chrysostome de la chevelure, du perroquet, etc. Au cinquième siècle, Synésius, qui fut un grand évêque, fera le panégyrique de la calvitie, long ouvrage où toutes les sciences sont mises à contribution pour apprendre aux hommes ce qu’il y a non-seulement de bonheur mais aussi de mérite à être chauve.”—Martha, _Moralistes de l’Empire Romain_ (ed. 1865), p. 275.

598 There is a good review of the teaching of Maximus in Champagny, _Les Antonins_, tome ii. pp. 207-215.

_ 599 Orat._ xv.; _De Servitute_.

600 See the singularly charming essay on Dion Chrysostom, in M. Martha’s book.

601 Mr. Buckle, in his admirable chapter on the “Proximate Causes of the French Revolution” (_Hist. of Civilisation_, vol. i.), has painted this fashionable enthusiasm for knowledge with great power, and illustrated it with ample learning.

602 The saying of Mme. Dudeffand about Helvétius is well known: “C’est un homme qui a dit le secret de tout le monde.” How truly Helvétius represented this fashionable society appears very plainly from the vivid portrait of it in the _Nouvelle Hèloïse_, part ii. letter xvii., a masterpiece of its kind.

603 Musonius tried to stop this custom of applauding the lecturer. (Aul. Gell. _Noct._ v. i.) The habits that were formed in the schools of the rhetoricians were sometimes carried into the churches, and we have notices of preachers (especially St. Chrysostom) being vociferously applauded.

604 Thus Gellius himself consulted Favorinus about a perplexing case which he had, in his capacity of magistrate, to determine, and received from his master a long dissertation on the duties of a judge (xiv. 2).

605 i. 10.

_ 606 Noct. Att._ vi. 13. They called these questions _symposiacæ_, as being well fitted to stimulate minds already mellowed by wine.

607 xviii. 2.

608 We have a curious example of this in a letter of Marcus Aurelius preserved by Gallicanus in his _Life of Avidius Cassius_.

609 “Senserunt hoc Stoici qui servis et mulieribus philosophandum esse dixerunt.”—Lact. _Nat. Div._ iii. 25. Zeno was often reproached for gathering the poorest and most sordid around him when he lectured. (Diog. Laërt. _Zeno_.)

610 This decadence was noticed and rebuked by some of the leading philosophers. See the language of Epictetus in Arrian, ii. 19, iv. 8, and of Herod Atticus in Aul. Gell. i. 2, ix. 2. St. Augustine speaks of the Cynics as having in his time sunk into universal contempt. See much evidence on this subject in Friedlænder, _Hist. des Mœurs Romaines_, tome iv. 378-385.

611 This movement is well treated by Vacherot, _Hist. de l’École d’Alexandrie_.

_ 612 De Superstitione._

_ 613 Dissertations_, x. § 8 (ed. Davis, London, 1740). In some editions this is _Diss._ xxix.

_ 614 Dissert._ xxxviii.

_ 615 De Dæmone Socratis._

_ 616 De Dæmone Socratis._ See, on the office of dæmons or genii, Arrian i. 14, and a curious chapter in Ammianus Marcell. xxi. 14. See, too, Plotinus, 3rd _Enn._ lib. iv.

_ 617 De Dæmone Socratis._

618 I should except Plotinus, however, who was faithful in this point to Plato, and was in consequence much praised by the Christian Fathers.

619 “Omnium malorum maximum voluptas, qua tanquam clavo et fibula anima corpori nectitur; putatque vera quæ et corpus suadet, et ita spoliatur rerum divinarum aspectu.”—Iamblichus, _De Secta Pythagor._ (Romæ, 1556), p. 38. Plotinus, 1st _Enn._ vi. 6.

_ 620 De Sect. Pyth._ pp. 36, 37.

621 Porphyry, _Life of Plotinus_.

622 Iamblichus, _De Mysteriis._ 1.

623 See, on this doctrine of ecstasy, Vacherot, _Hist. de l’École d’Alexandrie_, tome i. p. 576, &c.

624 “Sic habeto, omnibus qui patriam conservaverint, adjuverint, auxerint, certum esse in cœlo ac definitum locum ubi beati ævo sempiterno fruantur.”—Cic. _Somn. Scip._

625 Φῶς, which, according to Plutarch (who here confuses two distinct words), is poetically used for man (_De Latenter Vivendo_). A similar thought occurs in M. Aurelius, who speaks of the good man as light which only ceases to shine when it ceases to be.

_ 626 Diss._ xxi. § 6.

627 Iamblichus, _De Sect. Pythagoræ_, p. 35.

628 Porphyry, _Life of Plotinus_, cap. vii.; Plotinus, 1st _Enn._ iv. 7. See on this subject Degerando, _Hist. de la Philos._ iii. p. 383.

629 Thus it was said of Apollonius that in his teaching at Ephesus he did not speak after the manner of the followers of Socrates, but endeavoured to detach his disciples from all occupation other than philosophy.—_Philostr. Apoll. of Tyana_, iv. 2. Cicero notices the aversion the Pythagoreans of his time displayed to argument: “Quum ex iis quæreretur quare ita esset, respondere solitos, Ipse dixit; ipse autem erat Pythagoras.”—_De Nat. Deor._ i. 5.

630 See Vacherot, tome ii. p. 66.

631 See Degerando, _Hist. de la Philosophie_, tome iii. pp. 400, 401.

632 Plotinus, 1st _Enn._ ix.

633 See a strong passage, on the universality of this belief, in Plotinus, 1st _Enn._ i. 12, and Origen, _Cont. Cels._ vii. A very old tradition represented the Egyptians as the first people who held the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Cicero (_Tusc. Quæst._) says that the Syrian Pherecydes, master of Pythagoras, first taught it. Maximus of Tyre attributes its origin to Pythagoras, and his slave Zamolxis was said to have introduced it into Greece. Others say that Thales first taught it. None of these assertions have any real historical value.

634 We have a remarkable instance of the clearness with which some even of the most insignificant historians recognised the folly of confining history to the biographies of the Emperors, in the opening chapter of Capitolinus, _Life of Macrinus_.—Tacitus is full of beautiful episodes, describing the manners and religion of the people.

635 The passages relating to the Jews in Roman literature are collected in Aubertin’s _Rapports supposés entre Sénèque et St. Paul_. Champagny, _Rome et Judée_, tome i. pp. 134-137.

636 Cicero, _pro Flacco_, 28; Sueton. _Claudius_, 25.

637 Juvenal, _Sat._ xiv.

_ 638 Hist._ v.

639 Lact. _Inst. Div._ vii. 3.

640 See their history fully investigated in Aubertin. Augustine followed Jerome in mentioning the letters, but neither of these writers asserted their genuineness. Lactantius, nearly at the same time (_Inst. Div._ vi. 24), distinctly spoke of Seneca as a Pagan, as Tertullian (_Apol._ 50) had done before. The immense number of forged documents is one of the most disgraceful features of the Church history of the first few centuries.

641 Fleury has written an elaborate work maintaining the connection between the apostle and the philosopher. Troplong (_Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit_) has adopted the same view. Aubertin, in the work I have already cited, has maintained the opposite view (which is that of all or nearly all English critics) with masterly skill and learning. The Abbé Dourif (_Rapports du Stoïcisme et du Christianisme_) has placed side by side the passages from each writer which are most alike.

642 Quoted by St. Augustine.—_De Civ. Dei_, vi. 11.

643 xi. 3.

644 The history of the two schools has been elaborately traced by Ritter, Pressensé, and many other writers. I would especially refer to the fourth volume of Degerando’s most fascinating _Histoire de la Philosophie_.

645 “Scurra Atticus,” Min. Felix, _Octav._ This term is said by Cicero to have been given to Socrates by Zeno. (Cic. _De Nat. Deor._ i. 34.)

646 Tertull. _De Anima_, 39.

647 See especially his _Apol._ ii. 8, 12, 13. He speaks of the σπερματικὸς λόγος.

648 See, on all this, Clem. Alex. _Strom._ v., and also i. 22.

649 St. Clement repeats this twice (_Strom._ i. 24, v. 14). The writings of this Father are full of curious, and sometimes ingenious, attempts to trace different phrases of the great philosophers, orators, and poets to Moses. A vast amount of learning and ingenuity has been expended in the same cause by Eusebius. (_Præp. Evan._ xii. xiii.) The tradition of the derivation of Pagan philosophy from the Old Testament found in general little favour among the Latin writers. There is some curious information on this subject in Waterland’s “Charge to the Clergy of Middlesex, to prove that the wisdom of the ancients was borrowed from revelation; delivered in 1731.” It is in the 8th volume of Waterland’s works (ed. 1731).

650 St. Clement (_Strom._ i.) mentions that some think him to have been Ezekiel, an opinion which St. Clement himself does not hold. See, on the patristic notions about Pythagoras, Legendre, _Traité de l’Opinion_, tome i. p. 164.

651 This was the opinion of Julius Firmicus Maternus, a Latin writer of the age of Constantine, “Nam quia Saræ pronepos fuerat ... Serapis dictus est Græco sermone, hoc est Σαρᾶς ἄπο.”—Julius Firmicus Maternus, _De Errore Profanarum Religionum_, cap. xiv.

652 Justin Martyr, _Apol._ i. 54; Trypho, 69-70. There is a very curious collection of Pagan legends that were parallel to Jewish incidents, in La Mothe le Vayer, let. xciii.

653 Suet. _Vesp._ 7; Tacit. _Hist._ iv. 81. There is a slight difference between the two historians about the second miracle. Suetonius says it was the leg, Tacitus that it was the hand, that was diseased. The god Serapis was said to have revealed to the patients that they would be cured by the emperor. Tacitus says that Vespasian did not believe in his own power; that it was only after much persuasion he was induced to try the experiment; that the blind man was well known in Alexandria, where the event occurred, and that eyewitnesses who had no motive to lie still attested the miracle.

654 The following is a good specimen of the language which may still be uttered, apparently without exciting any protest, from the pulpit in one of the great centres of English learning: “But we have prayed, and not been heard, at least in this present visitation. Have we deserved to be heard? In former visitations it was observed commonly how the cholera lessened from the day of the public humiliation. When we dreaded famine from long-continued drought, on the morning of our prayers the heaven over our head was of brass; the clear burning sky showed no token of change. Men looked with awe at its unmitigated clearness. In the evening was the cloud like a man’s hand; the relief was come.” (And then the author adds, in a note): “This describes what I myself saw on the Sunday morning in Oxford, on returning from the early communion at St. Mary’s at eight. There was no visible change till the evening.”—Pusey’s _Miracles of Prayer_, preached at Oxford, 1866.

655 E.g.: “A master of philosophy, travelling with others on the way, when a fearful thunderstorm arose, checked the fear of his fellows, and discoursed to them of the natural reasons of that uproar in the clouds, and those sudden flashes wherewith they seemed (out of the ignorance of causes) to be too much affrighted: in the midst of his philosophical discourse he was struck dead with the dreadful eruption which he slighted. What could this be but the finger of that God who will have his works rather entertained with wonder and trembling than with curious scanning?”—Bishop Hall, _The Invisible World_, § vi.

656 Sir C. Lewis _On the Credibility of Roman Hist._ vol. i. p. 50.

657 Cic. _De Divin._ lib. i. c. 1.

658 “The days on which the miracle [of the king’s touch] was to be wrought were fixed at sittings of the Privy Council, and were solemnly notified by the clergy to all the parish churches of the realm. When the appointed time came, several divines in full canonicals stood round the canopy of state. The surgeon of the royal household introduced the sick. A passage of Mark xvi. was read. When the words ‘They shall lay their hands on the sick and they shall recover,’ had been pronounced, there was a pause and one of the sick was brought to the king. His Majesty stroked the ulcers.... Then came the Epistle, &c. The Service may still be found in the Prayer Books of the reign of Anne. Indeed, it was not until some time after the accession of George I. that the University of Oxford ceased to reprint the office of healing, together with the Liturgy. Theologians of eminent learning, ability, and virtue gave the sanction of their authority to this mummery, and, what is stranger still, medical men of high note believed, or affected to believe, it.... Charles II., in the course of his reign, touched near 100,000 persons.... In 1682 he performed the rite 8,500 times. In 1684 the throng was such that six or seven of the sick were trampled to death. James, in one of his progresses, touched 800 persons in the choir of the cathedral of Chester.”—Macaulay’s _History of England_, c. xiv.

659 One of the surgeons of Charles II. named John Brown, whose official duty it was to superintend the ceremony, and who assures us that he has witnessed many thousands touched, has written an extremely curious account of it, called _Charisma Basilicon_ (London, 1684). This miraculous power existed exclusively in the English and French royal families, being derived, in the first, from Edward the Confessor, in the second, from St. Lewis. A surgeon attested the reality of the disease before the miracle was performed. The king hung a riband with a gold coin round the neck of the person touched; but Brown thinks the gold, though possessing great virtue, was not essential to the cure. He had known cases where the cured person had sold, or ceased to wear, the medal, and his disease returned. The gift was unimpaired by the Reformation, and an obdurate Catholic was converted on finding that Elizabeth, after the Pope’s excommunication, could cure his scrofula. Francis I. cured many persons when prisoner in Spain. Charles I., when a prisoner, cured a man by his simple benediction, the Puritans not permitting him to touch him. His blood had the same efficacy; and Charles II., when an exile in the Netherlands, still retained it. There were, however, some “Atheists, Sadducees, and ill-conditioned Pharisees” who even then disbelieved it; and Brown gives the letter of one who went, a complete sceptic, to satisfy his friends, and came away cured and converted. It was popularly, but Brown says erroneously, believed that the touch was peculiarly efficacious on Good Friday. An official register was kept, for every month in the reign of Charles II., of the persons touched, but two years and a half appear to be wanting. The smallest number touched in one year was 2,983 (in 1669); the total, in the whole reign, 92,107. Brown gives numbers of specific cases with great detail. Shakspeare has noticed the power (_Macbeth_, Act iv. Scene 3). Dr. Johnson, when a boy, was touched by Queen Anne; but at that time few persons, except Jacobites, believed the miracle.

660 Lucretius, lib. vi. The poet says there are certain seeds of fire in the earth, around the water, which the sun attracts to itself, but which the cold of the night represses, and forces back upon the water.

The fountain of Jupiter Ammon, and many others that were deemed miraculous, are noticed by Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ ii. 106.

“Fly not yet; the fount that played In times of old through Ammon’s shade, Though icy cold by day it ran, Yet still, like souls of mirth, began To burn when night was near.”—Moore’s _Melodies_.

661 Tacit. _Annal._ i. 28. Long afterwards, the people of Turin were accustomed to greet every eclipse with loud cries, and St. Maximus of Turin energetically combated their superstition. (Ceillier, _Hist. des Auteurs sacrés_, tome xiv. p. 607.)

662 Suet. _Aug._ xci.

663 See the answer of the younger Pliny (_Ep._ i. 18), suggesting that dreams should often be interpreted by contraries. A great many instances of dreams that were believed to have been verified are given in Cic. (_De Divinatione_, lib. i.) and Valerius Maximus (lib. i. c. vii.). Marcus Aurelius (Capitolinus) was said to have appeared to many persons after his death in dreams, and predicted the future.

664 The augurs had noted eleven kinds of lightning with different significations. (Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ ii. 53.) Pliny says all nations agree in clapping their hands when it lightens (xxviii. 5). Cicero very shrewdly remarked that the Roman considered lightning a good omen when it shone upon his left, while the Greeks and barbarians believed it to be auspicious when it was upon the right. (Cic. _De Divinat._ ii. 39.) When Constantine prohibited all other forms of magic, he especially authorised that which was intended to avert hail and lightning. (_Cod. Theod._ lib. ix. tit. xvi. 1. 3.)

665 Suet. _Aug._ xc.

666 Ibid. _Tiber._ lxix. The virtue of laurel leaves, and of the skin of a sea-calf, as preservatives against lightning, are noticed by Pliny (_Hist. Nat._ ii. 56), who also says (xv. 40) that the laurel leaf is believed to have a natural antipathy to fire, which it shows by its angry crackling when in contact with that element.

667 Suet. _Calig._ ii.

668 Suet. _Jul. Cæs._ lxxxviii.

669 Plin. _Hist. Nat._ ii. 23.

670 “Prodigia eo anno multa nuntiata sunt, quæ quo magis credebant simplices ac religiosi homines eo plura nuntiabantur” (xxiv. 10). Compare with this the remark of Cicero on the oracles: “Quando autem illa vis evanuit? An postquam homines minus creduli esse cœperunt?” (_De Div._ ii. 57.)

671 This theory, which is developed at length by the Stoic, in the first book of the _De Divinatione_ of Cicero, grew out of the pantheistic notion that the human soul is a part of the Deity, and therefore by nature a participator in the Divine attribute of prescience. The soul, however, was crushed by the weight of the body; and there were two ways of evoking its prescience—the ascetic way, which attenuates the body, and the magical way, which stimulates the soul. Apollonius declared that his power of prophecy was not due to magic, but solely to his abstinence from animal food. (Philost. _Ap. of Tyana_, viii. 5.) Among those who believed the oracles, there were two theories. The first was that they were inspired by dæmons or spirits of a degree lower than the gods. The second was, that they were due to the action of certain vapours which emanated from the caverns beneath the temples, and which, by throwing the priestess into a state of delirium, evoked her prophetic powers. The first theory was that of the Platonists, and it was adopted by the Christians, who, however, changed the signification of the word dæmon. The second theory, which appears to be due to Aristotle (Baltus, _Réponse à l’Histoire des Oracles_, p. 132), is noticed by Cic. _De Div._ i. 19; Plin. _H. N._ ii. 95; and others. It is closely allied to the modern belief in clairvoyance. Plutarch, in his treatise on the decline of the oracles, attributes that decline sometimes to the death of the dæmons (who were believed to be mortal), and sometimes to the exhaustion of the vapours. The oracles themselves, according to Porphyry (Fontenelle, _Hist. des Oracles_, pp. 220-222, first ed.), attributed it to the second cause. Iamblichus (_De Myst._ § iii. c. xi.) combines both theories, and both are very clearly stated in the following curious passage: “Quamquam Platoni credam inter deos atque homines, natura et loco medias quasdam divorum potestates intersitas, easque divinationes cunctas et magorum miracula gubernare. Quin et illud mecum reputo, posse animum humanum, præsertim, puerilem et simplicem, seu carminum avocamento, sive odorum delenimento, soporari, et ad oblivionem præsentium externari: et paulis per remota corporis memoria, redigi ac redire ad naturam suam, quæ est immortalis scilicet et divina; atque ita veluti quodam sopore, futura rerum præsagire.”—Apuleius, _Apolog._

672 Aul. Gell. _Noct._ ii. 28. Florus, however (_Hist._ i. 19), mentions a Roman general appeasing the goddess Earth on the occasion of an earthquake that occurred during a battle.

673 Ælian, _Hist. Var._ iv. 17.

_ 674 Hist. Nat._ ii. 81-86.

675 Ibid. ii. 9.

676 Ibid. ii. 23.

677 I have referred in the last chapter to a striking passage of Am. Marcellinus on this combination. The reader may find some curious instances of the superstitions of Roman sceptics in Champagny, _Les Antonins_, tome iii. p. 46.

678 viii. 19. This is also mentioned by Lucretius.

679 viii. 1.

680 viii. 50. This was one of the reasons why the early Christians sometimes adopted the stag as a symbol of Christ.

681 xxix. 23.

682 xxxii. 1.

683 vii. 2.

684 xxviii. 7. The blind man restored to sight by Vespasian was cured by anointing his eyes with spittle. (Suet. _Vesp._ 7; Tacit. _Hist._ iv. 81.)

685 Ibid. The custom of spitting in the hand before striking still exists among pugilists.

686 ii. 101.

687 Legendre, _Traité de l’Opinion_, tome ii. p. 17. The superstition is, however, said still to linger in many sea-coast towns.

688 Lucian is believed to have died about two years before Marcus Aurelius.

689 See his very curious Life by Philostratus. This Life was written at the request of Julia Domna, the wife of Septimus Severus, whether or not with the intention of opposing the Gospel narrative is a question still fiercely discussed. Among the most recent Church historians, Pressensé maintains the affirmative, and Neander the negative. Apollonius was born at nearly the same time as Christ, but outlived Domitian. The traces of his influence are widely spread through the literature of the empire. Eunapius calls him “Ἀπολλώνιος ὁ ἐκ Τυάνων, οὐκέτι φιλόσοφος ἀλλ᾽ ἦν τι θεῶν τε καὶ ἀνθρώπου μέσον.”—_Lives of the Sophists._ Xiphilin relates (lxvii. 18) the story, told also by Philostratus, how Apollonius, being at Ephesus, saw the assassination of Domitian at Rome. Alexander Severus placed (_Lampridius Severus_) the statue of Apollonius with those of Orpheus, Abraham, and Christ, for worship in his oratory. Aurelian was reported to have been diverted from his intention of destroying Tyana by the ghost of the philosopher, who appeared in his tent, rebuked him, and saved the city (Vopiscus, _Aurelian_); and, lastly, the Pagan philosopher Hierocles wrote a book opposing Apollonius to Christ, which was answered by Eusebius. The Fathers of the fourth century always spoke of him as a great magician. Some curious passages on the subject are collected by M. Chassang, in the introduction to his French translation of the work of Philostratus.

690 See his defence against the charge of magic. Apuleius, who was at once a brilliant rhetorician, the writer of an extremely curious novel (_The Metamorphoses, or Golden Ass_), and of many other works, and an indefatigable student of the religious mysteries of his time, lived through the reigns of Hadrian and his two successors. After his death his fame was for about a century apparently eclipsed; and it has been noticed as very remarkable that Tertullian, who lived a generation after Apuleius, and who, like him, was a Carthaginian, has never even mentioned him. During the fourth century his reputation revived, and Lactantius, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine relate that many miracles were attributed to him, and that he was placed by the Pagans on a level with Christ, and regarded by some as even a greater magician. See the sketch of his life by M. Bétolaud prefixed to the Panckoucke edition of his works.

_ 691 Life of Alexander._ There is an extremely curious picture of the religious jugglers, who were wandering about the Empire, in the eighth and ninth books of the _Metamorphoses_ of Apuleius. See, too, Juvenal, _Sat._ vi. 510-585.

692 Porphyry’s _Life of Plotinus_.

693 Eunapius, _Porph._

694 Ibid. _Iamb._ Iamblichus himself only laughed at the report.

695 Eunapius, _Iamb._

696 See her life in Eunapius, _Œdescus_. Ælian and the rhetorician Aristides are also full of the wildest prodigies. There is an interesting dissertation on this subject in Friedlænder (_Trad. Franc._ tome iv. p. 177-186).

697 “Credat Judæus Apella.”—Hor. _Sat._ v. 100.

698 This appears from all the writings of the Fathers. There were, however, two forms of Pagan miracles about which there was some hesitation in the early Church—the beneficent miracle of healing and the miracle of prophecy. Concerning the first, the common opinion was that the dæmons only cured diseases they had themselves caused, or that, at least, if they ever (in order to enthral men more effectually) cured purely natural diseases, they did it by natural means, which their superior knowledge and power placed at their disposal. Concerning prophecy, it was the opinion of some of the Fathers that intuitive prescience was a Divine prerogative, and that the prescience of the dæmons was only acquired by observation. Their immense knowledge enabled them to forecast events to a degree far transcending human faculties, and they employed this power in the oracles.

_ 699 De Origine ac Progressu Idolatriæ_ (Amsterdam).

700 This characteristic of early Christian apology is forcibly exhibited by Pressensé, _Hist. des trois premiers Siècles_, 2me série, tome ii.

701 The immense number of these forged writings is noticed by all candid historians, and there is, I believe, only one instance of any attempt being made to prevent this pious fraud. A priest was degraded for having forged some voyages of St. Paul and St. Thecla. (Tert. _De Baptismo_, 17.)

_ 702 Apol._ i.

_ 703 Strom._ vi. c. 5.

704 Origen, _Cont. Cols._ v.

_ 705 Oratio_ (apud Euseb.) xviii.

_ 706 De Civ. Dei_, xviii. 23.

707 Constantine, _Oratio_ xix. “His testimoniis quidam revicti solent eo confugere ut aiant non esse illa carmina Sibyllina, sed a nostris conficta atque composita.”—Lactant. _Div. Inst._ iv. 15.

708 Antonius Possevinus, _Apparatus Sacer_ (1606), verb. “Sibylla.”

709 This subject is fully treated by Middleton in his _Free Enquiry_, whom I have closely followed.

710 Irenæus, _Contr. Hæres._ ii. 32.

711 Epiphan. _Adv. Hæres._ ii. 30.

712 St. Aug. _De Civ. Dei_, xxii. 8.

713 This history is related by St. Ambrose in a letter to his sister Marcellina; by St. Paulinus of Nola, in his _Life of Ambrose_; and by St. Augustine, _De Civ. Dei_, xxii. 8; _Confess._ ix. 7.

714 Plutarch thought they were known by Plato, but this opinion has been much questioned. See a very learned discussion on the subject in Farmer’s _Dissertation on Miracles_, pp. 129-140; and Fontenelle, _Hist. des Oracles_, pp. 26, 27. Porphyry speaks much of evil dæmons.

715 Josephus, _Antiq._ viii. 2, § 5.

716 This very curious subject is fully treated by Baltus (_Réponse à l’Histoire des Oracles_, Strasburg, 1707, published anonymously in reply to Van Dale and Fontenelle), who believed in the reality of the Pagan as well as the patristic miracles; by Bingham (_Antiquities of the Christian Church_, vol. i. pp. 316-324), who thinks the Pagan and Jewish exorcists were impostors, but not the Christians; and by Middleton (_Free Enquiry_, pp. 80-93), who disbelieves in all the exorcists after the apostolic times. It has also been the subject of a special controversy in England, carried on by Dodwell, Church, Farmer, and others. Archdeacon Church says: “If we cannot vindicate them [the Fathers of the first three centuries] on this article, their credit must be lost for ever; and we must be obliged to decline all further defence of them. It is impossible for any words more strongly to express a claim to this miracle than those used by all the best writers of the second and third centuries.”—_Vindication of the Miracles of the First Three Centuries_, p. 199. So, also, Baltus: “De tous les anciens auteurs ecclésiastiques, n’y en ayant pas un qui n’ait parlé de ce pouvoir admirable que les Chrétiens avoient de chasser les démons” (p. 296). Gregory of Tours describes exorcism as sufficiently common in his time, and mentions having himself seen a monk named Julian cure by his words a possessed person. (_Hist._ iv. 32.)

_ 717 Vit. Hilar._ Origen notices that cattle were sometimes possessed by devils. See Middleton’s _Free Enquiry_, pp. 88, 89.

718 The miracle of St. Babylas is the subject of a homily by St. Chrysostom, and is related at length by Theodoret, Sozomen, and Socrates. Libanius mentions that, by command of Julian, the bones of St. Babylas were removed from the temple. The Christians said the temple was destroyed by lightning; the Pagans declared it was burnt by the Christians, and Julian ordered measures of reprisal to be taken. Amm. Marcellinus, however, mentions a report that the fire was caused accidentally by one of the numerous candles employed in the ceremony. The people of Antioch defied the emperor by chanting, as they removed the relics, “Confounded be all they that trust in graven images.”

719 See the _Life of Gregory Thaumaturgus_, by Gregory of Nyssa. St. Gregory the Great assures us (_Dial._ iii. 10) that Sabinus, Bishop of Placentia, wrote a letter to the river Po, which had overflowed its banks and flooded some church lands. When the letter was thrown into the stream the waters at once subsided.

720 “Edatur hic aliquis sub tribunalibus vestris, quem dæmone agi constet. Jussus a quolibet Christiano loqui spiritus ille, tam se dæmonem confitebitur de vero, quam alibi deum de falso. Æque producatur aliquis ex iis qui de deo pati existimantur, qui aris inhalantes numen de nidore concipiunt ... nisi se dæmones confessi fuerint, Christiano mentiri non audentes, ibidem illius Christiani procacissimi sanguinem fundite. Quid isto opere manifestius? quid hæc probatione fidelius?”—Tert. _Apol._ xxiii.

_ 721 Apol._ i.; _Trypho_.

_ 722 Cont. Cels._ vii.

_ 723 Inst. Div._ iv. 27.

_ 724 Life of Antony._

_ 725 Octavius._

_ 726 De Superstitione._

727 i. 6.

_ 728 De Mort. Peregrin._

729 Origen, _Adv. Cels._ vi. Compare the curious letter which Vopiscus (Saturninus) attributes to Hadrian, “Nemo illic [i.e. in Egypt] archisynagogus Judæorum, nemo Samarites, nemo Christianorum presbyter, non mathematicus, non aruspex, non aliptes.”

730 “Si incantavit, si imprecatus est, si (ut vulgari verbo impostorum utor) exorcizavit.”—Bingham, _Antiquities of the Christian Church_ (Oxf., 1855), vol. i. p. 318. This law is believed to have been directed specially against the Christians, because these were very prominent as exorcists, and because Lactantius (_Inst. Div._ v. 11) says that Ulpian had collected the laws against them.

731 Philostorgius, _Hist. Eccl._ viii. 10.

732 See Juvenal, _Sat._ vi. 314-335.

733 See Juvenal, _Sat._ vi. 520-530.

_ 734 Metamorphoses_, book x.

735 See their _Lives_, by Lampridius and Spartianus.

736 The conflict between St. Cyprian and the confessors, concerning the power of remitting penances claimed by the latter, though it ended in the defeat of the confessors, shows clearly the influence they had obtained.

737 “Thura plane non emimus; si Arabiæ queruntur scient Sabæi pluris et carioris suas merces Christianis sepeliendis profligari quam diis fumigandis.”—_Apol._ 42. Sometimes the Pagans burnt the bodies of the martyrs, in order to prevent the Christians venerating their relics.

738 Many interesting particulars about these commemrative festivals are collected in Cave’s _Primitive Christianity_, part i. c. vii. The anniversaries were called “Natalia,” or birth-days.

739 See her acts in Ruinart.

740 St. Clem. Alex. _Strom._ iv. 10. There are other passages of the same kind in other Fathers.

_ 741 Ad Scapul._ v. Eusebius (_Martyrs of Palestine_, ch. iii.) has given a detailed account of six young men, who in the very height of the Galerian persecution, at a time when the most hideous tortures were applied to the Christians, voluntarily gave themselves up as believers. Sulp. Severus (_Hist._ ii. 32), speaking of the voluntary martyrs under Diocletian, says that Christians then “longed for death as they now long for bishoprics.” “Cogi qui potest, nescit mori,” was the noble maxim of the Christians.

742 Arrian, iv. 7. It is not certain, however, that this passage alludes to the Christians. The followers of Judas of Galilee were called Galilæans, and they were famous for their indifference to death. See Joseph. _Antiq._ xviii. 1.

743 xi. 3.

744 Peregrinus.

745 Zosimus.

746 “Do I not hate them, O Lord, that hate thee?—yea, I hate them with a perfect hatred.”

747 See Renan’s _Apôtres_, p. 314.

748 M. Pressensé very truly says of the Romans, “Leur religion était essentiellement un art—l’art de découvrir les desseins des dieux et d’agir sur eux par des rites variés.”—_Hist. des Trois premiers Siècles_, tome i. p. 192. Montesquieu has written an interesting essay on the political nature of the Roman religion.

749 Sueton. _Claud._ xxv.

750 Plin. _Hist. Nat._ vii. 31.

751 Tacit. _De Orat._ xxxv.; Aul. Gell. _Noct._ xv. 11. It would appear, from this last authority, that the rhetoricians were twice expelled.

752 Dion Cassius, lii. 36. Most historians believe that this speech represents the opinions, not of the Augustan age, but of the age of the writer who relates it.

753 On the hostility of Vespasian to philosophers, see Xiphilin, lxvi. 13; on that of Domitian, the _Letters_ of Pliny and the _Agricola_ of Tacitus.

754 See a remarkable passage in Dion Chrysostom, _Or._ lxxx. _De Libertate_.

755 Cic. _De Legib._ ii. 11; Tertull. _Apol._ v.

756 Livy, iv. 30

757 Val. Maximus, i. 3, § 1.

758 Livy, xxv. 1.

759 Val. Max. i. 3, § 2.

760 See the account of these proceedings, and of the very remarkable speech of Postumius, in Livy, xxxix. 8-19. Postumius notices the old prohibition of foreign rites, and thus explains it:—“Judicabant enim prudentissimi viri omnis divini humanique juris, nihil æque dissolvendæ religionis esse, quam ubi non patrio sed externo ritu sacrificaretur.” The Senate, though suppressing these rites on account of the outrageous immoralities connected with them, decreed, that if any one thought it a matter of religious duty to perform religious ceremonies to Bacchus, he should be allowed to do so on applying for permission to the Senate, provided there were not more than five assistants, no common purse, and no presiding priest.

761 Val. Max. i. 3.

762 See Dion Cassius, xl. 47; xlii. 26; xlvii. 15; liv. 6.

763 Joseph. _Antiq._ xviii. 3.

764 Tacit. _Annal._ ii. 85.

765 Tacitus relates (_Ann._ xi. 15) that under Claudius a senatus consultus ordered the pontiffs to take care that the old Roman (or, more properly, Etruscan) system of divination was observed, since the influx of foreign superstitions had led to its disuse; but it does not appear that this measure was intended to interfere with any other form of worship.

766 “Sacrosanctam istam civitatem accedo.”—Apuleius, _Metam._ lib. x. It is said that there were at one time no less than 420 ædes sacræ in Rome. Nieupoort, _De Ritibus Romanorum_ (1716), p. 276.

767 Euseb. _Præp. Evang._ iv. 1. Fontenelle says very truly, “Il y a lieu de croire que chez les payens la religion n’estoit qu’une pratique, dont la spéculation estoit indifférente. Faites comme les autres et croyez ce qu’il vous plaira.”—_Hist. des Oracles_, p. 95. It was a saying of Tiberius, that it is for the gods to care for the injuries done to them: “Deorum injurias diis curæ.”—Tacit. _Annal._ i. 73.

768 The most melancholy modern instance I remember is a letter of Hume to a young man who was thinking of taking orders, but who, in the course of his studies, became a complete sceptic. Hume strongly advised him not to allow this consideration to interfere with his career (Burton, _Life of Hume_, vol. ii. pp. 187, 188.) The utilitarian principles of the philosopher were doubtless at the root of his judgment.

_ 769 De Divinat._ ii. 33; _De Nat. Deor._ ii. 3.

770 “Quæ omnia sapiens servabit tanquam legibus jussa non tanquam diis grata.... Meminerimus cultum ejus magis ad morem quam ad rem pertinere.”—St. Aug. _De Civ. Dei_, vi. 10. St. Augustine denounces this view with great power. See, too, Lactantius. _Inst. Div._ ii. 3.

_ 771 Enchirid._ xxxi.

772 This is noticed by Philo.

773 The ship in which the atheist Diagoras sailed was once nearly wrecked by a tempest, and the sailors declared that it was a just retribution from the gods because they had received the philosopher into their vessel. Diagoras, pointing to the other ships that were tossed by the same storm, asked whether they imagined there was a Diagoras in each. (_Cic. De Nat. Deor._ iii. 37.)

774 The vestal Oppia was put to death because the diviners attributed to her unchastity certain “prodigies in the heavens,” that had alarmed the people at the beginning of the war with Veii. (Livy, ii. 42.) The vestal Urbinia was buried alive on account of a plague that had fallen upon the Roman women, which was attributed to her incontinence, and which is said to have ceased suddenly upon her execution. (Dion. Halicar. ix.)

775 Pliny, in his famous letter to Trajan about the Christians, notices that this had been the case in Bithynia.

776 Tert. _Apol._ xl. See, too, Cyprian, _contra Demetrian._, and Arnobius, _Apol._ lib. i.

777 St. Aug. _De Civ. Dei_, ii. 3.

778 Instances of this kind are given by Tertullian _Ad Scapulam_, and the whole treatise _On the Deaths of the Persecutors_, attributed to Lactantius, is a development of the same theory. St. Cyprian’s treatise against Demetrianus throws much light on the mode of thought of the Christians of his time. In the later historians, anecdotes of adversaries of the Church dying horrible deaths became very numerous. They were said especially to have been eaten by worms. Many examples of this kind are collected by Jortin. (_Remarks on Eccles. Hist._ vol. i. p. 432.)

779 “It is remarkable, in all the proclamations and documents which Eusebius assigns to Constantine, some even written by his own hand, how, almost exclusively, he dwells on this worldly superiority of the God adored by the Christians over those of the heathens, and the visible temporal advantages which attend on the worship of Christianity. His own victory, and the disasters of his enemies, are his conclusive evidences of Christianity.”—Milman, _Hist. of Early Christianity_ (ed. 1867), vol. ii. p. 327. “It was a standing argument of Athanasius, that the death of Arius was a sufficient refutation of his heresy.”—Ibid. p. 382.

780 Socrates, _Eccl. Hist._, vii. 30.

781 Greg. Tur. ii. 30, 31. Clovis wrote to St. Avitus, “Your faith is our victory.”

782 Milman’s _Latin Christianity_ (ed. 1867), vol. ii. pp. 236-245.

783 Ibid. vol. iii. p. 248.

_ 784 Ep._ xl.

785 “An diutius perferimus mutari temporum vices, irata cœli temperie? Quæ Paganorum exacerbata perfidia nescit naturæ libramenta servare. Unde enim ver solitam gratiam abjuravit? unde æstas, messe jejuna, laboriosum agricolam in spe destituit aristarum? unde hyemis intemperata ferocitas uberitatem terrarum penetrabili frigore sterilitatis læsione damnavit? nisi quod ad impietatis vindictam transit lege sua naturæ decretum.”—Novell. lii. Theodos. _De Judæis, Samaritanis, et Hæreticis_.

786 Milman’s _Latin Christianity_ vol. ii. p. 354.

_ 787 Démonomanie des Sorciers_, p. 152.

788 See a curious instance in Bayle’s _Dictionary_, art. “Vergerius.”

789 Pliny, Ep. x. 43. Trajan noticed that Nicomedia was peculiarly turbulent. On the edict against the hetæriæ, or associations, see _Ep._ x. 97.

790 All the apologists are full of these charges. The chief passages have been collected in that very useful and learned work, Kortholt, _De Calumniis contra Christianos_. (Cologne, 1683.)

791 Justin Martyr tells us it was the brave deaths of the Christians that converted him. (_Apol._ ii. 12.)

792 Peregrinus.

_ 793 Ep._ x. 97.

_ 794 Ep._ ii.

795 Juvenal describes the popular estimate of the Jews:—

“Tradidit arcano quodcunque volumine Moses; Non monstrare vias, eadem nisi sacra colenti, Quæsitum ad fontem solos deducere verpos.”

_Sat._ xix. 102-105.

It is not true that the Mosaic law contains these precepts.

796 See Merivale’s _Hist. of Rome_, vol. viii. p. 176.

797 See Justin Martyr, _Trypho_, xvii.

798 Justin Martyr, _Apol._ i. 26.

799 Eusebius expressly notices that the licentiousness of the sect of Carpocrates occasioned calumnies against the whole of the Christian body. (iv. 7.) A number of passages from the Fathers describing the immorality of these heretics are referred to by Cave, _Primitive Christianity_, part ii. ch. v.

800 Epiphanius, _Adv. Hær._ lib. i. Hær. 26. The charge of murdering children, and especially infants, occupies a very prominent place among the recriminations of religionists. The Pagans, as we have seen, brought it against the Christians, and the orthodox against some of the early heretics. The Christians accused Julian of murdering infants for magical purposes, and the bed of the Orontes was said to have been choked with their bodies. The accusation was then commonly directed against the Jews, against the witches, and against the mid-wives, who were supposed to be in confederation with the witches.

801 See an example in Eusebius, iii. 32. After the triumph of Christianity the Arian heretics appear to have been accustomed to bring accusations of immorality against the Catholics. They procured the deposition of St. Eustathius, Bishop of Antioch, by suborning a prostitute to accuse him of being the father of her child. The woman afterwards, on her death-bed, confessed the imposture. (Theodor. _Hist._ i. 21-22.) They also accused St. Athanasius of murder and unchastity, both of which charges he most triumphantly repelled. (Ibid. i. 30.)

802 The great exertions and success of the Christians in making female converts is indignantly noticed by Celsus (_Origen_) and by the Pagan interlocutor in Minucius Felix (_Octavius_), and a more minute examination of ecclesiastical history amply confirms their statements. I shall have in a future chapter to revert to this matter. Tertullian graphically describes the anger of a man he knew, at the conversion of his wife, and declares he would rather have had her “a prostitute than a Christian.” (_Ad Nationes_, i. 4.) He also mentions a governor of Cappadocia, named Herminianus, whose motive for persecuting the Christians was his anger at the conversion of his wife, and who, in consequence of his having persecuted, was devoured by worms. (_Ad Scapul._ 3.)

803 “Matronarum Auriscalpius.” The title was given to Pope St. Damasus. See Jortin’s _Remarks on Ecclesiastical History_, vol. ii. p. 27. Ammianus Marcellinus notices (xxvii. 3) the great wealth the Roman bishops of his time had acquired through the gifts of women. Theodoret (_Hist. Eccl._ ii. 17) gives a curious account of the energetic proceedings of the Roman ladies upon the exile of Pope Liberius.

_ 804 Conj. Præcept._ This passage has been thought to refer to the Christians; if so, it is the single example of its kind in the writings of Plutarch.

805 Pliny, in his letter on the Christians, notices that their assemblies were before daybreak. Tertullian and Minucius Felix speak frequently of the “nocturnes convocationes,” or “nocturnes congregationes” of the Christians. The following passage, which the last of these writers puts into the mouth of a Pagan, describes forcibly the popular feeling about the Christians: “Qui de ultima fæce collectis imperitioribus et mulieribus credulis sexus sui facilitate labentibus, plebem profanæ conjurationis instituunt: quæ nocturnis congregationibus et jejuniis solennibus et inhumanis cibis non sacro quodam sed piaculo fœderantur, latebrosa et lucifugax natio, in publico muta, in angulis garrula; templa ut busta despiciunt, deos despuunt, rident sacra.”—_Octavius._ Tertullian, in exhorting the Christian women not to intermarry with Pagans, gives as one reason that they would not permit them to attend this “nightly convocation.” (_Ad Uxorem_, ii. 4.) This whole chapter is a graphic but deeply painful picture of the utter impossibility of a Christian woman having any real community of feeling with a “servant of the devil.”

_ 806 De Civ. Dei_, xix. 23.

807 The policy of the Romans with reference to magic has been minutely traced by Maury, _Hist. de la Magie_. Dr. Jeremie conjectures that the exorcisms of the Christians may have excited the antipathy of Marcus Aurelius, he, as I have already noticed, being a disbeliever on this subject. (Jeremie, _Hist. of Church in the Second and Third Cent._ p. 26.) But this is mere conjecture.

808 See the picture of the sentiments of the Pagans on this matter, in Plutarch’s noble _Treatise on Superstition_.

809 Thus Justin Martyr: “Since sensation remains in all men who have been in existence, and everlasting punishment is in store, do not hesitate to believe, and be convinced that what I say is true.... This Gehenna is a place where all will be punished who live unrighteously, and who believe not that what God has taught through Christ will come to pass.”—_Apol._ 1. 18-19. Arnobius has stated very forcibly the favourite argument of many later theologians: “Cum ergo hæc sit conditio futurorum ut teneri et comprehendi nullius possint anticipationis attactu: nonne purior ratio est, ex duobus incertis et in ambigua expectatione pendentibus, id potius credere quod aliquas spes ferat, quam omnino quod nullas? In illo enim periculi nihil est, si quod dicitur imminere cassum fiat et vacuum. In hoc damnum est maximum.”—_Adv. Gentes_, lib. i

810 The continual enforcement of the duty of belief, and the credulity of the Christians, were perpetually dwelt on by Celsus and Julian. According to the first, it was usual for them to say, “Do not examine, but believe only.” According to the latter, “the sum of their wisdom was comprised in this single precept, believe.” The apologists frequently notice this charge of credulity as brought against the Christians, and some famous sentences of Tertullian go far to justify it. See Middleton’s _Free Enquiry_, Introd. pp. xcii, xciii.

811 See the graphic picture of the agony of terror manifested by the apostates as they tottered to the altar at Alexandria, in the Decian persecution, in Dionysius apud Eusebius, vi. 41. Miraculous judgments (often, perhaps, the natural consequence of this extreme fear) were said to have frequently fallen upon the apostates. St. Cyprian has preserved a number of these in his treatise _De Lapsis_. Persons, when excommunicated, were also said to have been sometimes visibly possessed by devils. See Church, _On Miraculous Powers in the First Three Centuries_, pp. 52-54.

812 “Si quis aliquid fecerit, quo leves hominum animi superstitione numinis terrerentur, Divus Marcus hujusmodi homines in insulam relegari rescripsit,” _Dig._ xlviii. tit. 19, l. 30.

813 A number of instances have been recorded, in which the punishment of the Christians was due to their having broken idols, overturned altars, or in other ways insulted the Pagans at their worship. The reader may find many examples of this collected in Cave’s _Primitive Christianity_, part i. c. v.; Kortholt, _De Calumniis contra Christianos_; Barbeyrac, _Morale des Pères_, c. xvii.; Tillemont, _Mém. ecclésiast._ tome vii. pp. 354-355; Ceillier, _Hist. des Auteurs sacrés_, tome iii. pp. 531-533. The Council of Illiberis found it necessary to make a canon refusing the title of “martyr” to those who were executed for these offences.

814 The first of these anecdotes is told by St. Jerome, the second by St. Clement of Alexandria, the third by St. Irenæus.

815 The severe discipline of the early Church on this point has been amply treated in Marshall’s _Penitential Discipline of the Primitive Church_ (first published in 1714, but reprinted in the library of Anglo-Catholic theology), and in Bingham’s _Antiquities of the Christian Church_, vol. vi. (Oxford, 1855). The later saints continually dwelt upon this duty of separation. Thus, “St. Théodore de Phermé disoit, que quand une personne dont nous étions amis estoit tombée dans la fornication, nous devions luy donner la main et faire notre possible pour le relever; mais que s’il estoit tombé dans quelque erreur contre la foi, et qu’il ne voulust pas s’en corriger après les premières remonstrances, il falloit l’abandonner promptement et rompre toute amitié avec luy, de peur qu’en nous amusant à le vouloir retirer de ce gouffre, il ne nous y entraînast nous-mêmes.”—Tillemont, _Mém. Ecclés._ tome xii. p. 367.

816 “Habere jam non potest Deum patrem qui ecclesiam non habet matrem. Si potuit evadere quisquam qui extra arcam Noe fuit, et qui extra ecclesiam foris fuerit evadit ... hanc unitatem qui non tenet ... vitam non tenet et salutem ... esse martyr non potest qui in ecclesia non est.... Cum Deo manere non possunt qui esse in ecclesia Dei unanimes noluerunt. Ardeant licet flammis et ignibus traditi, vel objecti bestiis animas suas ponunt, non erit illa fidei corona, sed pœna perfidiæ, nec religiosæ virtutis exitus gloriosus sed desperationis interitus. Occidi talis potest, coronari non potest. Sic se Christianum esse profitetur quo modo et Christum diabolus sæpe mentitur.”—Cyprian, _De Unit. Eccles._

817 Eusebius, v. 16.

_ 818 Confess._ iii. 11. She was afterwards permitted by a special revelation to sit at the same table with her son!

_ 819 Ep._ xl.

_ 820 Ep._ xviii.

821 Tertull. _De Corona_.

822 Milman’s _Hist. of Christianity_, vol. ii. pp. 116-125. It is remarkable that the Serapeum of Alexandria was, in the Sibylline books, specially menaced with destruction.

823 Eunapius, _Lives of the Sophists_. Eunapius gives an extremely pathetic account of the downfall of this temple. There is a Christian account in Theodoret (v. 22). Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, was the leader of the monks. The Pagans, under the guidance of a philosopher named Olympus, made a desperate effort to defend their temple. The whole story is very finely told by Dean Milman. (_Hist. of Christianity_, vol. iii. pp. 68-72.)

_ 824 Apology_, v. The overwhelming difficulties attending this assertion are well stated by Gibbon, ch. xvi. Traces of this fable may be found in Justin Martyr. The freedom of the Christian worship at Rome appears not only from the unanimity with which Christian writers date their troubles from Nero, but also from the express statement in _Acts_ xxviii. 31.

825 “Judæos, impulsore Chresto, assidue tumultuantes, Roma expulit.”—Sueton. _Claud._ xxv. This banishment of the Jews is mentioned in _Acts_ xviii. 2, but is not there connected in any way with Christianity. A passage in Dion Cassius (lx. 6) is supposed to refer to the same transaction. Lactantius notices that the Pagans were accustomed to call Christus, _Chrestus_: “Eum immutata litera Chrestum solent dicere.”—_Div. Inst._ iv. 7.

826 This persecution is fully described by Tacitus (_Annal._ xv. 44), and briefly noticed by Suetonius (_Nero_, xvi.).

827 This has been a matter of very great controversy. Looking at the question apart from direct testimony, it appears improbable that a persecution directed against the Christians on the charge of having burnt Rome, should have extended to Christians who did not live near Rome. On the other hand, it has been argued that Tacitus speaks of them as “haud perinde in crimine incendii, quam odio humani generis convicti;” and it has been maintained that “hatred of the human race” was treated as a crime, and punished in the provinces. But this is, I think, extremely far-fetched; and it is evident from the sequel that the Christians at Rome were burnt as incendiaries, and that it was the conviction that they were not guilty of that crime that extorted the pity which Tacitus notices. There is also no reference in Tacitus to any persecution beyond the walls. If we pass to the Christian evidence, a Spanish inscription referring to the Neronian persecution, which was once appealed to as decisive, is now unanimously admitted to be a forgery. In the fourth century, however, Sulp. Severus (lib. ii.) and Orosius (_Hist._ vii. 7) declared that general laws condemnatory of Christianity were promulgated by Nero; but the testimony of credulous historians who wrote so long after the event is not of much value. Rossi, however, imagines that a fragment of an inscription found at Pompeii indicates a general law against Christians. See his _Bulletino d’Archeologia Cristiana_ (Roma, Dec. 1865), which, however, should be compared with the very remarkable _Compte rendu_ of M. Aubé, _Acad. des Inscrip. et Belles-lettres_, Juin 1866. These two papers contain an almost complete discussion of the persecutions of Nero and Domitian. Gibbon thinks it quite certain the persecution was confined to the city; Mosheim (_Eccl. Hist._ i. p. 71) adopts the opposite view, and appeals to the passage in Tertullian (_Ap._ v.), in which he speaks of “leges istæ ... quas Trajanus ex parte frustratus est, vitando inquiri Christianos,” as implying the existence of special laws against the Christians. This passage, however, may merely refer to the general law against unauthorised religions, which Tertullian notices in this very chapter; and Pliny, in his famous letter, does not show any knowledge of the existence of special legislation about the Christians.

828 Ecclesiastical historians maintain, but not on very strong evidence, that the Church of Rome was founded by St. Peter, A.D. 42 or 44. St. Paul came to Rome A.D. 61.

829 On this horrible punishment see Juvenal, _Sat._ i. 155-157.

830 Lactantius, in the fourth century, speaks of this opinion as still held by some “madmen” (_De Mort. Persec._ cap. ii.); but Sulp. Severus (_Hist._ lib. ii.) speaks of it as a common notion, and he says that St. Martin, when asked about the end of the world, answered, “Neronem et Antichristum prius esse venturos: Neronem in occidentali plaga regibus subactis decem, imperaturum, persecutionem autem ab eo hactenus exercendam ut idola gentium coli cogat.”—_Dial._ ii. Among the Pagans, the notion that Nero was yet alive lingered long, and twenty years after his death an adventurer pretending to be Nero was enthusiastically received by the Parthians (Sueton. _Nero_, lvii.).

831 See the full description of it in Rossi’s _Bulletino d’Archeol. Crist._ Dec. 1865. Eusebius (iii. 17) and Tertullian (_Apol._ v.) have expressly noticed the very remarkable fact that Vespasian, who was a bitter enemy to the Jews, and who exiled all the leading Stoical philosophers except Musonius, never troubled the Christians.

832 See a pathetic letter of Pliny, lib. iii. _Ep._ xi. and also lib. i. _Ep._ v. and the _Agricola_ of Tacitus.

833 Euseb. iii. 20.

834 “Præter cæteros Judaicus fiscus acerbissime actus est. Ad quem deferebantur, qui vel improfessi Judaicam intra urbem viverent vitam, vel dissimulata origine imposita genti tributa non pependissent.”—Sueton. _Domit._ xi. Suetonius adds that, when a young man, he saw an old man of ninety examined before a large assembly to ascertain whether he was circumcised.

835 Euseb. iii. 18.

836 See the accounts of these transactions in Xiphilin, the abbreviator of Dion Cassius (lxvii. 14); Euseb. iii. 17-18. Suetonius notices (_Domit._ xv.) that Flavius Clemens (whom he calls a man “contemptissimæ inertiæ”) was killed “ex tenuissima suspicione.” The language of Xiphilin, who says he was killed for “impiety and Jewish rites;” the express assertion of Eusebius, that it was for Christianity; and the declaration of Tertullian, that Christians were persecuted at the close of this reign, leave, I think, little doubt that this execution was connected with Christianity, though some writers have questioned it. At the same time, it is very probable, as Mr. Merivale thinks (_Hist. of Rome_, vol. vii. pp. 381-384), that though the pretext of the execution might have been religious, the real motive was political jealousy. Domitian had already put to death the brother of Flavius Clemens on the charge of treason. His sons had been recognised as successors to the throne, and at the time of his execution another leading noble named Glabrio was accused of having fought in the arena. Some ecclesiastical historians have imagined that there may have been two Domitillas—the wife and niece of Flavius Clemens. The islands of Pontia and Pandataria were close to one another.

837 “Tentaverat et Domitianus, portio Neronis de crudelitate; sed qua et homo facile cœptum repressit, restitutis etiam quos relegaverat.” (_Apol._ 5.) It will be observed that Tertullian makes no mention of any punishment more severe than exile.

838 Euseb. iii. 20.

_ 839 De Mort. Persec._ iii.

840 Xiphilin, lxviii. 1. An annotator to Mosheim conjectures that the edict may have been issued just before the death of the emperor, but not acted on till after it.

841 Euseb. iv. 26. The whole of this apology has been recently recovered, and translated into Latin by M. Renan in the _Spicilegium Solesmense_.

_ 842 Apol._ 5.

843 Lactant. _De Mort. Persec._ 3-4.

844 Pliny, _Ep._ x. 97-98.

845 Euseb. lib. iii.

846 There is a description of this earthquake in Merivale’s _Hist. of the Romans_, vol. viii. pp. 155-156. Orosius (_Hist._ vii. 12) thought it was a judgment on account of the persecution of the Christians.

847 Eusebius, iv. 8-9. See, too, Justin Martyr, _Apol._ i. 68-69.

848 This is mentioned incidentally by Lampridius in his _Life of A. Severus_.

849 See this very curious letter in Vopiscus, _Saturninus_.

850 Justin Mart. _Ap._ i. 31. Eusebius quotes a passage from Hegesippus to the same effect. (iv. 8.)

851 “Præcepitque ne cui Judæo introeundi Hierosolymam esset licentia, Christianis tantum civitate permissa.”—_Oros._ vii. 13.

852 A letter which Eusebius gives at full (iv. 13), and ascribes to Antoninus Pius, has created a good deal of controversy. Justin Mart. (_Apol._ i. 71) and Tertullian (_Apol._ 5) ascribe it to Marcus Aurelius. It is now generally believed to be a forgery by a Christian hand, being more like a Christian apology than the letter of a Pagan emperor. St. Melito, however, writing to Marcus Aurelius, expressly states that Antoninus had written a letter forbidding the persecution of Christians. (Euseb. iv. 26.)

853 It is alluded to by Minucius Felix.

854 Eusebius, iv. 16.

855 St. Melito expressly states that the edicts of Marcus Aurelius produced the Asiatic persecution.

856 Eusebius, iv. 15.

857 See the most touching and horrible description of this persecution in a letter written by the Christians of Lyons, in Eusebius, v. 1.

858 Sulpicius Severus (who was himself a Gaul) says of their martyrdom (_H. E._, lib. ii.), “Tum primum intra Gallias Martyria visa, serius trans Alpes Dei religione suscepta.” Tradition ascribes Gallic Christianity to the apostles, but the evidence of inscriptions appears to confirm the account of Severus. It is at least certain that Christianity did not acquire a great extension till later. The earliest Christian inscriptions found are (one in each year) of A.D. 334, 347, 377, 405, and 409. They do not become common till the middle of the fifth century. See a full discussion of this in the preface of M. Le Blant’s admirable and indeed exhaustive work, _Inscriptions Chrétiennes de la Gaule_.

859 It was alleged among the Christians, that towards the close of his reign Marcus Aurelius issued an edict protecting the Christians, on account of a Christian legion having, in Germany, in a moment of great distress, procured a shower of rain by their prayers. (Tert. _Apol._ 5.) The shower is mentioned by Pagan as well as Christian writers, and is portrayed on the column of Antoninus. It was “ascribed to the incantations of an Egyptian magician, to the prayers of a legion of Christians, or to the favour of Jove towards the best of mortals, according to the various prejudices of different observers.”—Merivale’s _Hist. of Rome_, vol. viii. p. 338.

860 Xiphilin, lxxii. 4. The most atrocious of the Pagan persecutions was attributed, as we shall see, to the mother of Galerius, and in Christian times the Spanish Inquisition was founded by Isabella the Catholic; the massacre of St. Bartholomew was chiefly due to Catherine of Medicis, and the most horrible English persecution to Mary Tudor.

861 Euseb. v. 21. The accuser, we learn from St. Jerome, was a slave. On the law condemning slaves who accused their masters, compare Pressensé, _Hist. des Trois premiers Siècles_ (2me série), tome i. pp. 182-183, and Jeremie’s _Church History of Second and Third Centuries_, p. 29. Apollonius was of senatorial rank. It is said that some other martyrs died at the same time.

862 “Judæos fieri sub gravi pœna vetuit. Idem etiam de Christianis sanxit.”—Spartian. _S. Severus_. The persecution is described by Eusebius, lib. vi. Tertullian says Severus was favourable to the Christians, a Christian named Proculus (whom he, in consequence, retained in the palace till his death) having cured him of an illness by the application of oil. (_Ad Scapul._ 4.)

863 “Of the persecution under Severus there are few, if any, traces in the West. It is confined to Syria, perhaps to Cappadocia, to Egypt, and to Africa, and in the latter provinces appears as the act of hostile governors proceeding upon the existing laws, rather than the consequence of any recent edict of the emperor.”—Milman’s _Hist. of Christianity_, vol. ii. pp. 156-157.

_ 864 Adv. Cels._ iii. See Gibbon, ch. xvi.

865 Eusebius, vi. 28.

866 Lampridius, _A. Severus_. The historian adds, “Judæis privilegia reservavit. Christianos esse passus est.”

867 Compare Milman’s _History of Early Christianity_ (1867), vol. ii. p. 188, and his _History of Latin Christianity_ (1867), vol. i. pp. 26-59. There are only two cases of alleged martyrdom before this time that can excite any reasonable doubt. Irenæus distinctly asserts that Telesphorus was martyred; but his martyrdom is put in the beginning of the reign of Antoninus Pius (he had assumed the mitre near the end of the reign of Hadrian), and Antoninus is represented, by the general voice of the Church, as perfectly free from the stain of persecution. A tradition, which is in itself sufficiently probable, states that Pontianus, having been exiled by Maximinus, was killed in banishment.

868 Tacitus has a very ingenious remark on this subject, which illustrates happily the half-scepticism of the Empire. After recounting a number of prodigies that were said to have taken place in the reign of Otho, he remarks that these were things habitually noticed in the ages of ignorance, but now only noticed in periods of terror. “Rudibus sæculis etiam in pace observata, quæ nunc tantum in metu audiuntur.”—_Hist._ i. 86.

869 M. de Champagny has devoted an extremely beautiful chapter (_Les Antonins_, tome ii. pp. 179-200) to the liberty of the Roman Empire. See, too, the fifty-fourth chapter of Mr. Merivale’s _History_. It is the custom of some of the apologists for modern Cæsarism to defend it by pointing to the Roman Empire as the happiest period in human history. No apology can be more unfortunate. The first task of a modern despot is to centralise to the highest point, to bring every department of thought and action under a system of police regulation, and, above all, to impose his shackling tyranny upon the human mind. The very perfection of the Roman Empire was, that the municipal and personal liberty it admitted had never been surpassed, and the intellectual liberty had never been equalled.

870 Sueton. _Aug._ xxxi. It appears from a passage in Livy (xxxix. 16) that books of oracles had been sometimes burnt in the Republic.

871 Tacitus has given us a very remarkable account of the trial of Cremutius Cordus, under Tiberius, for having published a history in which he had praised Brutus and called Cassius the last of Romans. (_Annal._ iv. 34-35.) He expressly terms this “novo ac tunc primum audito crimine,” and he puts a speech in the mouth of the accused, describing the liberty previously accorded to writers. Cordus avoided execution by suicide. His daughter, Marcia, preserved some copies of his work, and published it in the reign and with the approbation of Caligula. (Senec. _Ad. Marc._ 1; Suet. _Calig._ 16.) There are, however, some traces of an earlier persecution of letters. Under the sanction of a law of the decemvirs against libellers, Augustus exiled the satiric writer Cassius Severus, and he also destroyed the works of an historian named Labienus, on account of their seditious sentiments. These writings were re-published with those of Cordus. Generally, however, Augustus was very magnanimous in his dealings with his assailants. He refused the request of Tiberius to punish them (Suet. _Aug._ 51), and only excluded from his palace Timagenes, who bitterly satirised both him and the empress, and proclaimed himself everywhere the enemy of the emperor. (Senec. _De Ira_, iii. 23.) A similar magnanimity was shown by most of the other emperors; among others, by Nero. (Suet. _Nero_, 39.) Under Vespasian, however, a poet, named Maternus, was obliged to retouch a tragedy on Cato (Tacit. _De Or._ 2-3), and Domitian allowed no writings opposed to his policy. (Tacit. _Agric._) But no attempt appears to have been made in the Empire to control religious writings till the persecution of Diocletian, who ordered the Scriptures to be burnt. The example was speedily followed by the Christian emperors. The writings of Arius were burnt in A.D. 321, those of Porphyry in A.D. 388. Pope Gelasius, in A.D. 496, drew up a list of books which should not be read, and all liberty of publication speedily became extinct. See on this subject Peignot, _Essai historique sur la Liberté d’Écrire_; Villemain, _Études de Littèr. ancienne_; Sir C. Lewis on the _Credibility of Roman Hist._ vol. i. p. 52; Nadal, _Mémoire sur la liberté qu’avoient les soldats romains de dire des vers satyriques contre ceux qui triomphoient_ (Paris 1725).

872 See a collection of passages on this point in Pressensé, _Hist. des Trois premiers Siècles_ (2me série), tome i. pp. 3-4.

_ 873 Trypho._

_ 874 Apol._ xxxvii.

875 Euseb. vi. 43.

876 Eusebius, it is true, ascribes this persecution (vi. 39) to the hatred Decius bore to his predecessor Philip, who was very friendly to the Christians. But although such a motive might account for a persecution like that of Maximin, which was directed chiefly against the bishops who had been about the Court of Severus, it is insufficient to account for a persecution so general and so severe as that of Decius. It is remarkable that this emperor is uniformly represented by the Pagan historians as an eminently wise and humane sovereign. See Dodwell, _De Paucitate Martyrum_, lii.

877 St. Cyprian (_Ep._ vii.) and, at a later period, St. Jerome (_Vit. Pauli_), both notice that during this persecution the desire of the persecutors was to subdue the constancy of the Christians by torture, without gratifying their desire for martyrdom. The consignment of Christian virgins to houses of ill fame was one of the most common incidents in the later acts of martyrs which were invented in the middle ages. Unhappily, however, it must be acknowledged that there are some undoubted traces of it at an earlier date. Tertullian, in a famous passage, speaks of the cry “Ad Lenonem” as substituted for that of “Ad Leonem;” and St. Ambrose recounts some strange stories on this subject in his treatise _De Virginibus_.

878 St. Cyprian has drawn a very highly coloured picture of this general corruption, and of the apostasy it produced, in his treatise _De Lapsis_, a most interesting picture of the society of his time. See, too, the _Life of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus_, by Greg. of Nyssa.

879 “La persécution de Dèce ne dura qu’environ un an dans sa grande violence. Car S. Cyprien, dans les lettres écrites en 251, dès devant Pasque, et mesme dans quelques-unes écrites apparemment dès la fin de 250, témoigne que son église jouissoit déjà de quelque paix, mais d’une paix encore peu affermie, en sorte que le moindre accident eust pu renouveler le trouble et la persécution. Il semble mesme que l’on n’eust pas encore la liberté d’y tenir les assemblées, et néanmoins il paroist que tous les confesseurs prisonniers à Carthage y avoient esté mis en liberté dès ce temps-là.”—Tillemont, _Mém. d’Hist. ecclésiastique_, tome iii. p. 324.

880 Dionysius the bishop wrote a full account of it, which Eusebius has preserved (vi. 41-42). In Alexandria, Dionysius says, the persecution produced by popular fanaticism preceded the edict of Decius by an entire year. He has preserved a particular catalogue of all who were put to death in Alexandria during the entire Decian persecution. They were seventeen persons. Several of these were killed by the mob, and their deaths were in nearly all cases accompanied by circumstances of extreme atrocity. Besides these, others (we know not how many) had been put to torture. Many, Dionysius says, perished in other cities or villages of Egypt.

881 See St. Cyprian, _Ep._ viii.

882 There was much controversy at this time as to the propriety of bishops evading persecution by flight. The Montanists maintained that such a conduct was equivalent to apostasy. Tertullian had written a book, _De Fuga in Persecutione_, maintaining this view; and among the orthodox the conduct of St. Cyprian (who afterwards nobly attested his courage by his death) did not escape animadversion. The more moderate opinion prevailed, but the leading bishops found it necessary to support their conduct by declaring that they had received special revelations exhorting them to fly. St. Cyprian, who constantly appealed to his dreams to justify him in his controversies (see some curious instances collected in Middleton’s _Free Enquiry_, pp. 101-105), declared (_Ep._ ix.), and his biographer and friend Pontius re-asserted (_Vit. Cyprianis_), that his flight was “by the command of God.” Dionysius, the Bishop of Alexandria, asserts the same thing of his own flight, and attests it by an oath (see his own words in Euseb. vi. 40); and the same thing was afterwards related of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus. (See his _Life_ by Gregory of Nyssa.)

883 “E veramente che almeno fino dal secolo terzo i fedeli abbiano posseduto cimiteri a nome commune, e che il loro possesso sia stato riconosciuto dagl’ imperatori, è cosa impossibile a negare.”—Rossi, _Roma Sotterranea_, tomo i. p. 103.

884 This is all fully discussed by Rossi, _Roma Sotterranea_, tomo i. pp. 101-108. Rossi thinks the Church, in its capacity of burial society, was known by the name of “ecclesia fratrum.”

885 See, on the history of early Christian Churches, Cave’s _Primitive Christianity_, part i. c. vi.

886 Dodwell (_De Paucit. Martyr._ lvii.) has collected evidence of the subsidence of the persecution in the last year of the reign of Decius.

887 This persecution is not noticed by St. Jerome, Orosius, Sulpicius Severus, or Lactantius. The very little we know about it is derived from the letters of St. Cyprian, and from a short notice by Dionysius of Alexandria, in Eusebius, vii. 1. Dionysius says, Gallus began the persecution when his reign was advancing prosperously, and his affairs succeeding, which probably means, after he had procured the departure of the Goths from the Illyrian province, early in A.D. 252 (see Gibbon, chap. x.). The disastrous position into which affairs had been thrown by the defeat of Decius appears, at first, to have engrossed his attention.

888 Lucius was at first exiled and then permitted to return, on which occasion St. Cyprian wrote him a letter of congratulation (_Ep._ lvii.). He was, however, afterwards re-arrested and slain, but it is not, I think, clear whether it was under Gallus or Valerian. St. Cyprian speaks (_Ep._ lxvi.) of both Cornelius and Lucius as martyred. The emperors were probably at this time beginning to realise the power the Bishops of Rome possessed. We know hardly anything of the Decian persecution at Rome except the execution of the bishop; and St. Cyprian says (_Ep._ li.) that Decius would have preferred a pretender to the throne to a Bishop of Rome.

889 Dionysius, Archbishop of Alexandria; see Euseb. vii. 10.

890 Eusebius, vii. 10-12; Cyprian, _Ep._ lxxxi. Lactantius says of Valerian, “Multum quamvis brevi tempore justi sanguinis fudit.”—_De Mort. Persec._ c. v.

891 Cyprian. _Ep._ lxxxi.

892 See his _Life_ by the deacon Pontius, which is reproduced by Gibbon.

893 Eusebius, vii. 13.

894 Tertullian had before, in a curious passage, spoken of the impossibility of Christian Cæsars. “Sed et Cæsares credidissent super Christo si aut Cæsares non essent seculo necessarii, aut si et Christiani potuissent esse Cæsares.”—_Apol._ xxi.

_ 895 Contra Demetrianum._

896 Eusebius, vii. 30. Aurelian decided that the cathedral at Antioch should be given up to whoever was appointed by the bishops of Italy.

897 Compare the accounts in Eusebius, vii. 30, and Lactantius, _De Mort._ c. vi.

898 See the forcible and very candid description of Eusebius, viii. 1.

899 This is noticed by Optatus.

900 See the vivid pictures in Lact. _De Mort. Persec._

901 Lactant. _De Mort. Persec._ 15.

902 Eusebius, viii.

903 These incidents are noticed by Eusebius in his _History_, and in his _Life of Constantine_, and by Lactantius, _De Mort. Persec._

904 “Italy, Sicily, Gaul, and whatever parts extend towards the West,—Spain, Mauritania, and Africa.”—Euseb. _Mart. Palest._ ch.