THE CHURCH IN ROME
IN THE FIRST CENTURY

iii

MCMXCIX

iv

THE BAMPTON LECTURES

FOR 1913

LECTURE
V.

I
Peter 4:16:
‘If a man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him
glorify God in this name.’

The
reasons that were given at the close of the last lecture for holding that
St. Paul was released from his bonds and left Rome at the beginning of the
year 62 A.D.
are greatly strengthened by the consideration of certain facts recorded by
Josephus. He tells us that during the short procuratorship of Festus a
serious quarrel had arisen between King Agrippa and the priestly party at
Jerusalem. Agrippa had built a lofty tower to his palace, from the top of
which he was able to overlook the Temple courts. This the Jews bitterly
resented, and in their turn erected a high wall to block out the view.
Agrippa thereupon applied to Festus, who at first commanded the Jews to
pull down the wall and then, fearing an outbreak of violence, afterwards
permitted them to send an embassy to lay the matter before Caesar. This
embassy consisted of twelve persons headed by the High Priest Ishmael, son
of Fabi, and Hilkiah the treasurer. The probable date of their arrival in
Rome was April or May, 62 A.D.,
for Festus died in the spring of this year. Nero had just married his
mistress, the beautiful and profligate Poppaea Sabina, to satisfy whose
ambition he had first divorced his long-suffering wife Octavia and was
within a few weeks to order her murder. Now Poppaea was, if not actually a
Jewish proselyte, one of that outer circle of adherents to Judaism known
as ‘God-fearers.’ Her influence with the Emperor was now exerted on behalf
of the Jewish embassy, with the result that Nero decided in their favour.
Ishmael and Hilkiah were, however, 116retained
at Rome as hostages, a very necessary precaution, for Agrippa on hearing
the news had at once deposed Ishmael from the High Priesthood, and
Jerusalem was in a very disturbed state.[1]

Had
these two men been in Rome at the time of Paul’s trial, they would have
been important witnesses in support of the charges against him, and it
would not have been difficult with the help of Poppaea to secure his
condemnation.[2]
The growth of a bitter feeling of hostility between the Jews and the new
Christian sect which had sprung up out of their midst was in this sixth
decade of the first century becoming more accentuated. The men of the
synagogues hated this new faith, which had for a number of years found
shelter under the protection of the privileges accorded to Judaism, as a
religio
licita,
throughout the empire, but which by its principle of universalism struck a
blow at the very foundations of Judaic exclusiveness. And it was against
the Jewish converts, much more than against the far larger number of
Gentiles who had embraced the Gospel, that their anger was especially
directed. The Jewish Christians were in the eyes of their orthodox
fellow-countrymen traitors to their race and to the traditions of their
fathers. Hence the vindictive spite with which 117St.
Paul was pursued, and the fierce outburst of fanaticism at Jerusalem which
in this very spring of 62 A.D.
had led to the stoning of St. James the Just.[3]

The
animosity of the Roman Jews was probably much less pronounced than that of
the fierce priestly fanatics in Judaea, but they would naturally be
anxious not to add to the hatred and contempt in which they were held by
all classes of the population of Rome, by allowing public opinion to
regard Christianity as a mere sect of Judaism.[4]

About
this time it is certain that the distinction between Jew and Christian
began to be generally recognised, and rumours to spread abroad, which
probably had their origin in Jewish malice, by which the Christians were
accused of holding impious orgies and horrible Thyestean feasts and of
being a secret society of anarchists and criminals. It is not difficult to
see that such slanders might be based upon distorted versions of Christian
teaching, of the baptism of infants in the Catacombs, and of the nocturnal
meetings of the brethren for the holding of the Agape meal and the
partaking of the Eucharist.[5]
118

The
exact date of the last visit of St. Peter to Rome cannot be fixed with
certainty, but a number of considerations point to the year 63
A.D.
as the time of his arrival. That St. Peter was martyred in Rome towards
the end of the reign of Nero is a fact, as I have previously shown,
established by overwhelming evidence.[6]

That
he resided there for some length of time before his death is witnessed to
by a weight of tradition which only prejudice and prepossession can put on
one side, as without evidential value. By some curious perversity of
critical aberration it was precisely the Ebionite fictions, which have
come down to us in the 3rd century pseudo-Clementine literature, which
Baur and Lipsius and their followers adopted as historical, accepting
their representation of Peter and Paul as the heads of two rival and
hostile Christian factions and as passing their lives in continuous and
acute conflict, while rejecting the tradition universally accepted in
every part of the Christian world for fifteen centuries, which regarded
these two Apostles as the joint founders of the Roman Church, working in
harmony for the common cause, and sealing their testimony by death in the
city where both alike spent their last days. This Tübingen theory, worked
out with much literary ingenuity and all the resources of erudition, had
for some decades a great vogue, but being fundamentally false it could not
live long when tested by the results of scientific archaeological
research, and has at length been practically abandoned. Christian
archaeology indeed has during the past half century made giant strides,
especially at Rome itself, and the accumulating evidence furnished by the
excavations and explorations in the Catacombs and elsewhere has been most
illuminating, and tends more and more by the testimony of still existing
monuments, tombs, and inscriptions to verify the general correctness of
early Christian tradition.[7]

St.
Peter’s final sojourn in Rome has a permanent 119record
in the first Epistle bearing his name, which is from the historian’s
standpoint a document of the utmost value. Its authenticity was never
questioned in ancient times and the external witness to its genuineness is
unimpeachable.[8]

If
on subjective grounds doubts have been thrown on its authorship, its date
and the place from which it was written, it has been simply because its
contents, being on the face of them that which they claimed to be—Petrine,
Neronian, and Roman—naturally clashed with theories which denied to it any
of these attributes. With the death and burial of the Tübingen fictions,
let it be hoped that the doubts about the genuineness of this Epistle may
also find decent interment.

The
salutation of the Epistle is addressed to the elect sojourners of the
Dispersion, in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, in other
words to the Jewish Christians scattered throughout the four Roman
provinces (for Pontus and Bithynia formed one province) which lay north
and west of the Taurus mountain range.[9]

This
region then, it may be assumed, had been the scene of Peter’s missionary
labours for a number of years before the 120visit
to Rome during which the epistle was written. Taken in conjunction with
the strong body of evidence from other sources for a residence of St.
Peter in Rome during the latter part of Nero’s reign,[10]

and
with the internal evidence of the epistle itself—that it was written in
that city during the earlier stages of the persecution which followed the
great fire of 64 A.D.,
the words of ch. v.v.v13, ‘the Church (or the
sister) which is in Babylon elect together with you saluteth you,’ are not
difficult of interpretation. To Jewish readers the term Babylon, as
symbolically and figuratively connoting the great city of oppression and
corruption on the Tiber, was, if one may judge by the use made of it in
the Apocalypse, so familiar as to be at once intelligible. The 5th book of
the Sibylline Oracles, in a passage of Jewish origin referring to the
misdeeds of Nero, and possibly written not long after the fall of
Jerusalem, likewise employs the name Babylon for Rome simply and directly,
as St. Peter does.[11]

The
epistle is remarkable for the extent of its indebtedness to other New
Testament writings, and especially to those of St. Pau1.[12]

There
is no lack of originality in either 121thought
or diction in this essentially Petrine document, but St. Peter’s mind
appears to have been one of those that absorbed what he had heard or read
so completely that he reproduced it almost unconsciously, and yet in
reproducing transformed the borrowed phrase or idea, so as to make it his
very own. It is peculiarly interesting to note that this Epistle plainly
testifies that the Apostle was intimately acquainted with those two great
epistles of St. Paul, the Epistles to the Romans and to the
Ephesians,[13]

and
that he was deeply impressed by them. This being so, it follows not only
that there was at this time no opposition between Peter and Paul, such as
fills the foreground of Christian Baur’s imaginative representation of the
relations between the two men, but that any earlier divergencies of view
had been replaced by the closest agreement and by practical identity in
the general character of their teaching. Further the fact that the
language of these two Epistles, Ephesians and Romans, should have been
thus fresh in the memory of St. Peter, when dictating his own letter, is
one of those undesigned coincidences which afford the strongest
circumstantial proof that the historical setting is in exact accordance
with that traditional interpretation of documentary evidence which I have
been endeavouring to show is the correct interpretation. St. Paul, as we
have seen, had sent from Rome in 61 A.D.
an Epistle to the Church in Colossae and another circular epistle,
commonly called the Epistle to the Ephesians, but in reality addressed to
a whole group of Asian Churches. In the Epistle to Colossae the Apostle in
sending the salutation of Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, who was then with
him states that he (Mark) was about to visit them, and he gives to him his
commendation.[14]

St. Peter in writing, also from Rome, to these same Asian Churches a few
years later adds to the salutation from the Church that of ‘Marcus my
son.’[15]

Now St. Peter, according to the opening passage of his Epistle, had been
122working
himself in Asia Minor in the years preceding this last Roman visit. The
natural inference therefrom is that Mark had, while journeying through
those Churches to which the Epistle of the Ephesians had been sent, joined
himself to his old chief, and then accompanied him once again to Rome, as
his interpreter. The many references to the Epistle to the Ephesians by
St. Peter in these circumstances are not more than what might reasonably
be expected. Moreover in. Christian Rome, the Apostle on his arrival so
soon after Paul’s release would find himself in a Pauline atmosphere, and
being a man keenly susceptible to influences from without, familiarity
with the Epistle to the Romans could scarcely fail to exercise that
profound effect upon his mind which is reflected in his utterances. But
not only was Mark a living bond between the two Apostles at this period;
the concluding paragraph of this Epistle seems to imply that Silvanus
also, Paul’s former missionary associate, had been with Peter in Asia
Minor, that he had accompanied him to Rome, that he was now acting as his
amanuensis in writing his epistle to the Churches of the Dispersion, and
that he was destined to be its bearer. The words ‘through Silvanus, a
faithful brother in my judgement, have I written to you briefly’ stand at
the beginning of the short postscript to the epistle, which was in all
probability written by St. Peter in his own hand, and it has been taken to
signify that in the body of the epistle the more cultured scribe was
allowed more or less a free hand in putting into literary form the
rough-hewn Greek which fell from the lips of the Apostle.[16]
123

An
event took place when St. Peter was in Rome, but some months before he
wrote his Epistle, which was fraught with terrible consequences to the
Christians. On July 19, 64 A.D.,
a fire broke out at the end of the Great Circus adjoining the Palatine and
Caelian Hills, amidst shops containing inflammable wares. For nine days
the conflagration raged, with most disastrous results. Of the fourteen
districts into which Rome was divided, four only escaped uninjured, three
were totally destroyed, in the other seven only a few scarred and
half-ruined houses remained. Nero was at Antium at the time, but he
hurried to Rome only to see his own palace buildings on the Palatine and
Esquiline, filled with works of art, consumed by the flames. From 400,000
to 500,000 persons found themselves homeless and most of them destitute.
The Emperor threw himself with energy into the formidable work of dealing
with such an emergency. He opened to the people the Campus Martins, the
public buildings of Agrippa and his own gardens, where he erected
temporary shelters for the homeless. He brought up supplies of corn and
lowered the price. The Sibylline Oracles were consulted and propitiations
offered to the Gods. But in spite of all these acts, which should have won
him popularity, manifold rumours were soon afloat attributing the fire to
incendiaries carrying out Nero’s own orders. It was commonly believed that
he wished the ancient city to be burnt down, with its dark, narrow,
close-packed streets in order that he might build a new one to be called
after his own name.[17]

The
work of rebuilding in any case was one in which he delighted and on which
he lavished vast sums of money. Broad, well-built streets of stone brought
from the quarries of Gabii and Alba, with long colonnades, replaced the
124narrow
and tortuous alleys which had disappeared. Above all he now appropriated
an immense area for the erection of a magnificent palace for himself, to
which the name of the Domus Aurea was given, surrounded by open
fields, woods and lakes, in which nature and art vied with each other in
creating a scene of perfect sylvan beauty. All this is told us by Tacitus,
who then proceeds to describe the effect upon the public mind of all this
activity on the part of the Emperor:—‘but neither man’s efforts to give
relief, nor the largess of the prince, nor the propitiations of the Gods
were able to dissipate belief in the sinister report that the fire had
been ordered. Wherefore to efface the rumour, Nero contrived that
accusations should be brought against a set of people hated for their
abominations, whom the populace called Christians, and subjected them to
the most exquisite torments. The author of this name, one Christus, had in
the reign of Tiberius been executed by the procurator Pontius Pilatus; and
the pernicious superstition, though repressed for the moment, began to
break out afresh, not only in Judaea, the origin of that evil, but also in
Rome, where all things horrible and shameful from every quarter collect
together and are practised.’[18]

With
these sentences Tacitus begins the famous passage, so full of difficult
and debateable points, in which he describes the Neronian persecution of
the Christians. Before, 125however,
proceeding further, and as a necessary preliminary to any detailed
consideration of the passage as a whole, I wish to point out what seems to
me a fundamental error on the part of almost every writer upon the
subject: the error of connecting the criminal process set on foot by Nero
against the Christians, and its culmination in the horrible fete in the
Vatican Gardens too closely with the Great Fire, either as regards the
time or the character of the charges. Most writers assume that the
Christians were accused of being incendiaries almost as soon as the last
flames were extinguished, and that the Vatican holocaust took place in the
month of August 64 A.D.
Now such a supposition runs directly counter to the Tacitean narrative and
derives no support from any other source.

The
section of Book XV of the ‘Annals’ comprising seven chapters (38–44) forms
a continuous story and treats of a considerable interval of time. The
words ‘wherefore to efface the rumour’ . . . are in strict
dependence on the sentence that precedes them—‘but neither man’s efforts
to give relief, nor the largesses of the prince, nor the propitiations of
the Gods were able to dissipate belief in the sinister report that the
fire had been ordered.’ With the utmost distinctness and clearness of
which language is capable Tacitus here declares that Nero did not try to
shift odium from himself by inflaming odium against the Christians, until
he had exhausted all the means for gaining popularity and diverting the
suspicions of the crowd, which the historian has just recapitulated. Now
it is simply impossible that the gigantic administrative task, first, of
providing food and temporary shelter for some hundreds of thousands’ of
homeless and destitute persons, and, afterwards, of clearing away the
ruins and debris of so vast a conflagration, of laying out and planning
new and spacious streets and of setting to work to build them with stone
brought from distant quarries, can have been carried out in less than five
or six months. In all probability the Emperor did not give instructions
for the prosecution of the Christians until the early part of 65
A.D.126

It
is no objection that the whole of this section (i.e. cc. 38–44) is
included in what appears to be the Tacitean narrative of the events of the
year 64, while the account of the happenings of the year 65 begins at
chapter 48. It is the ordinary practice of this historian thus to group
together so as to form a single and complete episode in his narrative a
series of events having close connexion with one another but really spread
over a considerable space of time. A conspicuous instance occurs in the
account of the Pisonian conspiracy and its suppression, which follows that
of the fire and fills the last twenty-six chapters of Book XV. The history
of the year 65 seems to begin in chapter 48 with the words ‘Silius Nerva
and Atticus Vestinus then enter on the consulship, when a conspiracy was
begun and at once gathered strength, into which senators, knights,
soldiers even women had vied with one another in giving in their names,
partly through hatred of Nero, partly through a liking for C. Piso.’[19]

But
Tacitus in thus writing had apparently forgotten that he had already
spoken of the conspiracy of Piso as being in existence in the year 63
A.D.,
and it is evident therefore that the narrative of the growth of the plot
given in chapters 48 to 53 covers the whole intervening period. The
statement that one of the leaders, Subrius Flavus, ‘had formed a sudden
resolution to attack Nero when his house was in flames and he was running
hither and thither unattended in the darkness’ shows that as far back as
the crisis of the conflagration the Emperor 127only
escaped by the lack of nerve of his would-be assailant. It will thus be
seen that, while seeming to compress the rise and fall of the Pisonian
conspiracy into the first few months of 65 A.D.,
Tacitus is really telling of the long-drawn-out drama of some two or three
years. The two sections therefore of the ‘Annals,’ (1) that dealing with
the fire, the rebuilding and the persecution, and (2) that which treats of
the doings of the conspirators after the failure of Subrius Flavus, are
overlapping narratives and really contemporary. What influenced Nero at
this juncture to select the Christians as his victims can only be
conjectured. Possibly the suspicions of the Roman crowd had fallen upon
the Jews, the objects at once of their detestation and contempt, as being
incendiaries, partly because their own Ghetto across the Tiber was one of
the few uninjured quarters of the city, and partly because the hated race
were at that time in especial favour at the Court. The Jews on their part,
alarmed at being the objects of popular anger, would not be slow to use
the influence of Poppaea with the Emperor, and to suggest that the blame
should be thrown on the Christians, a sect from which they were anxious to
be dissociated and on which they would be only too glad to wreak their
spite.[20]

A
plausible reason would easily be found in distorted versions of the
utterances of Christian ‘prophets’ and preachers concerning that
approaching destruction of the world by fire, in which all Christians at
that time firmly believed. However this may have been, the charge of
incendiarism, if ever preferred, was only a pretext; it was as malefactors
and criminals that the Christians suffered. An examination of the extant
authorities will, I think, bear out this contention.

In
the first place comes the all-important passage of Tacitus (xv. 44), a
part of which has been already given. 128After
his reference to the origin of Christianity he continues thus: ‘those
therefore who confessed were first brought to trial, afterwards by the
information derived from them, an immense multitude were joined with them,
not so much for the crime of incendiarism, as for hatred of the human
race. To their deaths mockeries were added, so that covered by the skins
of wild beasts they were torn to pieces by dogs and perished or were
affixed to crosses or set on fire and, when day had fallen, were burnt so
as to serve as an illumination for the night. Nero had offered his gardens
for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a public show in the circus. He
mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer, standing in a car.
Hence compassion began to arise, although towards criminals deserving the
extremest forms of punishment, on the ground that they were destroyed not
for the public good but to gratify a single man’s savage cruelty.’[21]

Since
the publication of Mommsen’s article ‘Der Religionsfrevel nach römische
Recht’ in 1894,[22]

the
views 129of
the writer, as the greatest authority upon the history of the early
Empire, gained wide acceptance, and have now a large and growing number of
adherents. According to this view stated briefly the early persecutions of
the Christians were mere matters of police and were dealt with by the
summary powers, coercitio,
possessed by the executive magistrates at Rome and by the governors,
proconsuls, procurators and their deputies, in the provinces. Now the
subject of this article is in no sense specially the Neronian persecution
or the interpretation of the passage of Tacitus which we are considering.
It is a paper of a general character, dealing with what I may call the
normal procedure of the Roman State in its treatment of religious
offences, and no doubt it gives a perfectly correct account of the
ordinary repressive measures which were continually being exercised
against the Christians, as Christians, certainly after the time of
Trajan’s rescript, but to some extent during the whole of the FIavian
period also.[23]

But
the Neronian persecution was not a normal repressive measure, such as
those with which Mommsen is concerned. The persecution of 65 A.D.
was the first act of hostility of the Roman State against those professing
the Christian faith, and it was the personal act of the Emperor himself.
No one can read Chapter 44 of Book XV of the ‘Annals’ without 130admitting
this. From first to last Tacitus lays stress upon the personal part taken
by Nero in the whole of the proceedings. The account opens with the
statement ‘Ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos et quaesitissimis
poenis adfecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat,’
and in the closing scene ‘hortos suos ei spectaculo Nero obtulerat.’ That
in the popular view Nero was the prime mover throughout could scarcely be
more strongly expressed than in the words ‘in saevitiam
unius.’

The
evidence of Suetonius is scarcely less direct. His biography of Nero
strikes a kind of balance between the praiseworthy and beneficent deeds of
the Emperor and the much longer list of black crimes and histrionic
follies, apparently with the object of showing that the latter far
outweigh the former. Among the good and commendable deeds comes the brief
notice—‘the Christians, a race of men holding a strange and noxious
superstition, were visited with punishments.’[24]

The
impious sect was only worthy of mention because the severity of their
punishment reflected a certain measure of personal credit upon Nero’s
administration. That of Tertullian is remarkable. In his ‘Apology’ to the
Emperor Septimus Severus he writes: Consult your records [commentarios];
there you will find Nero first savagely attacked with Caesarean sword this
sect then rising chiefly at Rome. But of such an initiator of our
condemnation we are even proud. For he who knows that man can understand
that nothing except what is great and good was condemned by Nero.’ Again
in the ‘Scorpion’—‘we have read the lives of the Caesars; Nero was the
first to stain with blood the rising faith at Rome.’[25]

Tertullian
131was
himself a jurist learned in the law, and as the quotations above testify,
he bases his statements and arguments upon documentary evidence, both the
works of historians and state records. Since, therefore, the Emperor
personally initiated the persecution of the Christians in 64–65
A.D.—‘ergo
abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos,’ as Tacitus says—the trial must have
taken place in the imperial court presided over in the Emperor’s absence
by the Pretorian prefects and their assessors of the Imperial Council.[26]

Probably
in this matter Tigellinus took the leading part; the character of the
final tragedy in the Vatican Gardens was quite in accord with what we are
told of the fiendish ingenuity of his cruelty. There is abundant evidence
to show that Tigellinus after 62 A.D.
was not merely the instigator of many of Nero’s crimes but the active and
merciless agent in the execution of them.[27]

If
Nero then, in the course of the winter months of 64–65 A.D.,
by his personal initiative brought the Christians to trial before his
court, knowing them to be held in general odium for their crimes, in order
to divert public attention from the widely accredited rumour that it was
by his secret orders that the city had been set on fire, let us now
proceed to examine the highly condensed and somewhat enigmatic narrative
of Tacitus with the view of further investigating 132the
character of the charges brought against the accused. In the first place
let us clear our minds of a misapprehension. Negatively they were not
accused of having had any hand in the actual conflagration of July, 64
A.D.
Not a single writer, Christian or pagan, who refers to the Neronian
persecution ever suggests that it had any connexion with the fire, with
the single exception of the late fourth-century chronographer, Sulpicius
Severus, who, however, contents himself with an almost slavish
reproduction of Tacitus.[28]

Neither
Tertullian nor Orosius, who were well acquainted with the works of Tacitus
and with other documentary sources no longer accessible to us, shows any
sign of being aware of any correlation between the charges against the
Christians and the burning of Rome.[29]

There
is not a trace in the contemporary writings—1 Peter, Hebrews, the
Apocalypse or 1 Clement—that such an accusation was made.

This
being so, what then is the meaning of ‘those therefore who confessed were
first brought to trial, afterwards by the information derived from them an
immense multitude were joined with them, not so much for the crime of
incendiarism as for hatred of the human race’? Now in the first place it
is surely plain that had any Christians confessed to the crime of setting
fire to Rome in July, 64 A.D.,
and had they implicated the general body of their fellow-Christians in
their guilt, there would have been no need of any subsidiary charges;
exemplary punishment would have been summary and immediate, and Nero’s
name would at once have been freed from the stigma that rested upon it.
But it was not freed. There is something approaching unanimity in the
verdict of the writers of succeeding centuries (for Tacitus scarcely
conceals what was his personal opinion) in ascribing the fire to Nero, and
what is more important for our present contention of contemporaries also.
The 133above-named
Subrius Flavus, a tribune of the Pretorian guard, when on his trial before
Nero, as a conspirator, in April 65 A.D.,
did not scruple to tell the Emperor to his face that he was an incendiary,
and Tacitus is at pains to state ‘I have given the man’s very words.’[30]

‘Pliny
the Elder also, in his ‘Natural History’ published before 79 A.D.,
writing upon the longevity of certain trees remarks that they lasted until
the fires of the Emperor Nero with which he burnt the city. . .
,’ and he concludes in words that leave not the smallest doubt as to his
conviction in this matter, ‘They would have remained afterwards by
cultivation green and young had not that Prince hastened the death even of
trees.’[31]

The
incendiarism of which the Christians were accused and of which they made
open confession was an incendiarism in will not yet realised, but in their
firm and absolute conviction immediately to come, and meanwhile eagerly
watched for and desired. In Christian circles this one belief during the
early decades of the second half of the first century overpowered all
others, and transformed all men’s ideas and their outlook upon life, that
the second Advent of Christ was at hand, and it would be preceded by the
destruction by fire of the world and with it the great city of Rome. In
every part of the New Testament there are evidences that the Christians of
the period with which we are dealing expected that ‘the end of all
things’[32]

would
be consummated in their own lifetime, and the Apocalyptic literature of
the time dwells not only upon the fire which was to burn up the world and
all its wickedness, but also upon the sign that the final judgment was at
hand, by the 134appearance
in bodily form of Antichrist, the incarnation of Belial or Satan, and
there is evidence to show that the enormities of Nero had before the end
of his reign led Christians to identify him as Antichrist personified.[33]

The
open expression of such views at such a time would not escape the notice
of Tigellinus’ secret police, and the offenders, no doubt, when arrested
(exactly as Tacitus reports) made no attempt to deny or explain away the
language they had used. Confessing that they were Christians and that a
belief in the approaching destruction by fire of wicked Rome and of the
world of which it was the head was to them as Christians an article of
faith, it is easy to see how ‘by their information’ the whole body of
Christians became included in the accusation. That afterwards under
torture some of the more weak-kneed prisoners may have turned traitors and
furnished the government with the names and meeting-places of their fellow
disciples, and in the stress of agony may even have given false evidence
concerning the crimes with which popular opinion charged them, is not
impossible. The language of the Epistle to the Hebrews rather supports
such an hypothesis, as do certain passages of ‘The Shepherd’ of Hermas.[34]

The
proceedings against the Christians for the use of language threatening a
coming judgment upon the world and its destruction by fire can be
paralleled by the account given by Philostratus of the visit of the
sophist and wonder-worker, Apollonius of Tyana, to Rome in 66 A.D.
We read how ‘Tigellinus, who controlled the sword of Nero, expelled from
Rome’ the cynic Demetrius, a friend of Apollonius, ‘for destroying the
Baths by his language, and secretly he [Tigellinus] began to keep his eye
on 135Apollonius
against the time when he should say something unguardedly that could be
taken hold of. . . . All the eyes that Government sees with were
turned to scrutinise him: his discourses or his silences; his sitting or
walking; what he ate and with whom—all was reported. . . .’
Finally, we read a little further on that Apollonius was overheard saying
concerning the Emperor: ‘Pardon the gods for taking pleasure in buffoons,’
and on this being reported. Tigellinus ‘sent officers to arrest him, and
he had to defend himself on a charge of sacrilege against Nero.’ The
representation here given of the power and methods of procedure of
Tigellinus and of the action that he took in the year 66 in regard to
Apollonius and his companion furnishes us with the means of filling in
with detail the story of what happened to the Christians in the preceding
year told by Tacitus in barest and briefest outline.[35]

The
offences with which the Christians were charged under Nero appear to have
been, according to Tacitus, of the same character as those of which Pliny
the Younger speaks in his famous letter from Bithynia to the Emperor
Trajan, as ‘the crimes adhering to the name,’[36]

and
which we find described in the writings of the second-century Christian
Apologists, perhaps more succinctly than any other by Athenagoras (about
177 A.D.),
who writes ‘Three things 136are
alleged against us: Atheism, Thyestean feasts, Oedipodean intercourse.’
The refusal to take part in the ceremonies or to recognise the gods of the
national religion constituted the crime of Atheism. The secret assemblies,
the bringing of children to them for the rite of baptism, the words of
consecration in the Holy Eucharist, the salutation with ‘a holy kiss,’
were travestied by the enemies of Christianity into charges of murder,
cannibalism, and promiscuous intercourse, which were accepted as true by
public opinion already in the days of Nero, and which still remained a
fixed article of popular belief and execration when Tertullian wrote his
‘Apology’ about a century and a half later.[37]

These
were the flagitia
to which Tacitus attaches the epithets atrocia
and pudenda,
abominations horrible and shameful.

That
the Christians were also condemned for the crime of ‘magic’ may he
inferred from the fact that their religion is styled by Tacitus a most
pernicious superstition—exitiabilis
superstitio—and
by Suetonius a strange and maleficent superstition — superstitio
nova ac malefica
— (the word maleficus
having juristically the special signification of a magician or sorcerer),
and the punishment in the Vatican Gardens was that specially assigned to
those convicted of practising magical arts.[38]
The crime of ‘hatred of the human race,’ however, was the charge which
included all these other accusations, and henceforth during the succeeding
centuries was to render the mere name of Christian a sufficient ground for
summary 137punishment.
This charge, as we have seen, may have originated in the suggestions of
Jewish malice, sustained by the reports which no doubt reached the ears of
the authorities—through the agency of some of that host of spies and
informers (delatores)
employed by Tigellinus—of the incendiary discourses in which certain
noxious religious fanatics, called Christians by the populace, were openly
expressing their belief in the imminent destruction of the world and its
inhabitants by fire without any concealment of the joyful anticipation
with which they awaited the Divine judgment that was impending over a city
which was in their eyes the home of iniquity and of every sort of
blasphemy. But when those first arrested were brought before the
magistrates it was soon found that the fiery words of these enthusiasts
were not nearly so damning as the principles in which they gloried and
which forbade them to recognise the national gods or the religion of the
Roman people, or to take part in any of the public religious ceremonies or
spectacles, or in that worship of the genius of Caesar, who was the
personification of the state. Thus that law of maiestas,
which in the reign of Tiberius had been such a powerful instrument for the
assertion of the imperial authority, and which after a period of disuse
had been revived by Nero in 62 A.D.,
to be during this very spring of 65 A.D.
employed by him with such terrible effect in securing the condemnation of
those implicated rightly or wrongly in the Pisonian conspiracy, was no
less a ready implement in the hands of Tigellinus for striking at the
humbler Christians as enemies of the Roman state. It is of this
lex
de maiestate
that Tertullian writes in his appeal ‘ad Nationes’ (c. 7) ‘under Nero
condemnation [of this Name] was firmly established.’ And a few lines
further on, ‘Although all his other acts were rescinded this Neronian
ordinance alone remained permanent.’[39]

Henceforth
the mere confession 138that
he was a Christian rendered a man an outlaw. It has been argued that the
name of ‘Christian’ was not yet in common use in the days of Nero, and
that Tacitus and Suetonius being writers of the second century may have
employed the term proleptically. Apart from the fact that both these
historians drew their material from contemporary sources, St. Peter in his
first epistle, which, as we hold, was written while the Neronian
persecution was gathering force, distinctly says ‘If a man suffer as a
Christian let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this Name,’
and, the Acts of the Apostles already completed before 62 A.D.,
it testifies not only that the word was popularly used in Antioch about 40
A.D.,
but that it was familiar to a man in the position of King Agrippa in 59
A.D.
With the constant intercourse between Antioch and the capital, the
nickname would be carried to Rome probably quicker than to any other
place, and the familiar Latin form of the word would be speedily
popularised even so early as the time of Claudius.[40]

Pliny
in his letter to Trajan most clearly points out that condemnation of
Christians for the name 139only
was already of long standing in 112 A.D.
His chief object in writing to the Emperor was to know whether he was to
punish ‘for the Name itself, if crimes were wanting, or for the crimes
adhering to the Name.’[41]

Let
us now see how far the evidence from contemporary Christian sources
confirms that derived from Pagan authorities of a later date. That of the
1st Epistle of St. Peter has already been quoted to show that in 65
A.D.
Christians were punished for the name. This epistle was written in an
atmosphere of persecution. The Apostle as one who has been an eyewitness
of persecution in Rome sends a letter of exhortation and warning to the
Judaeo-Christians of the Roman provinces of Asia Minor, who were at the
time he was writing passing through trials of the same character as those
which their brethren in the capital had just been experiencing. Three
times does Peter refer to the charge of being evildoers or malefactors,[42]

twice
to 140the
ordeal of punishment by fire.[43]

His
exhortations are largely directed to the object of entreating his readers
to prove by the goodness of their lives and their obedience to lawful
authority that the accusations of being criminal evildoers was
unfounded.[44]

But on the other hand ‘if ye be reproached by the name of Christ, blessed
are ye’; ‘if a man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed but let
him glorify God in this name.’[45]

The
testimony of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which was most probably sent from
Asia Minor to Rome in the following year 66 A.D.,
and of the Apocalypse, of the date 70 A.D.,
is similar to that of St. Peter in that both refer to the severity of the
sufferings which the Roman Christians had endured, and also to the fact
that the persecution which had begun in Rome had afterwards spread to Asia
Minor. The evidence that Tacitus did not exaggerate either the horrors of
the scene in the Vatican Gardens nor the large number of those who
perished is abundantly corroborated. ‘Ye endured’—says the Epistle to the
Hebrews—‘a great conflict of sufferings; partly being made a public
spectacle by insults and afflictions: and partly by becoming partakers
with them that were so used,’[46]

while
the writer of the Apocalypse, to quote only one of many passages, speaks
of the woman seated on the Seven Hills as ‘drunken with the blood of the
Saints and of the martyrs of Jesus.’[47]

Still
more remarkable are the added details given by Clement of Rome in what
seems to be the description of an eyewitness. ‘Enough of ancient
examples,’ he writes, ‘let us pass on to the athletes of very recent
times, let us take the noble examples 141of
our own days.’ Then after telling of the deaths of St. Peter and St. Paul
he proceeds:—‘to these men {the Apostles] of holy living was gathered
together a great multitude of the elect, who having suffered through
jealousy many insults and tortures, became very splendid examples amongst
ourselves. Persecuted through jealousy, women after having suffered, in
the guise of Danaids and Dirces, terrible and monstrous outrages, attained
the goal which made sure to them the race of faith, and those who were
weak in body received a noble reward.’[48]

I
have already shown that the arrest of the first batch of accused
Christians cannot have taken place till several months after the fire of
July 64, probably in the early spring of 65 A.D.
The language of Tacitus may be held to imply that there were, as in the
case of Pliny’s proceedings in Bithynia, several questionings and trials
of the prisoners, and some time would elapse between the first confessions
of which the historian speaks and the final seizing of the ‘immense
multitude’ for the holocaust in the Gardens. One thing, moreover, may be
regarded as certain: that such a nocturnal spectacle would not have been
planned so long as the night air was chilly, nor would Nero with his
scrupulous care for the preservation of his divine voice[49]

have
appeared at night in the open on a car in the garb of a charioteer in cold
weather. But if this were the case then an additional motive appears for
the arresting in the spring of 65 A.D.
of this crowd of humble Christians in order that their execution might be
a spectacle to glut the eyes of the Roman populace. In the middle of April
the plot of the Pisonian conspirators to take Nero’s life during the
festival of Ceres was discovered. He grasped at the opportunity of getting
rid of a 142number
of illustrious and wealthy men, the confiscation of whose goods helped to
fill his treasury, depleted by the building of the Domus
Aurea
and other extravagances. Some undoubtedly were guilty, but once more
public opinion condemned Nero. ‘He was perpetually,’says Tacitus, ‘under
the lash of popular talk, which said he had destroyed men of rank, who
were innocent, out of jealousy or fear.’[50]

Thus
confronted with a fresh crop of disquieting rumours, while those of his
complicity in the conflagration were still current, it may well be that he
sought at the great fetes that were given in gratitude for his escape from
death to win a fleeting popularity and divert criticism from himself by
devising the spectacle of the illumination with living torches and of the
rest of the unspeakable barbarities of that night. But if so, the arrest
of the ingens
multitudo
must have been synchronous with the trials and condemnation of the
Pisonian conspirators. May it not be that in this fact may be found the
explanation of that passage of Tacitus in which he relates how Nero sent
out bodies of soldiers in every direction, and how ‘in long succession
troops of prisoners in chains were dragged along and stood at the gates of
the imperial gardens’?[51]

Mr.
Henderson in his ‘Life and Principate of Nero,[52]

commenting
on these trials of April 65 A.D.,
says ‘The temporary measures of repression and punishment were grossly
exaggerated . . . . Forty-one persons in all were
implicated; of these twenty were certainly guilty, sixteen of them
suffered death, the others were acquitted—only one certainly innocent
person was slain.’ Who then were these troops of prisoners in chains? Is
it not possible that the ingens
multitudo
who were arrested and convicted in chapter 44 are identical with the
continua
et vincta agmina
of chapter 58? If the two events were really contemporaneous, Tacitus may
have misread some record and converted Christian prisoners into Pisonian
conspirators.143

In
dealing with the question of the Neronian persecution and its date, one
important authority cannot be neglected, that of Orosius, who wrote his
Historiae adversus Paganos under the direction of his master and
friend St. Augustine (410–20). In the seventh book of his history, in
which is found the account of the fire and the persecution, Orosius shows
himself to be thoroughly acquainted with the writings of Suetonius,
Tacitus, and Josephus, all of which he quotes by name. The passage which
specially concerns us runs as follows: ‘The boldness of his [Nero’s]
impiety towards God increased the mass of his crimes, for he was the first
at Rome to visit the Christians with punishments and deaths, and through
all the provinces he commanded that they should be tortured with a like
persecution, and having endeavoured to extirpate their very name he killed
the most blessed Apostles Peter by the cross, Paul by the sword. Soon
calamities in heaps began on every side to oppress the wretched state, for
in the following autumn so great a pestilence fell upon the city that
according to the registers [in the temple] of Libitina there were thirty
thousand funerals.’ These last words are a direct quotation from
Suetonius, who however as usual gives no date to the pestilence. This is
however given by Tacitus, who thus concludes his narrative of the events
of 65 A.D.:
‘The Gods also marked by storms and diseases a year made shameful by so
many crimes. Campania was devastated by a hurricane. . . . the
fury of which extended to the vicinity of the City, in which a violent
pestilence was carrying away every class of human beings . . .
houses were filled with dead bodies, the streets with funerals.’[53]
144

Orosius
thus confirms the evidence of 1 Peter, the Hebrews, and the Apocalypse,
that a general persecution in the provinces was concurrent with that in
Rome; and his express statement that the pestilence happened in the autumn
following the persecution fixes the date of the trials and execution of
the Christians, as having taken place in the earlier part of 65
A.D.

[1] Josephus,
Ant. xx. 8.
11: τῇ
γυναικὶ
Ποππαίᾳ,
θεοσεβὴς
γὰρ
ἦν,
ὑπὲρ
τῶν
Ἰουδαίων
δεηθείσῃ
χαριζόμενος,
ἣ
τοῖς
μὲν
δέκα
προσέταξεν
ἀπιέναι. Poppaea
was buried after the Jewish custom, Tac.
Ann. xvi. 6; Hist. i. 22.

[2] The
above was not an isolated act of interference by Poppaea on behalf of the
Jews. Josephus in his autobiography tells us of the hard case of certain
priests who were his friends. They had been sent in irons to Rome
by Felix to be tried before Caesar, and remained there in strict
confinement without trial for some four years. Josephus describes how in
63 A.D. he went to Rome to see if he could do anything on their behalf.
After a perilous voyage, in which he was shipwrecked in the Adriatic, he
finally, like St. Paul, landed at Puteoli, and there met a Jewish actor,
named Aliturus, who was a favourite with Nero. By this man’s help he
obtained an introduction to Poppaea, who not only secured for him the
liberation of the priests but gave to him some costly presents before his
return to Judaea.—Josephus, Vita , c. 3. Josephus tells us that he was at
this time twenty-six years of age, and as he was born in the year of the
accession of Caligula, i.e. 37 A.D. , this fixes the date of his voyage to
Rome as 63 A.D.

[3] Josephus,
Ant. xx. 9. 1; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. ii. 23.

[4] It
was not until the second century that the hatred between Jew and Christian
became irreconcilable. In the period we are considering the Christians had
no enmity against the Jews, as a race. Despite the bad treatment he
received at their hands at Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Thessalonica,
Corinth, Ephesus, and, above all, at Jerusalem, St. Paul always showed the
strongest affection for his fellow-countrymen, and in his preaching held
fast to the rule ‘the Jew first.’ But Tertullian’s words ‘ synagogas
Iudaeorum fontes persecutionum ’ were true always. Tert. Scorp .
10.

[5]
The well-known Roman archaeologist, Orazio Marucchi, has discovered in the
1st-century cemetery of Priscilla on the lower floor an ancient baptistery
that he has identified with the ‘ Coemeterium ad Nymphas Beati Petri ubi
baptizaverat ,’ Acta Liberii [according to their Acts the Martyrs Papias
and Maurus were interred ‘ via Nomentana ad nymphas Beati Petri ubi
baptizabat ’]. In any case this baptistery dates from the first century
and the local traditions in the Acta are generally correct. Marucchi,
Eléments d’Archéologie Chrétienne, ii. 385–6, 457–61; also Le Memorie
degli Apostoli Pietro e Paolo in Roma , pp. 93–102. The language of
Tacitus ( Ann. xv. 44) and Suetonius ( Nero , 31, 39) testifies that the
charges against the Christians in the time of Nero were of the same kind
as those mentioned in detail at a later date by Justin Martyr, Dial. c.
Tryph. 10, 17, 108; I Apol. 26; Athenagoras, Apol. 3; Eusebius, Hist.
Eccl. vi. 1 (as to the charges brought against the Christians at Lyons).

[6] pp.
47–51.

[7] G.
B. de Rossi, Roma sotterranea cristiana , 4 vols. 1864–1877; Inscriptiones
Christianae urbis Romae VIIº saeculo antiquiores , 1864–1888. De Rossi
examined over 15,000 epitaphs in the Catacombs. Bullettino di archeologia
cristiana , 1863–1894, etc. Nuovo Bullettino di archeologia cristiana
(edited by Orazio Marucchi), 1895; Orazio Marucchi, Eléments d’archéologie
chrætienne: I. ‘Notions générales,’ II. ‘Itinéraire des Catacombes,’ III.
‘Basiliques et églises 1906–9. Roma sotterranea Christiana (Nuova serie)
Cimitero di Domitilla,’ No. 4, 1909; Le Memorie degli Apostoli Pietro e
Paolo in Roma , 1903, etc.; P. Wilpert, Principienfragen der christlichen
Archäologie , 1892; R. Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome , 1892, and New
Tales of Old Rome ; J. S. Northcote and W. R. Brownlow, Roma Sotterranea ,
2 vols. 1879.

[8] On
this point Renan ( L’Antéchrist , Introd. p. vii) may be quoted: ‘ La I
Petri est un des écrits du Nouveau Testament qui sont le plus anciennement
et le plus unanimement cités comme authentiques. ’ 1 Peter is quoted in
the Epistle to the Hebrews, of which the date is probably 66 A.D. , and in
Clement, 1 Corinthians , an epistle written by a disciple of St.
Peter.

[9] There
was regular intercourse between Rome and the seaports of provincial
Pontus, especially Sinope. Possibly, as Dr. Hort suggests, Silvanus may
have had special personal reasons for beginning his journey as the bearer
of the Epistle from this point. As Bithynia adjoined Pontus and formed
part of the same province the route of Silvanus would be a circuit ending
at a point not far from that at which it began. See Dr. Hort’s special
note on ‘The Provinces of Asia Minor included in St. Peter’s address’:
Hort, 1 st Epistle of St. Peter , pp. 157–185; also the very interesting
Introduction to Bigg’s 1 st Epistle of St. Peter , pp.
67–80.

[10] See
Dr. Chase’s article on Peter in Hastings’s Dictionary of the Bible , in
which references will be found to the literature bearing on the
subject.

[11] The
Sibylline Oracles , Book v. p. 143: Φεύξεται
ἐκ
Βαβυλῶνος
ἄναξ
φοβερὸς
καὶ
ἀναιδής.
. The subject of this passage is the flight of Nero from Rome. Zahn gives
the date 71–74 A.D. in Zeitschrift für Kirchliche Wissenschaft und Leben ,
1886, p. 337 ff.

[12] St.
Peter in many passages shows an acquaintance with the Epistle of St.
James. In this there is nothing remarkable, considering the close
association of the two early Christian leaders. Far more striking are the
numerous echoes and reflections of our Lord’s sayings, as they are
recorded in the four Gospels. These Petrine reminiscences of the Master’s
words do not, however, seem to be derived from any canonical gospel we now
possess. Possibly St. Peter made use of some pre-canonical source, i.e.
that which the critics have named ‘ Q. ’ Far more probably he was in the
habit of quoting from memory in his preaching the sayings of Jesus, which
his love for the speaker had enshrined in his mind unforgettably. It is
not unlikely that 1 Peter contains many phrases and thoughts which may
have their source in sayings of the Lord unrecorded in the extant Gospels.
It is noteworthy that the phraseology of 1 Peter contains several
coincidences with that of the Fourth Gospel, a piece of evidence strongly
testifying to the historical character of the Johannine
record.

[13] 259259In
the Authorised Version of 1 Peter will be found more than forty marginal
references to Romans, more than twenty to Ephesians.

[14] Col. 4:10

[15] I Pet. 5:13

[16]  I Pet. 5:12:
διὰ
Σιλουανοῦ
ὑμῖν
τοῦ
πιστοῦ
ἀδελφοῦ,
ὡς
λογίζομαι,
δἰ
ὀλίγων
ἔγραψα.
Compare the words of Dionysius of Corinth quoted in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl.
iv. 2. 11, who speaks of the epistle of Clement as ἡμῖν
διὰ
Κλήμεντος
γραφεῖσαν.
. The Epistle was sent in the name of the Church of Rome, but the general
assent of antiquity makes Clement to have been the author. He had no doubt
general instructions agreed upon by the Presbyterate, i.e. by Bishop Linus
and the body of episcopi who were his coadjutors and of whom Clement was
one. He appears, according to Hermas, to have acted as the secretary of
the Presbyterate in their intercourse with foreign churches and to have
been given a free hand in the actual composition of the letter. To a less
extent this was probably the case with Silvanus in his transcription of
Peter’s dictation.

[17] See
Tacitus, Ann. xv. 38—41; Suet. Nero , p. 38; Dion Cassius, lxii. 16—18;
Pliny, Nat. Hist. xvii. 5. Of these Suetonius, Dion and Pliny agree in
ascribing the crime of incendiarism to Nero. Tacitus does not commit
himself to any positive statement: ‘ sequitur clades forte an dolo
principis incertum, nam utrumque auctores prodidere. ’ The legend of
‘Nero’s fiddling while Rome burned’ is probably a fiction, but there must
always be strong doubts whether or no he was the author of the fire.

[18] 264264Tac.
Ann . xv. 44: ‘ sed non ope humana, non largitionibus principis aut deum
placamentis decedebat infamia, quin iussum incendium crederetur. Ergo
abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos et quaesitissimis poenis adfecit, quos
per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat. Auctor nominis eius
Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio
adfectus erat; repressaque in praesens exitiabilis superstitio rursum
erumpebat, non modo per Iudaeam, originem eius mali, sed per urbem etiam,
quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque. ’ ‘
Subdidit reos ’ means ‘brought to trial with the malicious object of
shifting the hatred of the people from himself upon the
Christians.’Compare Ann. 1. 6: ‘ quod postquam Sallustius Crispus
. . . comperit metuens ne reus subderetur , iuxta periculoso
ficta seu vera promeret. ’See also Suetonius, Nero , 16: ‘ affiicti
suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae ac maleficae ’;
and Pliny in his letter to the Emperor Trajan: ‘ nomen ipsum, si flagitiis
careat, an flagitia cohaerentia nomini puniantur’ . . . ‘nihil
aliud inveni quam superstitionem pravam et immodicam. ’

[19] ‘
Ineunt deinde consulatum Silius Nerva et Atticus Vestinus, coepta simul et
aucta coniuratione, in quam certatim nomina dederant senatores eques
miles, feminae etiam, cum odio Neronis tum favore in C. Pisonem ,’ Ann.
xv. 48. Cf. xiv. 65: ‘ Romanus secretis criminationibus incusaverat
Senecam ut C. Pisonis socium. . . . Unde Pisoni timor, et orta
insidiarum in Neronem magna moles sed inprospera. ’ In xii. 56, 57 Tacitus
speaks of the piercing by Claudius of (Monte Salviano) the mountain
intervening between Lake Fucinus and the river Liris with the object of
creating an outlet for the lake into the river, and he seems to place the
execution of the work and fetes attending its inauguration all in the year
53: ‘ sub idem tempus inter lacum Fucinum amnemque Lirim perrupto monte,
quo magnificentia operis a pluribus viseretur etc. ’ Suetonius tells us
that the work employed 30,000 men for eleven years, Claud. 20. See also
Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 15, 24.

[20] Allard,
Hist. des Persécutions , pp. 42–3; Renan, l’Antéchrist , pp. 154–5; 1
Clement, 5, διὰ
ζῆλον
καὶ
φθόνον
. Nero must have been well aware of the existence of the Christians, many
of whom were to be found in his own household. Difficulties must have
arisen at times with the freedmen and slaves who refused to take part in
any pagan ceremonies or sacrifices or to attend public
spectacles.

[21] ‘
Igitur primum correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitudo
ingens haud proinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis coniuncti
sunt. Et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis contecti laniatu
canum interirent, aut crucibus adfixi aut flammandi, atque, ubi defecisset
dies, in usum nocturni luminis urerentur. Hortos suos ei spectaculo Nero
obtulerat et circense ludicrum edebat, habitu aurigae permixtus plebi vel
curriculo insistens. Unde quamquam adversus sontes et novissima exampla
meritos miseratio oriebatur, tamquam non utilitate publica sed in
saevitiam unius absumerentur ’ ( Ann. xv. 44). Correpti = (1) seized by
violence; (2) dragged violently to trial. Compare ‘ continua hinc et
vincta agmina trahi ac foribus hortorum adiacere. Atque ubi dicendam ad
causam introissent ’ ( Ann. xv. 58) of the Pisonian conspirators.
Fatebantur can only mean ‘made open confession.’ Indicio eorum : this may
possibly mean that some turned renegades (see Heb. vi. 5, 6), but it includes
information of all kinds. Many no doubt made no concealment about their
being Christians and the views that they held as to the approaching
destruction of all things by fire. It may also mean that papers and other
proofs were found by search of the houses of the accused. Coniuncti : this
is the reading of MS. Med. and on the ground that the more difficult
reading should be preferred, I adopt it with Henderson, Ramsay, Boissier
and others, and also because it seems to me to give the right
interpretation of the words that precede, ‘ haud proinde in crimine
incendii quam odio humani generis. ’ The other reading is convicti
.

[22] ‘Der
Religionsfrevel nach römische Recht’ ( Historische Zeitung , 1890, t.
lxiv. 389 ff) (see also Expositor , 1893, vol. viii.
1–7).

[23] Among
the many modern writers on early Christian persecution the following works
are specially deserving of mention: Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht , 1899;
Arnold, Die Neronische Christenverfolgung , 1888; Schiller, Gesch. des
Röm. Kaisserreichs unter der Reg. des Nero , 1872; Allard, Histoire des
Persécutions pendant les deux premiers siècles , 1892; Callewaert, ‘Les
premiers Chrétiens, furent-ils persécutés par édits ou par mesures de
police?’ ( Rev. d’hist. ecclés . Louvain 1901, p. 771 ff; 1902, p. 6 ff,
326 ff, 601 ff); Duchesne, ‘La prohibition du Christianisme dans l’Empire
romain’ ( Misc. di storia ecclesiastica a stud. ausil. 1902, i. 1); Le
Blant, Les persécutions et les martyrs , 1903; Guérin, ‘Etude sur le
fondement jurid. des persécutions dirigées contre les Chrétiens pendant
les deux premiers siècles de notre ère’ ( Rev. Hist. de droit franc. et
étrang. 1895, pp. 600, 713); Renan, L’Antéchrist , 1873; Boissier, Fin du
Paganisme , 1892; Parfumo, Le fonti e i tempi dello incendio Neroniano ,
1905; Ramsay, The Church and the Empire , 4th edit. 1905; ‘Christianity in
the Roman Empire’ ( Expositor , 1893, viii, pp. 8–21, 110–119, 282–296);
Hardy, Christianity and the Roman Government , 1894; Henderson, Life and
Principate of the Emperor Nero , 1902; Klette, Die Christenkatastrophe
unter Nero , 1907.

[24] ‘
Afflicti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae et
maleficae ’ (Suet. Nero , 16). These words occur in the midst of a number
of sumptuary regulations enforced by Nero. The epithet maleficae suggests
that one of the charges was that of sorcery or
magic.

[25] Tertullian,
Apol. c. 51, 21; Scorp . c. 15; Ad Nat . 1, 7: ‘ sed tali dedicatore
damnationis nostrae etiam gloriamur. ’ The word dedicator in Tertullian’s
writings has the signification auctor, initiator , see Oehler’s Index
Verborum in his edition of Tertullian’s works. In the passage from Scorp .
occur the words ‘ si fidem commentarii voluerit haereticus, instrumenta
Imperii loquentur. ’

[26] Tac.
Ann . xiv. 51, 60; xv. 37, 50, 72; xvi. 19, 20; Hist . i, 72; Suet. Galba
, 15; Plutarch, 0tho , c. 2; Tac. Ann . xv. 58: ‘ Atque ubi dicendam ad
causam introissent . . . pro crimine accipi cum super Neronis ac
Tigellini saevas percontationes, Faenius quoque Rufus violenter urgeret. ’
The trial of the Pisonian conspirators thus took place before Nero and the
two Pretorian Prefects, April 65. A little afterwards Seneca was accused
of complicity, and his answers to the charge were brought by a tribune to
the Court. Tacitus ( Ann . c. 61) thus relates it: ‘ Ubi haec a tribuno
relata Bunt Poppaea et Tigellino coram, quod erat saevienti principi
intimum consiliorum. . . .

[27] See
Juvenal, Sat . i, 155–157: Pone Tigellinum: taeda lucebis in illa, Qua
stantes ardent, qui fixo gutture (pectore) fumant Et latum media sulcum
diducit arena. On this passage an ancient Schol . comments: ‘ In munere
Neronis arserunt vivi de quibus ille iusserat cereos fieri, qui lucerent
spectatoribus. . . . Maleficos homines taeda, papyro, cera super
vestiebat, sicque ad ignem admoveri iubebat ut arderent.
’

[28] Sulp.
Sev. Chron . ii. 29.

[29] This
negative evidence of Tertullian comes out the more forcibly as his Apology
was addressed to the Emperor Septimius Severus, and to the chief
magistrates of the Roman Empire. Orosius roundly charged Nero with being
the incendiary: ‘ denique urbis Romae incendium voluptatis suae
spectaculum fecit ’ ( Hist. adv. Paganos , vii. 7).

[30] ‘
Ipsa rettuli verba ,’ Tac. Ann . xv. 67.

[31] 7‘
Duraveruntque, quoniam et de longissimo aevo arborum diximus, ad Neronis
principis incendia quibus cremavit Urbem, annis CLXXX . . .
postea cultu virides iuvenesque ni Princeps ille accelerasset etiam
arborum mortem ,’ Pliny, Hist. Nat. xvii. 1.

[32]  I Thess. 4:16-18; II Thess.
1:7-10; I Cor. 15:51-2;
Rom. 13:11-13;
Tit. 2:12, 13; Heb. 9:37; I Pet. 4:7; II Pet.
3:10-12; Rev. 18:1-21, 22:10-12, 20.—See Turner, Studies in Early
Church History , pp. 226–7.

[33] Rev.
xiii., xvi. 10, 19, xvii. 5–9; Ascension of Isaiah [80–90 A.D. ] 14 (2, 5)
and 18. Orac. Sibyllina , iii. 63–93 [about 80 A.D. ], iv. 179–182, v.
158–162. There are many other passages of Judaeo-Christian origin which
are difficult to date, as the books in their present form contain many
ancient fragments. See also Apoc. of Baruch, xxxvi.–xl., which Dr. Charles
dates before 70 A.D. , and iv. Esdras a little earlier.

[34] Heb. 6:4-6, 10:26-29, 39.
The title of Confessores was one in which the Christians of later
centuries gloried. Compare I Tim. 6:12-13. Compare Hernias, Pastor , Sim.
ix. 21. 3, 28. 4, Vis. iii. 2. 1, the persecution to which Hermas refers
was probably that of Nero.

[35] The
translation from Philostratus’ Apollonius is that of Prof. J. S
Phillimore, recently published by the Clarendon Press, 1912, vol. ii.
43–45, bk. iv. cc. 42, 43, 44. Prof. Phillimore in his Preface sides with
the majority of critics in asserting that this work of Philostratus is a
Romance. At any rate, many sections of it may undoubtedly be regarded as
imaginative fiction, But, as in the Acta Sincera of the Martyrs, the
romance is built upon a basis of historical fact, and the fictitious
details fill in the framework of a real biography. The portion of the book
which treats of Apollonius’ visit to Rome in 66 A.D. gives strong evidence
of its historicity. The name of the consul Telesinus, the inauguration of
the Gymnasium and Baths by Nero and his later departure for Greece, the
personality of Demetrius the Cynic, and the character and activity of
Tigellinus are all historical. The original Greek of two important
passages stands thus: Τιγελλῖνος
γάρ,
ὑφ᾽
ᾧ
τὸ
ξίφος
ἦν
τοῦ
Νέρωνος,
ἀπήλαυνεν
αὐτὸν
τῆς
Ῥώμης
. . . ἀπαγγελθέντος
δὲ
τῷ
Τιγελλίνῳ
τὸν
λόγον
τοῦτον
πέμπει
τοὺς
ἄξοντας
αὐτὸν
ἐς
τὸ
δικαστήριον
ὡς
ἀπολογήσαιτο
μὴ
ἀπέβειν
ἐς
Νέρωνα
.

[36] ‘
Flagitia cohaerentia nomini ,’ Plin. Ep. x. 97.

[37] Athenagoras,
Supplicatio 3; also Justin Martyr, 1 Apol . 26, 2 Apol . 12, 13; Dial. c.
Tryph : 10, 17, 108; Tertullian, Apo1 . 2, 4, 7, 8, 39; Ad Nat . 2. In the
account of the persecution at Lyons and Vienne, 177 A.D. , which has been
preserved by Eus. Hist. Eccl . v. i., the same charges are brought
forward: κατεψεύσαντο
ἡμῶν
Θυέστεια
δεῖπνα
καί
Οἰδιπεδείους
μίξεις
.

[38] Gebhardt,
Acta Martyrum Selecta , 119: ‘ Magi estis quia novum nescio quod genus
religionis inducitis. ’ Cod. Iust . ix. tit. 18: ‘ de maleficis et
mathematicis .’ Suetonius, Nero , 16: ‘ Afflicti suppliciis christiani,
genus hominum superstitionis novae et maleficae. ’ Paulus, Sent . v.: ‘
Qui sacra impia nocturnave ut quem obtruncarent, defigerent, obligarent,
fecerint faciendave curaverint, aut crucibus suffiguntur aut bestiis
obiiciuntur. . . . Magicae artis conscios summo supplicio adfici
placuit, id est bestiis obiici aut crucibus suffigi; ipsi autem magi vivi
exuruntur. ’

[39] Tertullian,
Ad Nat . i. 7: ‘ Principe Augusta nomen hoc ortum est, Tiberio disciplina
eius inluxit, sub Nerone damnatio invaluit. . . . Et tamen
permansit erasis omnibus hoc solum “institutum Neronianum” iustum denique
ut dissimile sui auctoris. ’ The lex de maiestate was a juridical creation
of Tiberius and so would not be affected by the rescissio actorum of the
latter after his death: ‘ addito maiestatis crimine, quod tunc omnium
accusationum complementum erat ,’ Tac. Ann . iii. 38. Nero himself was
spoken of by Pliny the Elder as ‘ hostis generis humani ’ ( Hist. Nat .
vii. 8. 45. 46). Attilio Profumo in his learned work Le Fonti ed i Tempi
dello Incendio Neroniano (p. 227), commenting on the passage above quoted
from Tertullian’s Ad nationes , thus states the conclusions at which he
arrived: (1) ‘ Non esser mai esistita nè legge nè altra disposizione
giuridica qualsiasi che colpisse nominativamente e solo, come tali,
Christiani. (2) Le persecuzioni contro di essi furono sempre fatte in
forma giuridica e legale , applicando loro 1’ “ institutum ” delle tre
accuse—suntuaria, di sacrilegio, di maestà—detto “Neronianum”; “istituto”
non già esclusivo per essi, ma ad essi solo e sempre applicato. (3) La
natura dell’ “Institutum” istesso, spiega i periodi di persecuzione e di
pace che si alternavano per i Cristiani, senza bisogno di fare o di
annullare legge alcuna; dappoichè era affidita alla suprema autorità del
Principe e fino ad un certo limite anche a quella dei Presidi delle
Province, e 1’applicazione di esso e 1’applicazione più o meno lata ,’
Tertullian, as a jurist, uses the word ‘ institutum ’ correctly to signify
a legal procedure resting upon custom, not necessarily written, Compare
Tac. Ann . xiii. 32 of the domestic court for the trial of Pomponia
Graecina; ‘ isque (Aulus Plautius) prisco instituto propinquis coram de
capita famaque coniugis cognovit et insontem pronuntiavit.
’

[40] Suet.
Claudius , c. 25.

[41] ‘
Ipsum nomen, si flagitiis careat, an flagitia cohaerentia nomini puniantur
,’ Pliny, Ep . x. 96. Pliny had no definite edict against Christianity to
guide him: ‘ cognitionibus de Christianis interfui nunquam; ideo nescio
quid et quatenus aut puniri soleat aut quaeri ’—so in Trajan’s rescript ‘
Neque enim in universum aliquid quod quasi certam formam habeat constitui
potest. ’ In comparing the action of Pliny with that of Tigellinus it
should be noticed that there are many points of close resemblance. Pliny
writes: ‘ interim in iis, qui ad me tanquam Christiani deferebantur, hunc
sum secutus modum. Interrogavi ipsos, an essent Christiani; confitentes
iterum ac tertio interrogavi, supplicium minatus; perseverantes duci
iussi. ’ Thus there is the same confession before trial, and finally
punishment for the name. Though he could find no specific law, there was
no searching for precedents. Pliny knew that for some time past the
Christians had been legally regarded as the enemies of the state and that
confession of the name meant outlawry. It should be observed that he was
not hasty in condemnation, but that he mentions having granted three
cognitiones before ordering them to be executed. Finally, an anonymous
paper was placed in the governor’s hand implicating a large number of
persons which led to his writing to the Emperor for direction and advice:
‘ Propositus est libellus sine auctore, multorum nomina continens. Qui
negabant esse Christianos. . . . Alii ab indice nominati, esse
se Christianos dixerunt. ’ Compare with Tacitus, Ann . xv. 44: ‘ Igitur
primo correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitudo ingens.
. . . ’ The Rescript of Trajan merely confirmed in writing the
practice, which had subsisted since the time of Nero, of treating the very
name of Christian as a crime against the State.

[42] 1
Pet. ii, 12, 14; iii. 15-17; iv. 15.

[43] I Pet. 1:7:
διὰ
πυρὸς
δοκιμαζομένου
. I Pet. 4:12: τῇ
ἐν
ὑμῖν
πυρώσει
πρὸς
πειρασμὸν
ὑμῖν
γινομένῃ.

[44] I Pet. 2:11-17.
Are the words ( v. 14): ἡγεμόσιν,
ὡς
δἱ
αὐτοῦ
[τοῖ
βασιλέως
πεμπομένοις
εἰς
ἐκδίκησιν
κακοποιῶν
, a reference to instructions sent out by Nero with regard to the
Christians of Asia Minor? I Pet.
3:16

[45] I Pet. 4:14-16.

[46] Heb. 10:32, 33.
See also 4:14, 15, 10:23-27, 6:4-6, 1, 13:1-13, 23. For the date of Hebrews and
of the Apocalypse see Lecture VI.

[47] Rev. 17:6.
See also 2:3, 9, 10, 13; 3:8-11; 6: 9-11; 7:13-17; 12:10, 11; 13:7, 8; 16:6; 18:24;
20:4.

[48] 1
Clem. v. Ἀλλ᾽
ἵνα
τῶν
ἀρχαίων
ὑποδειγμάτων
παυσώμεθα
ἔλθωμεν
ἐπὶ
τοὺς
ἔγγιστα
γενομένους
ἀθλητάς·
λάβωμεν
τῆς
γενεᾶς
ἡμῶν
τὰ
γενναῖα
ὑποδείγματα
. . vi. τούτοις
τοῖς
ἄνδρασιν
ὁσίως
πολιτευσαμένοις
συνηθροίσθη
πολὺ
πλῆθος
ἐκλεκτῶν,
οἵτινες
πολλάκις
αἰκίαις
καὶ
βασάνοις
διὰ
ζῆλος
παθόντες
ὑπόδειγμα
κάλλιστον
ἐγένοντο
ἐν
ἡμῖν.
Διὰ
ζῆλος
γυναῖκες
Δαναίδες
καὶ
Δίρκαι
αἰκίσματα
δεινὰ
καὶ
ἀνόσια
παθοῦσαι
ἐπὶ
τὸν
τῆς
πίστεως
δρόμον
κατήντησαν
.

[49] Suet.
Nero , 20; Plin. Hist. Nat . xix. 6. 108, and xxxiv. 18. 1666 Tac. Ann .
xv. 22.

[50] Tac.
Ann. xv. 73: ‘ etenim crebro vulgi rumore lacerabatur, tamquam viros
claros et insontes ob invidiam aut metum extinxisset. ’ Compare Josephus,
Ant. xx. 8, 3; Suet. Nero , xxvi.

[51] Tac.
Ann . xv. 58; ‘ continua hinc et vincta agmina trahi ac foribus hortorum
adiacere.’

[52] Henderson,
pp. 272–4.

[53] Orosius,
vii. 7 ‘ Auxit hanc molem facinorum eius temeritas impietatis in Deum, nam
primus Romae Christianos suppliciis et mortibus affecit ac per omnes
provincias pari persecutione excruciari imperavit ipsumque nomen
exstirpare conatus beatissimos Christi apostolos Petrum cruse, Paulum
gladio occidit. . . . Mox acervatim miseram civitatem obortae
undique oppressere clades, nam subsequente autumno tanta Urbi pestilentia
incubuit, ut triginta milia funera in rationem Libitinae venirent. ’ Suet.
Nero , 34. Tac. Ann . xvi. 13: ‘ Tot facinoribus foedum annum etiam di
tempestatibus et morbis insignivere, vastata Campania turbine ventorum qui
. . . pertulitque violentiam ad vicina urbi; in qua omne
mortalium genus vis pestilentiae depopulabatur. . . . ’