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tocracy, yet conscious that his life hung upon a thread,

an emperor

who, in the terrible phrase of Gibbon, was at once a priest, an atheist, and a god.-FARRAR.

If you would witness a scene characteristic of the popular life of old, you must go to the amphitheatre of Rome, mingle with its eighty thousand spectators, and watch the eager faces of senators and people; observe how the masters of the world spend the wealth of conquest and indulge the pride of power; see every wild creature that God has made to dwell from the jungles of India to the mountains of Wales, from the forests of Germany to the deserts of Nubia, brought hither to be hunted down in artificial groves by thousands in an hour; behold the captives of war, noble perhaps and wise in their own land, turned loose, amid yells of insult more terrible for their foreign tongue, to contend with brutal gladiators trained to make death the favorite amusement, and present the most solemn of individual realities as a wholesale public sport; mark the light look with which the multitude, by uplifted finger, demands that the wounded combatant be slain before their eyes; notice the troop of Christian martyrs awaiting, hand in hand, the leap from the tiger's den; and when the day's spectacle is over, and the blood of two thousand victims stains the ring, follow the giddy crowd as it streams from the vomitories into the street, trace its lazy course into the forum, and hear it there scrambling for the bread of private indolence doled out by the purse of public corruption; and see how it suns itself to sleep in the open ways, or crawls into foul dens, till morning brings the hope of games and merry blood again, - and you have an idea of the imperial people, and their passionate living for the moment, which the gospel found in occupation of the world. MARTINEAU.

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THE CONQUEST OF BRITAIN.

THE only addition to the Roman dominion during this century was the province of Britain (except the northern part and Ireland),

This year Claudius, second of the Roman kings, sought the land of Britain, and brought under his power the greater part of the island. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

"Far to the west, in th' ocean wide,

Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lies, -
Sea-girt it lies, where giants dwelt of old,
Now void it fits thy people; thither bend
Thy course, there shalt thou find a lasting seat,
Where to thy sons another Troy shall rise;
And kings be born of thee, whose dreaded might

Shall awe the world, and conquer nations bold,”

These verses, originally Greek, were put in Latin, saith Virunnius, by Gildas, a British poet, and him to have lived under Claudius. — MILTON.

PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS.

The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. - TERTULLIAN.

THE first century of the Christian era is that in which occurred the first persecution of the Christians, who until

the time of Nero had never been brought into collision with the imperial government.

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He [Nero] likewise inflicted punishments on the Christians, a sort of people who held a new and impious superstition. — SUETONIUS. Nero was the first who raged with the sword of Cæsar against this TERTULLIAN. sect, which was then specially rising at Rome.

Præstare Neronem

Securum valet hæc ætas.

JUVENAL.

Nihil est nobis . . . cum insaniâ circi, cum impudicitia theatri, cum atrocitate arenæ, cum vanitate xysti. - TERTULLIAN.

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The following passage from Tacitus is regarded as the earliest reference by a profane author to the name of Christ:

He [Nero] inflicted the most exquisite tortures on those men, who, under the vulgar appellation of Christians, were already branded with deserved infamy. They derived their name and origin from one Christ, who in the reign of Tiberius had suffered death by the sentence of the procurator, Pontius Pilate. For a while this dire superstition was checked; but it again burst forth, and not only spread itself over Judæa, the first seat of this mischievous sect, but was even introduced into Rome, the common asylum which receives and protects whatever is impure, whatever is atrocious. The confessions of those who were seized discovered a great multitude of their accomplices, and they were all convicted, not so much for the crime of setting fire to the city as for their hatred of humankind. They died in torments, and their torments were imbittered by insult and derision. Some were nailed on crosses; others sewn up in the skins of wild beasts, and exposed to the fury of dogs; others again, smeared over with combustible materials, were used as torches to illuminate the darkness of the night. The gardens of Nero were destined for the melancholy spectacle, which was accompanied with a horse-race, and honored with the presence of the emperor, who mingled with the populace in the dress and attitude of a charioteer. The guilt of the Christians deserved, indeed, the most exemplary punishment, but

the public abhorrence was changed into commiseration, from the opinion that those unhappy wretches were sacrificed, not so much to the public welfare, as to the cruelty of a jealous tyrant. - TACITUS.

Those who survey with a curious eye the revolutions of mankind may observe that the gardens and circus of Nero on the Vatican, which were polluted with the blood of the first Christians, have been rendered still more famous by the triumph and by the abuse of the persecuted religion. On the same spot a temple, which far surpasses the ancient glories of the Capitol, has been since erected by the Christian Pontiffs, who, deriving their claim of universal dominion from an humble fisherman of Galilee, have succeeded to the throne of the Cæsars, given laws to the barbarian conquerors of Rome, and extended their spiritual jurisdiction from the coast of the Baltic to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. GIBBON.

This persecution was general throughout the whole Roman Empire; but it rather increased than diminished the spirit of Christianity. In the course of it, St. Paul and St. Peter were martyred. — JOHN Fox, Book of Martyrs.

History has few stronger contrasts than when it shows us Paul preaching Christ under the walls of Nero's palace. Thenceforward there were but two religions in the Roman world, - the worship of the emperor, and the worship of the Saviour. The old superstitions had long been worn out; they had lost all hold on educated minds. CONYBEARE AND HOWSON.

The position of a Christian in the Roman Empire was always one of peril, and whatever legitimate precautions he might take, it was still difficult for him to escape his enemies. His very attitude and his scruples drew down persecution upon him; it was enough for him to abstain from some of the practices of pagan life to be at once recognized, and thus he became every hour his own betrayer. PRESSENSE.

As the martyr [Paul] and his executioners passed on, their way was crowded with a motley multitude of goers and comers between the metropolis and its harbor, — merchants hastening to superintend the unlading of their cargoes; sailors eager to squander the profits of their last voyage in the dissipations of the capital; officials of the government charged with the administration of the provinces or the command of the legions on the Euphrates or the Rhine; Chaldean

astrologers; Phrygian eunuchs; dancing-girls from Syria, with their painted turbans; mendicant priests from Egypt, howling for Osiris; Greek adventurers, eager to coin their national cunning into Roman gold, representatives of the avarice and ambition, the fraud and lust, the superstition and intelligence, of the imperial world. . . . They were marching, though they knew it not, in a procession more really triumphal than any they had ever followed, in the train of general or emperor, along the Sacred Way. - CONYBEARE AND HOWSON.

...

Imagine that awful scene once witnessed by the silent obelisk in the square before St. Peter's at Rome. Imagine it, that we may realize how vast is the change which Christianity has wrought in the feelings of mankind! There, where the vast dome now rises, were once the gardens of Nero. They were thronged with gay crowds, among whom the emperor moved in his frivolous degradation; and on every side were men dying slowly on their cross of shame. Along the paths of those gardens on the autumn nights were ghastly torches, blackening the ground beneath them with streams of sulphurous pitch, and each of those living torches was a martyr in his shirt of fire. And in the amphitheatre hard by, in sight of twenty thousand spectators, famished dogs were tearing to pieces some of the best and purest of men and women, hideously disguised in the skins of bears or wolves. Thus did Nero baptize in the blood of martyrs the city which was to be for ages the capital of the world. - FARRAR.

Imagine we see the people assembling in the theatre of Vespasian; all Rome gathered to drink the blood of the martyrs; a hundred thousand spectators, some shaded by the hems of their robes, others by umbrellas, crowding the seats; multitudes vomited forth, as it were, by the porticos, descending and ascending the long stairs, and taking their places. Railings of gold ward off the senators' box from the attacks of the ferocious beasts. Ingenious machines scatter a perfumed spray throughout the vast space, cooling the air and making it pleasant. Three thousand statues in bronze, an endless multitude of pictures, columns of jasper and porphyry, balustrades of crystal, vases of the richest workmanship, dazzle the eye and lend variety to the scene. In a canal surrounding the arena swim a hippopotamus and crocodiles. Five hundred lions, forty elephants, and tigers, panthers, and bulls, accustomed to the slaughter of human beings, rage and roar in the caverns of the amphitheatre; while here and there gladiators not less ferocious wipe their blood-stained arms. [See also pages 143, 147, 157.] — CHATEAUBRIAND.

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