On one point he was determined. No word, no sign of his should do any further injury to the Christians. He would not reveal their meeting-place, nor help their enemies.
Alas! his aid was no longer needed. We can abstain from evil deeds, but when we have done them their consequences are beyond us, nor can we escape their punishment. Tigellinus, by his spies, had put himself in communication with Philetus; he knew enough to palliate in the eyes of the people the arrest of a community which they regarded with detestation. His nets were spread in every direction. Unless the Christians abandoned all attempt at meeting together, it was impossible that they could escape the agents of the tyranny which had determined to destroy them as the scapegoat of its own crimes. To warn them would in any case have been in vain, and Aliturus was unable to warn them, for Tigellinus did not make him a confidant of his intentions.
Unaccompanied by Philetus, the actor went to the meeting which Linus had announced, and found the Christians gathered in undiminished numbers, anxious to hear once more the words of him who at the Last Supper had leaned his head on the bosom of their Lord.
Again—lest in the presence of traitors and enemies he should use language which might be turned into an engine of condemnation against the brethren—the Apostle addressed them in allegoric terms. The Christians understood his words, and the rich comfort which lay beneath their poetic imagery. But he had not been speaking long, when from the narrow entrance which led into the sandpit—for the Christians had barricaded every approach but one—there arose first a cry of surprise, then a sound of struggling, and a clash of arms, and a tramp of feet. The youths to whom was entrusted the guardianship of the approach were borne back by numbers, and flying into the assembly raised a shout of ‘Fly, brethren, fly! the Prætorians are upon us.’ The lamps flashed on the gilded armour of a centurion, who leapt, sword in hand, into the midst of the worshippers. In a moment every lamp was extinguished, and by the straggling starlight might be caught glimpses of a scene of wild confusion, as men and shrieking women sprang in vain to the egress, and, driven back on each other by the swords of the soldiers, struggled in mad panic towards the various subterranean hiding-places and passages, which branched out of the sandpit, and were the beginning of the catacombs. Many made their escape in the tumult, for they were more familiar than the soldiers with the exits and winding ways. Except that one or two Christians were struck to earth and trampled upon in the obscurity, no blood was shed; for the principles of the Christians forbade them to resist lawful authority. The centurion, the moment he entered, strode straight towards the group of presbyters, and arrested Linus, who sat in the seat of the bishop. Another officer laid his hand on the robe of the Apostle, but while Aliturus involuntarily sprang forward to make him release his hold, a gigantic fossor—whose trade it was to hew graves in the tufa for all the brethren—flung his arms round the officer, and pinned them to his side, while Cletus, seizing the hand of John, hurried him along a tortuous and half-subterranean path by which they emerged into the upper air. They lay concealed among the thick leaves of a vineyard, until they heard the tramp of the soldiers who marched off with about a hundred prisoners, whose arms they had tied behind their backs. Aliturus was in no personal danger, but he had followed the escaping steps of Cletus and the Apostle, and he lay hidden with them in the vineyard till the sound of footsteps had died away in the echoing gloom.
‘Alas, father, what can I do?’ exclaimed the presbyter. ‘I am but a freedman in the house of the senator Nerva. I have no home, no refuge to offer thee which would not be full of hardship and the peril of certain death.’
‘Come to my house,’ exclaimed Aliturus to the Apostle, eagerly. ‘I am not a Christian—I am but a pantomime. But, if thou wilt trust me, thy life will be safer with me than in any house in Rome, till opportunity enables thee to escape to Asia.’
‘My son,’ said the Apostle, ‘I trust thee. Lead me on.’
That night the son of Zebedee was sheltered in the house of the actor, who told his most confidential slaves to treat with all honour a friend of Jewish race who had come from Palestine. But all night long the Apostle was on his knees, praying for his brethren. For the Great Tribulation—the first of the ten great Christian persecutions—had begun.
CHAPTER LIV
IN THE BURNING FIERY FURNACE
Ἀγαπητοὶ μὴ ξενίζεσθε τῇ ἐν ὑμῖν πυρώσει πρὸς πειρασμὸν ὑμὶν γινομένῃ.—1 Pet. iv. 12.