[11] This comment cannot be pressed too strongly.
[12] It is this which makes the vivid picture which the younger Pliny, in his Letter to Trajan, paints of Christian life and influence in a great province so valuable.
[13] See Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire, xii. 2.
[14] See Hilary (Poitiers), Contra Arianos, 3.
[15] Bishop Lightfoot discusses at some length the great probability of the accuracy of this definite statement of S. Hilary of Poitiers, and decides that the absence of any mention of Vespasian among the persecutors in Melito and Tertullian by no means invalidates Hilary’s mention; no systematic record was kept of the persecutions; the knowledge possessed by each individual writer was accidental and fragmentary. Lightfoot, Ignatius and Polycarp, vol. i. pp. 15, 16.
[16] “Domitian loved to be identified with Jupiter, and to be idolized as the Divine Providence in human form; and it is recorded that Caligula, Domitian, and Diocletian were the three Emperors who delighted to be styled dominus et deus.”
[17] He struck (says the Roman poet), without exciting popular indignation, at the illustrious citizen:
“Tempora sævitiæ, claras quibus abstulit Urbi
Illustresque animas impune, et vindice nullo.”
But when his rage touched the people—he fell: