That the Antonine Emperors knew little really of Christianity is almost certain. The name of Jesus was probably unknown to either Pius or Marcus, and the canonical Gospels evidently had never come before them, although these writings were generally current among the Christian congregations at that time. Once only in his Meditations does Marcus refer to the sect, and then it was clearly with a feeling of dislike and repulsion; their extraordinary readiness to give up their lives for their belief, misliked the calm, stoic Emperor. “The soul,” he wrote, “should be ready at any moment to be separated from the body; but this readiness must come from a man’s own calm judgment, not from mere obstinacy and with a tragic show, as with the Christians” (Meditations, xi. 3).
Marcus before all things, it must ever be remembered, was a Roman. To the Emperor, the tradition of Rome was a dogma. “Every moment,” he wrote, “think ever as a Roman and a man; do whatever thou hast in hand with perfect and simple dignity” (II. 5).
That he abhorred the Christian sect who poured scorn upon the traditions he loved, and contempt upon the gods whom he adored, was perfectly natural; and it must be remembered that not only before the judge when they were arraigned did the Christians express utter disbelief in the gods of Rome, but not unfrequently the more fanatical Christians went out of their way to insult these deities in whom Marcus believed with a real intensity.
When the noble Emperor had passed away, the leniency with which his evil successor Commodus treated the Church was owing largely to his dislike and jealousy of his father and his policy. In the following century (the third) the gentleness of the treatment of Christians in the reigns of Alexander Severus and Philip the Arabian was mainly owing to the fact that these Emperors had little sympathy with the Roman tradition; they were certainly foreigners: the first of them, Alexander Severus, was a Syrian pure and simple. The name by which Philip is always known tells us of his foreign nationality. The famous persecutors of the third century, Decius, Aurelius and Diocletian, were believers in the Roman tradition, and adopted as the groundwork of their policy here, the principles of Trajan and the Antonines.
No crime was necessary to be proved in these reigns when one of the sect was arraigned. The mere fact of the accused being a Christian ensured at once condemnation. Christianity was utterly incompatible with the ancient traditions of Rome.