In the reign of Nero, possibly in that of Claudius, there was brought to the various Jewish congregations of the Roman world, seemingly not beyond that, the “good news,” εὐαγγέλιον, that a certain Jesus, of Nazareth in Galilee, was the long-promised Messiah. To most, perhaps, the facts cited of his life indicated only that he was one of the “many swindlers,” γόητες ἄνθρωποι, like those whom Felix captured and put to death (Jos. Ant. XX. viii. 5). But some believed. If we are to credit the Acts of the Apostles, this belief at once produced a bitter conflict between those who did so believe, afterwards called Christians, and those who did not.[[340]] But the Acts in the form in which it has come down to us represents a recension of much later date, made when the enmity between Jew and Christian was real and indubitable.
It may be that in certain places those Jews who accepted the evangel almost at once formed congregations of their own, synagogues or ecclesiae (the terms are practically synonymous),[[341]] different from the synagogues of those who rejected it. But there were from the beginning differences of degree in its acceptance, and even in the existing recension of the Acts there is good evidence that its acceptance or rejection did not immediately and everywhere produce a schism.
In the city of Rome a persecution of Christians, as distinct from Jews, took place under Nero. That fact is attested by both Suetonius and Tacitus and by the earliest of the Christian writers. Tertullian quotes the commentarii, the official records, for it.
The record as it appears in Suetonius is characteristically different from that in Tacitus. In Suetonius we have a brief statement (Nero, 16): Afflicti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae ac maleficae, “Punishment was inflicted upon the Christians, a class of men that maintained a new and harmful form of superstition.” This statement is made as one item, apparently of minor importance, in the list of Nero’s creditable actions, as Suetonius tells us later (ibid. 19): Haec partim nulla reprehensione, partim etiam non mediocri laude digna, in unum contuli, “These acts, some of which are wholly blameless, while others deserve even considerable approbation, I have gathered together.” Whether the punishment of the Christians is in the former or the latter class does not appear.
In Tacitus, on the other hand, we have the famous account that Nero sought to divert from himself the suspicion of having set Rome on fire, by fastening it upon those “whom the people hated for their wickedness, the so-called Christians” (Ann. xv. 44). These were torn by dogs, or crucified, or tied to stakes and burned in a coat of pitch to serve as lanterns to the bestially cruel emperor. The truth of these stories depends upon the reliability of Tacitus in general. They have been received with justifiable doubt, ever since the quite conscienceless methods of Tacitus’ rhetorical style have been made evident. The last form of punishment, the tunica molesta, has made a particular impression on the ancient and modern world. It is referred to by Seneca, Juvenal, and Martial, but by none of them associated with the Christians. From the passage in Seneca (Epist. ad Lucil. xiv. 4) it is simply a standard form of cruelty, such as the rack, thumbscrew, and maiden of later times. The very fact that the courtier Seneca dares to mention it as a form of saevitia would indicate that it was not used by Seneca’s master, Nero. But what is particularly striking is that Tertullian[[342]] in his Apology does not mention any cruelties, in the sense of savage tortures, inflicted upon the Christians. The context (Apologeticus, § 5) indicates that the punishment was banishment to some penal colony, relegatio, a punishment considered capital at law, but still different from the tunica molesta.
But a new element was introduced in the case of the Christians, which, except in the treatment of the Druidic brotherhoods among the Gauls, is unusual in Roman methods. It is scarcely possible to read the Apology of Tertullian without being convinced that the profession of Christianity was in and for itself an indictable offense at Roman law since the time of Nero, quite apart from the fantastic crimes of which the Christians were held to be guilty.[[343]] Tertullian undoubtedly had legal training, and his exposition of the logical absurdities into which the fact led Roman officials is convincing enough, but the fact remains. The nomen Christianum, “the profession of Christianity,” was considered a form of maiestas, “treason,” and punished capitally. In effect this was an attempt to stamp out a religion, just as Claudius had sought to stamp out the Druids (Suetonius, Claud. 25). (Comp. above, p. 142.)
When Tertullian wrote, perhaps even in the time of Tacitus and Suetonius, the gulf between Jew and Christian was wide and impassable. It can hardly have been so in Nero’s time. The statement that Nero’s measures were instigated by Jews is a later invention for which there is simply no evidence whatever.[[344]] The fact that the nomen Christianum was either actually considered treason or partook of the nature of treason, makes it probable that the Messianic idea, which was the very essence of the evangel, was the basis of the Roman statute. In Judea the special and drastic crushing of every “impostor” has been spoken of, and its significance indicated (above, p. [292]). The preaching of Christianity in Rome itself could only have seemed to Nero, or his advisers, an attempt at propagating, under the guise of religion, what had long been considered in the East simple sedition. While therefore the spread of Judaism, Isis-worship, Mithraism, was offensive, and attempts were made to check it, the spread of Christianity was an increase in crime and was treated as such. Perhaps a partial analogy may be offered in the attitude of conservative Americans to doctrines they regard as mischievous, like Socialism, and to those which are directly criminal, like some forms of organized Anarchism.
The elaborate scheme of salvation prepared by the Cilician Jew Paul[[345]] gradually gained almost general acceptance among Christians, although in the mother ecclesia at Jerusalem it found determined and obstinate resistance long after Paul’s death.[[346]] The fundamental doctrine, that the Law was not necessarily the way of salvation for any but born Jews, and even for them was of doubtful efficacy, was the direct negation of the Pharisaic doctrine that through the Law there was effected immediate communion of man with God in this world and the next.
As long as the Christians were merely a heretical Jewish sect, their fortunes affected the whole Jewish community. When their propaganda became, not a supplement to that of the Jews, but its rival, and soon its successful and triumphant rival, its history is wholly separated, and the measures that dealt with the Christians and those that concerned the Jews were no longer in danger of being confused. To the Jews the success of the propaganda of Paul seemed to depend on the fact that he had abolished the long and severe ritual of initiation; he had increased his numbers by decreasing the cost of admission. So we find, shortly after the destruction of the temple, R. Nehemiah ben ha-Kannah asserting (Ab. iii. 6) that to discard the yoke of the Law was to assume the yoke of the kingdom and of the world; i.e. so far from making the path to unworldliness easier, it laid insuperable obstacles in the way. The statement is applicable to Jews of lax observance, but it seems particularly applicable to the Pauline Christians, who had not merely lightened the load, but deliberately and ex professo wholly discarded it.
Outside of the references that give us certain data about the external history of the Roman Jewish community of the first century, we have other data of a wholly different sort, data that allow of a more intimate glimpse into its actual life. They are furnished us by the Roman satirists, whose literary labors have scarcely an analogue in our days. Satire itself was assumed to be a Roman genre.[[347]] Whether or not it was of Roman invention, the miscellanies that have given us so many and such vivid pictures of ancient life are known to us wholly in Latin. It is safe to say that if satirists such as Horace, Persius, Juvenal, and Martial had not come down to us, ancient history would be a vastly bleaker province than it is.