To the pagans, Christianity was but a religious extravagance—contemptible, indeed, but otherwise insignificant. To the Jews, on the other hand, it was an object of hatred, which never stopped short of bloodshed when it possessed or could usurp the power, and which, though long suppressed by circumstances, displayed itself in all the intensity of its virulence during the brief spasm of the dictatorship of Barcochebas. Christianity was hateful to the Jews on every ground. It nullified their law. It liberated all Gentiles from the heavy yoke of that law, without thereby putting them on a lower level. It even tended to render those who were born Jews indifferent to the institutions of Mosaism. It was, as it were, a fatal revolt and schism from within, more dangerous than any assault from without. And, worse than all, it was by the Gentiles confounded with the Judaism which was its bitterest antagonist. While it sheltered its existence under the mantle of Judaism, as a religio licita, it drew down upon the religion from whose bosom it sprang all the scorn and hatred which were attached by the world to its own special tenets, for however much the Greeks and Romans despised the Jews, they despised still more the belief that the Lord and Saviour of the world was a crucified malefactor who had risen from the dead.
I see in the proselytism of Poppæa, guided by Jewish malice, the only adequate explanation of the first Christian persecution. Hers was the jealousy which had goaded Nero to matricide; hers not improbably was the instigated fanaticism of a proselyte which urged him to imbrue his hands in martyr blood. And she had her reward. A woman of whom Tacitus has not a word of good to say and who seems to have been repulsive even to a Suetonius, is handed down by the renegade Pharisee as "a devout woman"—as a worshipper of God!
And, indeed, when once the Christians were pointed out to the popular vengeance, many reasons would be adduced to prove their connection with the conflagration. Temples had perished—and were they not notorious enemies of the temples? Did not popular rumor charge them with nocturnal orgies and Thyestæan feasts? Suspicions of incendiarism were sometimes brought against Jews; but the Jews were not in the habit of talking, as these sectaries were, about a fire which should consume the world, and rejoicing in the prospect of that fiery consummation.[33] Nay, more, when pagans had bewailed the destruction of the city and the loss of the ancient monuments of Rome, had not these pernicious people used ambiguous language, as though they joyously recognized in these events the signs of a coming end? Even when they tried to suppress all outward tokens of exultation, had they not listened to the fears and lamentations of their fellow-citizens with some sparkle in the eyes, and had they not answered with something of triumph in their tones? There was a satanic plausibility which dictated the selection of these particular victims. Because they hated the wickedness of the world, with its ruthless games and hideous idolatries, they were accused of hatred of the whole human race.
The charge of incivisme, so fatal in this reign of terror, was sufficient to ruin a body of men who scorned the sacrifices of heathendom and turned away with abhorrence from its banquets and gayeties. The cultivated classes looked down upon the Christians with a disdain which would hardly even mention them without an apology. The canaille of pagan cities insulted them with obscene inscriptions and blasphemous pictures on the very walls of the places where they met.[34] Nay, they were popularly known by nicknames, like Sarmenticii and Semaxii—untranslatable terms of opprobrium derived from the fagots with which they were burned and the stakes to which they were chained. Even the heroic courage which they displayed was described as being sheer obstinacy and stupid fanaticism.
But in the method chosen for the punishment of these saintly innocents Nero gave one more proof of the close connection between effeminate æstheticism and sanguinary callousness. As in old days, "on that opprobrious hill," the temple of Chemosh had stood close by that of Moloch, so now we find the spoliarium beside the fornices—Lust hard by Hate. The carnificina of Tiberius, at Capreæ, adjoined the sellariæ. History has given many proofs that no man is more systematically heartless than a corrupted debauchee. Like people, like prince. In the then condition of Rome, Nero well knew that a nation, "cruel, by their sports to blood inured," would be most likely to forget their miseries and condone their suspicions by mixing games and gayety with spectacles of refined and atrocious cruelty, of which, for eighteen centuries, the most passing record has sufficed to make men's blood run cold.
Tacitus tells us that "those who confessed were first seized, and then on their evidence a huge multitude[35] were convicted, not so much on the charge of incendiarism as for their hatred to mankind." Compressed and obscure as the sentence is, Tacitus clearly means to imply by the "confession" to which he alludes the confession of Christianity, and though he is not sufficiently generous to acquit the Christians absolutely of all complicity in the great crime, he distinctly says that they were made the scapegoats of a general indignation. The phrase—"a huge multitude"—is one of the few existing indications of the number of martyrs in the first persecution, and of the number of Christians in the Roman Church. When the historian says that they were convicted on the charge of "hatred against mankind" he shows how completely he confounds them with the Jews, against whom he elsewhere brings the accusation of "hostile feelings toward all except themselves."
Then the historian adds one casual but frightful sentence—a sentence which flings a dreadful light on the cruelty of Nero and the Roman mob. He adds: "And various forms of mockery were added to enhance their dying agonies. Covered with the skins of wild beasts, they were doomed to die by the mangling of dogs, or by being nailed to crosses, or to be set on fire and burned after twilight by way of nightly illumination. Nero offered his own garden for this show, and gave a chariot race, mingling with the mob in the dress of a charioteer, or actually driving about among them. Hence, guilty as the victims were, and deserving of the worst punishments, a feeling of compassion toward them began to rise, as men felt that they were being immolated not for any advantage to the Commonwealth, but to glut the savagery of a single man."
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!
The specific atrocity of such spectacles—unknown to the earlier ages which they called barbarous—was due to the cold-blooded selfishness, the hideous realism of a refined, delicate, æsthetic age. To please these "lisping hawthorn buds," these debauched and sanguinary dandies, art, forsooth, must know nothing of morality; must accept and rejoice in a "healthy animalism"; must estimate life by the number of its few wildest pulsations; must reckon that life is worthless without the most thrilling experiences of horror or delight! Comedy must be actual shame, and tragedy genuine bloodshed. When the play of Afranius, called The Conflagration, was put on the stage, a house must be really burned and its furniture really plundered. In the mime called Laureolus an actor must really be crucified and mangled by a bear, and really fling himself down and deluge the stage with blood. When the heroism of Mucius Scævola was represented, a real criminal must thrust his hand without a groan into the flame and stand motionless while it is being burned. Prometheus must be really chained to his rock, and Dirce in very fact be tossed and gored by the wild bull; and Orpheus be torn to pieces by a real bear; and Icarus must really fly, even though he fall and be dashed to death; and Hercules must ascend the funeral pyre and there be veritably burned alive; and slaves and criminals must play their parts heroically in gold and purple till the flames envelop them.