Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/127

 THE ROMAN EMPIRE 115 visiting personally every portion of his empire from Britain itself to the confines of Parthia. He proved himself a great ruler, though the irritability of a painful disease led him in his last years to sundry acts of personal tyranny. He had adopted, or in other words nominated as his successor, Antoninus Pius, who in his turn adopted Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. For a time the world was governed by The two emperors, who were also philosophers ; and AntODines. perhaps better governed than at any other period. The two Antonines made the welfare of their subjects their primary aim, and made no attempt to expand the empire ; though Marcus Aurelius himself was constantly compelled to wage war on the frontiers against the wild tribes which were now pressing south- wards and westwards with increasing vigour, impelled forwards by the still wilder tribes behind them. Here we must pause to observe that the establishment of the Roman Empire was silently accompanied by an unsuspected revolution of no less importance even in the political 2. Chris- history of the world. This was the birth and growth tianity. of Christianity. The Roman state tolerated all religions. It permitted the worship of all manner of gods as freely as we do to-day in our vast empire. But the one thing it would not tolerate was a religion directed against the authority of the state, and it was the conviction that Christianity sought to subvert the state which led to the persecution of the professors of the new faith. The years of our Lord's ministry in Judaea fell in the latter part of the reign of Tiberius. Outside Judaea itself the new teaching attracted little attention from the rulers. It was addressed mainly to the humbler classes, and was not readily intelligible to those who were not familiar with Jewish doctrines. Its austere morality, while it appealed intensely to unpopularity the noblest types of mind, was irritating to a society of which, given over to sensual indulgence and devoid ChristianB - of spiritual ideals, was at the same time the ready victim of the grossest superstitions. The doctrine of a brotherhood as open to the slave as to the free man was incredible ; the practice of the community of goods was intolerable. If the state tolerated all religions it did not trouble itself to prevent the private perse