Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 2.djvu/187

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 169 scarcely finished the term of his annual magistracy, CHAP, when on a slight pretence he was condemned and exe- cuted; Domitilla was banished to a desolate island on the coast of Campania*^ ; and sentences either of death or of confiscation were pronounced against a great number of persons who were involved in the same accu- ♦ sation. The guilt imputed to their charge was that of atheism SLndjewis/i fnonners^; a singular association of ideas, which cannot with any propriety be applied ex- cept to the christians, as they were obscurely and im- perfectly viewed by the magistrates and by the writers of that period. On the strength of so probable an in- terpretation, and too eagerly admitting the suspicions of a tyrant as an evidence of their honourable crime, the church has placed both Clemens and Domitilla among its first martyrs, and has branded the cruelty of Domitian with the name of the second persecution. But this persecution (if it deserves that epithet) was of no long duration. A few months after the death of Clemens and the banishment of Domitilla, Stephen, a freedman belonging to the latter, who had enjoyed the favour, but who had not surely embraced the faith, of his mistress, assassinated the emperor in his palace '. The memory of Domitian was condemned by the sen- ate ; his acts were rescinded ; his exiles recalled ; and under the gentle administration of Nerva, while the innocent were restored to their rank and fortunes, even the most guilty either obtained pardon or escaped punishment''. II. xbout ten years afterwards, under the reign of Ignorance Trajan, the younger Pliny was intrusted by his friend coucermntr s The isle of Pandataria, according to Dion. Hruttius Prsesens (apud, Euseb. iii. 18.) banishes her to that of Pontia, which was not far distant from the other. That difference, and a mistake either of Eusebius or of his transcribers, have given occasion to suppose two Domitillas, the wife and the niec^ of Clemens. See Tillemont, Memoires Ecclesiastiques, torn ii. p. 2-24. •> Dion, 1. Ixvii. p. 1112. If the Bruttius Prsesens, from whom it is pro- bable that he collected this account, was the correspondent of Pliny (Epistol. vii. 3.) we may consider him as a contemporary writer. ' Suetou. in Domit. c 17 ; Philostratus in Vit. .Apolion. 1. viii. •i Dion, 1. Ixviii. p. 1118; Plin. Epistol. iv. 22.