Page:The early Christians in Rome (1911).djvu/118

 pursued through the reign of the blameless Antoninus Pius, and became yet more pronounced and severe in the years of his successor, the yet nobler and purely patriotic Marcus, under whose rule, beneficent and just though it generally was, the Christians suffered as they had never suffered before.

For the first time after the close of the great Jewish war, A.D. 133-A.D. 135, the imperial government recognised what a grave danger to the Roman polity, to its ancient religion and its beliefs, was Christianity.

For more than sixty years—that is, from the day that Nero charged the then comparatively little band of Roman Christians with being the authors of the great fire which reduced so large a portion of Rome to ashes—had the sword of persecution hung over the Christian communities. From that day, the follower of Jesus was an outlaw in the great Empire. His home, his life, were exposed to a perpetual danger; ever and anon a period of bitter persecution set in, and lives were sacrificed and homes were wrecked to gratify some wild and senseless popular clamour, or even as the result of some private and often malicious information. There was no security any more for a member of the proscribed sect.

It is true that a great and wise Emperor like Trajan reluctantly allowed the law as it stood to be carried out, but he made no effort to change it or to mitigate its stern penalties. Hadrian, certainly in his early and middle life, was like his predecessor generally averse to harrying the quiet sect, and his well-known rescript even threatened the severest penalties to the false informer who denounced a Christian; but in spite of these just efforts the Christian lived in a state of perpetual unrest,—a martyr's death was ever before the eyes of one who elected to be a follower of Jesus. This position of the Christians in the Roman Empire continued from A.D. 64-5 until the later days of Hadrian, A.D. 135-8.

But after the close of the great Jewish war, A.D. 135, as we have said, things grew even graver for the Christians. They now stood out conspicuous as an irreconcilable sect, quite different from the Jews, who after the great war had quietly submitted to Roman law and order