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 PART III

THE GREAT NUMBER OF MARTYRS IN THE FIRST TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS

Considerable stress has been laid in the preceding pages on the question of the duration of the periods of persecution and the consequent number of martyrs who suffered in these periods. It has commonly been assumed that after the death of Nero a lengthened period of quiet was enjoyed by the Church of Rome as in the provinces, and that the sect of Christians was generally left unmolested during the reigns of Vespasian and Titus, and indeed of Domitian, until quite the last years of his life.

It has been shown that this was by no means the case, and that the Christians were harassed more or less all through this period of supposed quiet.

And after, through the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, the rapidly growing Christian community was perpetually persecuted by an unfriendly and suspicious government, often at the instigation of a jealous and hostile populace. Again and again these attacks, probably at first mostly local and partial, flamed out into a general and bitter persecution.

In the days of Antoninus Pius the harrying of Christians even grew more and more general and cruel, and when Marcus Antoninus became Emperor, the sufferings of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth became decidedly more acute and pronounced, and a terrible period of persecution set in and became the lot of the Christian subjects of Rome.

We have awful examples of this bitter "Antonine" persecution in the sad records, undoubtedly genuine, of the