Page:The early Christians in Rome (1911).djvu/65

 mingled with that fierce envy with which the people too frequently view the great and rich and powerful.

Prompted by his evil advisers, among whom the infamous Tigellinus was the most conspicuous, the Emperor in the first instance accused the Jews of being the incendiaries: curiously enough the quarter of the city where they mostly congregated had been spared in the late conflagration. It was no difficult task to persuade the fickle people that the strange race of foreigners, who hated Rome and Rome's gods, had avenged themselves and the wrongs they had suffered at the hands of the Roman nation, by firing the capital city.

Up to this time—in the eyes of most of the Romans—the Jew and the Christian were one people; they considered that if any difference at all existed, it was simply that the Christian was a dissenting Jew. Now apparently, after the burning of Rome, for the first time was any distinction made. It happened on this wise: the Jews had powerful friends in the court of the despotic Emperor. Poppæa the Empress, if not a Jewess, was at least a devoted proselyte of the chosen race. There is no doubt but that her influence, backed up no doubt by others about her person at the court, diverted the suspicions which had been awakened, from the Jews to the Christians. These, it was pointed out, were no real Jews, but were their deadly enemies; they were a hateful and hated sect quite improperly confounded with the chosen people. The Christians were now formally accused of being the real authors of the late calamity, and the accusation seems to have been generally popular among the masses of the Roman population. Our authorities for this popular hatred—we may style them contemporary—are Tacitus and Suetonius and the Christian Clement of Rome. The testimony of Pliny the Younger, who governed Bithynia under the Emperor Trajan, will be discussed later.

Under the orders of Nero—who turned to his own purposes the popular dislike to the new sect of Jewish fanatics, as they generally were supposed to be—the Christians were sought for. It turned out that there was a vast multitude of them in the city, "ingens multitudo," says Tacitus; and Clement of Rome, the Christian bishop and writer, circa 96, also