Page:The early Christians in Rome (1911).djvu/66

 speaks of their great numbers. Many of the accused were condemned on the false charge of incendiarism, to which was added an accusation far harder to disprove—general hostility to society, and hatred of the world (odio generis humani).

A crowd of Christians of both sexes was condemned to the wild beasts. It was arranged that they should provide a hideous amusement for the people who witnessed the games just then about to be celebrated in the imperial gardens on the Vatican Hill—on the very spot where the glorious basilica of S. Peter now stands.

Nero, anxious to restore his waning popularity with the crowd, and to divert the strange suspicion which had fixed upon him as the incendiary of the great fire, was determined that the games should surpass any former exhibition of the like kind in the number of victims provided, and in the refined cruelty of the awful punishment to which the sufferers were condemned. He had in good truth an array of victims for his ghastly exhibition such as had never been seen before. A like exhibition indeed was never repeated; the hideousness of it positively shocking the Roman populace, cruel though they were, and passionately devoted to scenic representations which included death and torture, crime and shame. Numbers of these first Christian martyrs were simply exposed to the beasts; others clothed in skins were hunted down by fierce wild dogs; others were forced to play a part in infamous dramas, which ever closed with the death of the victims in pain and agony.

But the closing scene was the most shocking. As the night fell on the great show, as a novel delight for the populace, the Roman people being especially charmed with brilliant and striking illuminations, the outer ring of the vast arena was encircled with crosses on which a certain number of Christians were bound, impaled, or nailed. The condemned were clothed in tunics steeped in pitch and in other inflammable matter, and then, horrible to relate, the crucified and impaled were set on fire, and in the lurid light of these ghastly living torches the famous chariot races, in which the wicked Emperor took a part, were run.

But this was never repeated; as we have just stated,