Page:The early Christians in Rome (1911).djvu/69

 *ings belonging to the temples of the old gods. But, after all, this widespread popular dislike to the sect was not the chief cause of the steady persecution which set in after the wild and intemperate scenes which followed the great fire.

For the first time the imperial government saw with whom they had to do. It was the settled policy of Rome steadily to repress and to stamp out all organizations, all self-governing communities, or clubs, as highly dangerous to the spirit of imperial policy; and as the result of the trials and inquiries which followed the fire of Rome, it found in the Christian community a living embodiment of this tendency which hitherto Rome had succeeded in crushing—found that in their midst, in the capital and in the provinces, an extra-imperial unity was fast growing up—an Empire within the Empire.

In other words, the whole of the principles and the constitution of Christianity were considered as hostile to the established order, and if persisted in were to be deemed treasonable; thus after the discoveries made in the course of the judicial proceedings which were instituted after the great fire, the Christians, even after their innocence on the incendiary charge was generally acknowledged, were viewed by the imperial authorities as a politically dangerous society, being an organized and united body having its ramifications all over the Empire; but after the hideous and revolting cruelties to which so many of them had been subjected in the famous Vatican games, the original charge made against them came universally to be considered as an infamous device of the Emperor Nero to divert public attention from himself, to whom, although probably falsely, the guilt of causing the fire was popularly attributed.

Still there is no doubt that although the alleged connexion of the Christian sect with the crime of incendiarism seems to have been quickly forgotten, from the year 64 onward "the persecution was continued as a permanent police measure, under the form of a general prosecution of Christians as a sect dangerous to the public safety."

This, after a lengthened discussion of the whole question, is Professor Ramsay's conclusion, who considers it doubtful