Page:The early Christians in Rome (1911).djvu/79

 *tioned as the second great persecutor, Nero being the first. The reason doubtless for this general tradition is that in 95, PERSONS OF THE HIGHEST RANK, SOME EVEN BELONGING TO the imperial family, were among the condemned; notably Flavius Clemens the Consul, and the two princesses bearing the name of Domitilla—all these being very near relatives of the Emperor.

The violent outbreak of persecution, fierce and terrible as it seems to have been in the last year and a half of Domitian's reign, does not appear to have been owing to any special movement among the Christian subjects of the Empire which aroused attention and suggested distrust, but was solely owing to the Emperor's private policy and personal feelings. There is nothing to show that any edict against the sect was promulgated in this reign. Since the time of Nero the persecution of Christians was a standing matter, as was that of persons who were habitual law-breakers, robbers, and such like. Probably under the princes of the Flavian dynasty, as we have said, this policy of the government was somewhat developed throughout the Empire, and now and again, owing to local circumstances and the disposition of the chief magistrate, was more or less severe. It is said that some governors boasted that they had brought back from their province their lictors' axes unstained with blood; but others were actuated with very different feelings.

In the case of the so-called Domitian persecution, the ill-will of the autocratic Emperor naturally intensified it. Various motives seem to have influenced the sovereign Lord of the Empire here.

Domitian was a sombre and suspicious tyrant, and no doubt his cruel action in the case of his relatives, the consul Flavius and the princesses of his House, was prompted by jealousy of those who stood nearest his throne, and the fact that they were found to belong to the proscribed sect gave him a pretext of which he was glad to avail himself. But his bloody vengeance was by no means only wreaked upon his own relatives. We learn from the pagan writer Dion Cassius (in the epitome of his work by the monk Xiphilin) and also from Suetonius, that he put to death various persons of high position, notably Acilius Glabrio who had been consul in 91.