SOURCE: “Two Pagan Criticisms” and “The Roman Attitude toward Christianity” in Marcus Aurelius, Yale University Press, 1921, pp. 198-206, 207-18.

[In the following excerpt, Sedgwick explores two contemporary admonishments directed at Aurelius and explains the reasons why Christians were generally held in low esteem by Romans.]

In this chapter I shall refer to the criticisms that have been made upon Marcus Aurelius. But, first, as a fitting prologue to an apology, I will begin with some favorable testimonies of Dio Cassius (150-235?), Herodianus (165-255?), and such other historians of the ancient world as have spoken of him, in order to make it plain at the very first that outside of certain special criticisms there is nothing but eulogy. Dio Cassius uses these phrases: “Always so pure, honorable, and religious-minded” (LXXI, 30); “He refrained from all wrongdoing” (do. 34); “All that he did was done for virtue's sake, and nothing from pretense” (do. 34); “Most of his life he spent in acts of beneficence” (do. 34); “He governed better than anyone who has ever been in power” (do. 34). He owed much to education, but more to his natural disposition, for before he was under his famous teachers “he set his soul stalwartly toward virtue” (do. 35).

Herodian says: “He made every virtue his business” (I, 2); “He was the only king who has proved his philosophy, not by words, but by his sober, righteous, and godly life and character” (do. 2). When he died he “left a longing for him in the hearts of living men and an immortal memory of his virtue unto generations yet to come.” And, at the news, “every man, whether in the army or civil life, was weighed down by grief; not a soul in the whole Empire but received the news with tears, they called him their noble father, their good Emperor, their gallant leader, their wise and temperate king. And none spoke false” (do. 4).

Eutropius (fourth century): “Without a doubt a most noble man … whom it is easier to wonder at than to praise”; “He restored the fortunes of the commonwealth by his virtue and his gentleness.”

Sextus Aurelius Victor (fourth century): “He had all the virtues and a celestial mind”; “Had it not been for him the whole Roman State would have toppled over in a single fall”; “On his death Rome was upset by the public grief, the Senators put on mourning and met with tears in the Senate chamber. … No one doubted that he had gone to heaven; however hard it might be to believe in the ascension of Romulus, everybody believed in that of Marcus.” And Julius Capitolinus, the biographer, who is so ready to tell evil, speaks of his sanctitas, tranquillitas, and pietas, and tells how “everybody loved him, the old men loved him as a son, the young men as a father, those more of his own age as a brother, and all spoke of him under these several names.” And, “on the day of his funeral no one thought he was to be lamented, for all were sure that he had been lent by the gods and had gone home to them. And everybody, all ages, every rank and class, paid him honors as a god, and anyone who might by hook or crook get his picture and did not have it in his house, was thought to be a sacrilegious wretch.” And the chronicler adds that “even in his day in many a house a statuette of Marcus Aurelius stood among the household gods; and that there were men who said that Marcus had foretold them in dreams of the future and had foretold truly.”

I cite these scattered bits from these various writers, as evidence of the special place which Marcus held, and continued to hold for centuries, in the popular imagination, a place personal to himself, quite distinct from his position as one of the Antonines, who, taken together, represented to succeeding generations a golden age like that of the poets, (as our friend Fronto says,) illud a poetis saeculum aureum memoratum; for, I repeat, outside of certain definite reproaches, all the world is in agreement that Marcus Aurelius far transcended the moral measure of ordinary men.

Of these reproaches, which are three in number, the first two are of the same kind, but the third comes from quite a different and alien source, and must be dealt with by itself. The first two had better be set forth in the form adopted by the most illustrious, as well as the most just and sympathetic, of the ancient critics, who, in presenting the two reproaches, follows some traditional criticism rather than his own opinion, and by his explanation and argument quite takes their sting away. I refer to what that strange, wayward genius, the Emperor Julian, whom we call the Apostate, has said in his satire The Caesars. The story is this:

Romulus, himself deified, gives a banquet in heaven to celebrate the feast of the Saturnalia, to which he invites the gods and the Roman Emperors. The gods come first and take their places. Silenus, the wag, who serves as the mouth-piece of satire, sits beside the young and laughter-loving Bacchus, and makes jibes and jests at the Emperors as they arrive, one by one, Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, and so on. Caligula no sooner appears than he is seized by the Furies, and hurled headlong to Tartarus; Nero, also. Then follow Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius, and all the while, Silenus cracks his jokes at their expense. At last “the pair of brothers enter, Marcus and Lucius; Silenus looks cross for he can find nothing to jeer at or make fun of, especially as to Marcus. And yet Silenus pries in meddlesome fashion, charging that Marcus had not done as he should in regard to his wife and his son, in that he mourned for Faustina more than was becoming, considering she had not been a model of decorum …, and as to his son, in that he put it in his power to destroy the State, although he had a son-in-law of high character who would have managed the commonwealth more wisely and taken better care of Commodus than he himself had done. Nevertheless with all his meddlesome investigation into these matters, Silenus revered the greatness of Marcus's virtue.” Other Emperors follow, and, at the request of Hercules, Alexander the Great is also admitted.

After the feast Jupiter announces a contest of merit. The great warriors, Julius Caesar, Augustus, and Trajan are bid step forward. Saturn turns to Jupiter and says he is surprised to see that fighting Emperors are called forth, but no philosopher. Jupiter answers, “I like philosophers just as much; call up Marcus Aurelius.” Marcus is called and comes forward, “with an aspect of great seriousness, contracting his eyes and eyebrows from pain; his beauty wears a neglected look, for his person is simple and unadorned, his beard very long, his dress plain and modest, and his body from lack of nourishment is diaphanous, translucent, as if there were a very pure and radiant light within.” He is admitted within the sacred enclosure.

It is then settled that each contestant shall speak on his own behalf, for a certain length of time to be determined by the water-glass. Mercury ignores a suggestion by Silenus that Trajan and Alexander may mistake the contents of the glass and drink it up, and announces that each contestant is to proclaim what he has achieved. Caesar, Alexander, Augustus, and Trajan (as was to be expected) boast of their victories; Constantine, also, boasts of his. When Marcus began to speak, Silenus whispered to Bacchus, “Now we shall hear what paradoxes and wonderful opinions this Stoic will utter.” But Marcus looking at Jupiter and the other gods said: “Jupiter, ye Gods, there is no need for me to make a speech, nor labor in this contest. If you did not know all about my life, it would be proper for me to tell it to you; but since you know, and nothing is hid from you, you yourselves will estimate me according to my worth.”

“For Marcus seemed a wonderful person in everything, and in this respect exceptionally wise, [such is the reflection of the Emperor Julian,] in that he knew, as the poet says,

When it was time to speak and
When it was best to keep silent.”

The gods did not vote at once, but asked to hear from the candidates not only their achievements but what each thought was the end and purpose of life. The goddess Fortune interrupts to complain that none of the candidates, except Augustus, had acknowledged their debt to her. But Mercury proceeded with the questioning, and asked Alexander the Great what he believed to be the noblest thing and what he had striven for. Alexander answered, “To conquer the whole world.” Trajan, “I strove for the same things as Alexander, only with greater moderation.” Silenus is beginning to quiz Trajan, when Bacchus breaks in: “Go to glory, you jeer at them all and don't let them speak for themselves. But stop your nonsense about them now, and see what you can say against Marcus. He seems to me a man, to quote Simonides, ‘four square and beyond the reach of blame.’” Mercury turned to Marcus and asked, “And what do you think, Marcus, is the end of life?” Marcus answered quietly and soberly, “To imitate the gods.” The irrepressible Silenus questions him, “Tell me, what did you use to think was the way to imitate the gods?” Marcus answered, “To have as few needs as possible, and to do good to as many as I could.” “But surely,” said Silenus, “you needed something?” Marcus answered, “I needed nothing, but perhaps my body had some little needs.” To this question, also, Marcus was judged to have answered well. Silenus was at a loss, but at last returned to the points in which he thought Marcus had not done rightly or reasonably, as to his wife and son, in that he had enrolled her among the deities and that he had entrusted the Empire to him. Marcus answered: “In this also I imitated the gods; for I obeyed Homer who says,

Surely whatsoever man is good and sound of mind
Loves his own wife and cherishes her.

And as to my son, I have Jupiter's own reasoning, for he said to Mars, ‘Long ago I would have smitten you with my thunderbolt, were it not that I love you because you are my son.’ Besides I never thought that my son would be so bad. And though his youth, assailed on all sides by strong temptations, swaying to and fro, was borne down to the worse, he was not bad when I entrusted the State to him; he turned out to be bad after he had received it. Therefore, as to my wife I acted in accordance with the vehement love of god-like Achilles, and as to my son I followed the example of almighty Jupiter; and besides I did no novel thing. It is the custom to bequeath the succession to one's sons, and all fathers pray that it may be so. And I am not the first to do honor to a wife; I did as many others have done. Perhaps it would not be wise to initiate such practices, but it would border close on injustice to debar nearest relations from doing what had been done over and over again. But I forget myself, I have made too long a defence before you, O Jupiter and ye Gods, who have knowledge of this already. So please excuse my over zeal.” When the decision of the gods was announced Marcus had received a majority of the votes.

In his satire the Emperor Julian reports the only two reproaches that the ancient world cast at Marcus, that he did wrong to give to Faustina divine honors and to bequeath the Empire to Commondus. On both these points Julian's defence seems to me an adequate plea in mitigation; but I think he should have gone farther, and, as lawyers say, demurred to the indictment. As to Faustina, I will merely repeat what I have already said, that there is no contemporary evidence of her misbehaving as a wife, and that historians today, who concern themselves with the matter, such as Professor Bury and Mr. Thomas Nelson Jerome, wholly reject the accusation. As to Commodus, I will amplify Julian's defence; and, in order to do this, it becomes pertinent to quote the nearest contemporary account of what took place on Marcus's death.

It will be remembered that Marcus's other sons had died, Titus, Aurelius, Aelius, Antoninus, Annius Verus, and Hadrian, and only Commodus was left, a beautiful boy, with golden hair. Marcus used to call him “my fellow soldier” and carry him in his arms to show him to the men. He had spared no pains on his education; and had he not a right to expect that his own self-denial and consecration to duty had found a lodgment in his son's heart, and in maturer years would exert beneficent influences? Commodus was naturally as free from taint as any man; Dio Cassius himself reports this. The stories told of his boyhood by Julius Capitolinus belong to the same category as the scandals he tells of Faustina. And when Silenus, presenting the chief traditional reproach, complains that Marcus bequeathed the Empire to Commodus, he must have forgotten that Marcus had already created him Augustus, and had conferred not only the consulship but also the tribunician power, chief among the imperial prerogatives, and that he had done so in compliance with the express request of the Senate: Commodo imperium justum rogamus. Progeniem tuam robora. Commodo Antonino tribuniciam potestatem rogamus. The Senate had been thoroughly scared by Cassius's rebellion, they feared that unless the succession of Commodus was solidly established, ambitious soldiers might start up on all sides and snatch at the crown. At that time the Senate certainly did not believe evil of Commodus. The horrible wickedness that he did afterwards confused public memory and made sundry persons think, as wiseacres do, that they had already perceived in his father's lifetime that he was bad. The army also accepted him at once, and at first (for a very short time, it must be admitted) he acted in accordance with his father's plans and proposed to continue the war and conquer the land from the Danube to the Baltic Sea. I mention this as a bit of evidence to show that not until after his accession did Commodus's wicked character reveal itself. Very soon, however, fighting on the northern borders became irksome. “Fawning Parasites, placing their Felicity in Belly-cheere, and Brutish Lusts, did oftsoones put him in mind of the Delices of Rome.” I repeat, I am not concerned with his weakness, but with the general opinion and expectation of the time. To Rome he decided to go. When it was known at Rome that he was coming, all the people were delighted, full of hope in their young Emperor, for they expected him to take after his father. (I quote Herodian.) He was welcomed and cheered all along his journey. When he came near Rome, nobles and commons went out to meet him, and strewed flowers in his path, and when they saw him they burst into acclamations, for he was very beautiful in his youthful prime, most noble to look at, with his well-made body, his strength, his handsome face, the glitter in his eye, and his hair shining in the sunlight like skeins of gold.

Such was Commodus at the time of his accession. It would hardly have been wise policy on Marcus's part to revoke all the prerogatives of sovereignty from Commodus and confer them on his son-in-law Pompeianus, an old general of foreign birth, who had married Lucilla after the death of Lucius Verus, and by that very act prompt and prick on to rebellion half a dozen rivals in the army or in the Senate who held themselves as good as he. With such a father as Marcus and such a grandfather as Antoninus Pius, no man would have believed it wise to set aside the appointed heir and put a stranger in his place. This reproach is founded on the wisdom that comes after the event.

The third reproach proceeds from a wholly different source, and requires a more elaborate explanation.

.....

Modern Christian scholars blame Marcus Aurelius for what they term the persecutions that took place in his reign. They look back upon the Early Church, as Don Quixote looked back on the Golden Age, as a time of innocence, simplicity, brotherly love, and knowledge of the truth, “Dichosa edad, dichosos siglos aquellos! (that happy age, those happy times!)” Let it be granted that the picture of the early Christian community as painted in the beginning of the Book of Acts might still serve to depict life as it was among the simpler congregations, and that the majority of those early Christians were worthy of all admiration. Justin Martyr, an honest witness, in his memorial addressed to the Emperor Antoninus says: “Before we became Christians we delighted in debauchery, now we rejoice in purity of life; we used to practise magic rites and sorcery, but now we are dedicated to the good, unbegotten, God; we used to value money and possessions above everything, but now we bring together all that we own and share with everyone that needs. We used to hate one another, and kill one another, and, because of a difference of custom or nationality, we would not admit strangers within our doors, but now since the coming of Christ we all live together. We pray for our enemies; we try to win over those who hate us unjustly, so that by living in accordance with the noble precepts of Christ they may become partakers with us in the same joyful hopes of obtaining our reward from God, the Lord of all.” (Apol. XIV.) Aristides of Athens, in his petition to Antoninus, says even more.

Nevertheless Justin and Aristides are advocates and state their case as forcibly as they can. An opposing advocate might concede all this as to the genuine disciples of Christ, and yet he could also point to differences in dogma and mutual criticisms between disagreeing sects, (and produce witnesses, too,) as signs that brotherly love among Christians was not universal; he might submit that not all of the goodly fellowship endured to the end, but that some apostatized and some betrayed their fellows. He might also dispute the claim that Christians had knowledge of the truth. But let us grant that though Christianity could not free poor humanity from all frailty and wrongdoing, it did so then more than it does now, that it made many men and women kind, pure, and true, and some heroic, and that Justin's description of his fellow Christians, on the whole, is true. The gravamen of the modern Christian accusation against Marcus Aurelius does not lie in the fact that the Christians were innocent and good, but that he, the persecutor, was innocent and good. Their condemnation seems almost to indicate a fear lest this lack of understanding and sympathy in a man whom all the world, themselves excepted, regards as tender-hearted and prone to mercy, should cast a shadow of reproach upon the Christians of that generation. For it might be thought, by some indifferent person, that the fault did not lie exclusively with the Emperor. Some such notion may have passed through the minds of those early Christian apologists, Melito, Bishop of Sardis, and Tertullian, who say that only the wicked Emperors such as Nero and Domitian persecuted the Christians, and that under the good Emperors, Marcus included, there were no persecutions, and so evade the dilemma. On the other hand, Melito and Tertullian may have spoken out of ignorance. But let us assume that the Christians were innocent and good; yet it cannot be contended that they were law-abiding, and therefore I take exception to the word persecution. However heroic, however admirable, the Christians may have been, the application of the word persecution to the customary enforcement of the criminal law, does violence to the ordinary use of language. The law was cruel, the society from which it issued was brutalized, the public opinion on which it was based was wholly erroneous, all this may be granted; but it does not alter the fact that the proceedings against the Christians, of which the modern apologists complain, (for they would scarcely hold an Emperor responsible for an outbreak of mob violence in Smyrna, let us say, or Lyons,) were, according to the Roman constitution, conducted with due process of law. The charge against Marcus Aurelius is that he suffered the criminal law to take its course.

The result was tragic enough, and not for the Christians only. The early Christians were a very fortunate people. They had the greatest of human possessions, the belief in a personal God and a passionate love for him. “Blessed are ye,” their God had said, “when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven” (St. Matt. v, 11-12). And they did rejoice exceedingly: “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” But the obverse of this picture has no rejoicing. In the Meditations there is this pathetic passage: “If a man stand beside a spring of clear fresh water and utter curses upon it, the spring does not stop welling up pure water for him to drink; and if he should throw mud into it and filth, it will quickly scatter them away, purify them, and not be one whit less clear and fresh. How then shall I possess myself of a spring and not a mere cistern?” (M. A [Meditations of Aurelius] . VIII, 51.) A very little rearrangement of history might, it would seem, have permitted Marcus Aurelius to listen with a sympathetic, if not a credulous, ear to some Christian preacher repeating the words spoken beside Jacob's well to the woman of Samaria? “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” (St. John iv, 13-14). … Of course it would have been impossible for a man educated as Marcus Aurelius had been, to accept the religious beliefs of this heroic martyr, but it might have been possible for him to learn that a man, not a Roman, unlettered, ignorant of philosophy, whose lot in life perhaps had been to be a slave, to hew wood and draw water, could be a hero. This, then, is the other side of the tragedy, that the Emperor, living in the midst of a society in which so much was cruel and vulgar, haunted by dim apprehensions of greater evils to come, and with personal sorrows thick at his heart, did not know that there was a great company of persons, scattered here and there in many parts of the Empire, who cherished ideals as pure as his own, many of whom were joyfully giving their lives for the very ends for which he was spending his,—to bring their wills into harmony with the divine will,—and that in what he could see nothing but low superstition (M. A. I, 6), gross habits (M. A. III, 16), and fanatical obstinacy (M. A. VIII, 48; XI, 3), there was really the same heroic self-consecration to which he had dedicated his own life. Marcus Aurelius could not, humanly speaking, have become a Christian; his spiritual task was not to follow the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth, but to set before the world the example of a man who, without the support of a supernatural creed, lived as if he were walking in the sight of a personal god.

It is now time to set before the reader the various causes which not only prevented educated Roman gentlemen, bred upon the cosmopolitan doctrines of Stoicism, from obtaining an inkling of the goodness and innocence of the Christians, but also filled their minds with all manner of evil thoughts concerning them. For it is beyond question that not only the common people, but also the most educated Romans, those farthest from the reach of prejudice, did believe the grossest calumnies. To show what those calumnies were, it will be best to cite contemporary evidence. I quote from a charming little book written at or about this time, by a distinguished advocate at the Roman bar, Minucius Felix, in which, under the guise of a discussion between two friends, Octavius, a Christian, and Caecilius, a pagan, the author presents his brief on behalf of the new religion that he himself has adopted.

The two friends, Octavius and Caecilius, together with the teller of the tale, who is to act as umpire, go down from Rome to Ostia for a holiday. The courts are not sitting, and the leisure class has left town to enjoy the vintage season after a hot summer. The friends walk along the bank of the Tiber till they reach the sea; here they sit upon a breakwater that serves to protect bathers, and, after watching boys skip sea shells over the rippling waters, they fall into a religious argument. The pagan begins by deploring the attack that has been made upon the gods by “certain fellows belonging to a sect whose case is hopeless, proscribed, and desperate. They have gathered together from the lowest dregs of the people a number of ignorant men and credulous women, always ready to believe anything, and have formed a rabble of impious conspirators. At their nocturnal gatherings, at their solemn fasts, and barbarous meals, not sacred rites but crimes constitute their bond of union. It is a people that lurks in darkness and shuns the light. … Ill weeds grow apace. These vicious habits are spreading day by day. The abominable secret haunts where these impious wretches hold their meetings are increasing in number all over the world. These execrable conspirators must be rooted out. They recognize one another by secret signs and marks! After the briefest acquaintance they love one another! A kind of religion of sensuality prevails amongst them; they call themselves promiscuously brothers and sisters, and under the cloak of these names are guilty of the most beastly offences. … The details of the initiation of novices are as horrible as they are well known. A baby, wrapped up in dough to deceive the unwary, is brought to the would-be novice, who, misled by the coating of dough, is induced to deal what are apparently harmless blows, and secretly stabs it to death. Then—shame on them!—they thirstily lick up the child's blood and eagerly dissect his limbs. This victim is their bond of union. Complicity in the crime is their pledge of mutual silence. Such rites are more abominable than any acts of sacrilege. What takes place at their banquets is also well known. Everybody talks about them everywhere, and the oration of our distinguished friend from Cirta confirms it. On a fixed day they assemble together, children, sisters, mothers, people of both sexes and of all ages. After much feasting, a dog fastened to the lamp is coaxed by some pieces of meat thrown to it, to spring violently beyond the length of its chain. The lamp, which would have been an inconvenient witness, is overturned and extinguished. After this, riot and indecency reign supreme. I purposely omit much: what I have already said is too much, and all or most of it is shown to be true by the very atmosphere of secrecy which surrounds this impious religion” (Octavius, IX, X).

The defender of the faith, Octavius, admits that before he had become a Christian he, too, believed all this. “I believed that the Christians worshipped monsters, ate the flesh of infants, and practised incest at their feasts.” And he explains the stories as the invention of evil demons (do. XXVIII). “The story of our incestuous banquet is a monstrous lie, invented by a league of demons to injure us in order that our reputation for chastity should be sullied by charges of infamous and disgusting practices, and that before people had learned the truth, they should be induced to shun us, owing to the terror inspired by these unspeakable insinuations. So, too, your friend Fronto [for he was the orator from Cirta who in a public oration had repeated these calumnies against the Christians] has not given his evidence like a man who asserts a known fact, but after the manner of orators, who scatter abuse broadcast” (do. XXXI). It is useless to continue the story further.

From this book of Minucius Felix we learn that these slanders were believed by men of the highest education, position, and character, even publicly asserted by Fronto. Octavius was right; everybody told these stories everywhere. An apologist from Athens, Athenagoras, in his petition to Marcus Aurelius, admits at the outset that “common report charges us with three crimes, atheism, feasting on human flesh, and incest.” Even the Epistle from the church at Lyons and Vienna to their brethren in Asia and Phrygia (a.d. 177), which describes the horrible punishments inflicted in Lyons, states that the pagan servants of the denounced Christians, under fear of torture, accused their masters of the “feasts of Thyestes” and “the incests of Oedipus,” referring to the grandson of Tantalus, who unwittingly ate his own son, and to the wretched king who, also in ignorance, married his own mother. And in another defence of Christianity, again in the form of a dialogue, this time between a Christian and a Jew, Justin Martyr asks the Jew: “Do you, like others, believe that we eat men, and when we meet after our feast put out the lights and wallow in promiscuous bestiality?” (Dial. with Trypho, X). And, with equal directness, Tertullian, a generation later in his Apology, says: “We are called the wickedest wretches on account of our sacrament of killing babies and making food of them, and on account of incest after the banquet, because the dogs overturn the lamps (our panders of darkness in good truth!) and help on the shamelessness of our impious lusts!” (Apol. VII.) All this I quote because it is necessary to relate the facts as they were presented to that sad, solitary, lover of justice and mercy, who instinctively drew back from this strange, innovating, oriental sect with the same disdain that he showed toward all that he understood to be degrading.

Such then was the universally accepted report. Let us now glance at the causes which kicked up so thick a dust of calumnies that, in spite of innocence, of godly lives, of memorial and apology, Romans of every class, the most educated as well as the mob, believed them with so pitiable a confidence. The attitude of the educated was based on contempt, as we know from the expressed opinions of a tolerably long list of men high in office, proconsuls and governors, a class of which scholars have said, “we can find among them examples occasionally of cruelty, occasionally of rapacity, but never of incompetence.” These men looked upon the Christian dogmas, that a Jew crucified as a criminal is God, that after being dead he became alive again, as the tenets of a debased superstition, and proofs of an irrational mind. The first of these Romans to come upon the Christian dogmas was Gallio, Seneca's brother, governor of Achaia, who treated them with contempt. (Acts xviii, 12-17.) The second was Festus, governor of Judaea, who said to King Agrippa, in explaining the nature of the accusation against Paul: “There is a certain man left in bonds by Felix: about whom, when I was at Jerusalem, the chief priests and the elders of the Jews informed me, desiring to have judgment against him. … Against whom when the accusers stood up, they brought none accusation of such things as I supposed: but had certain questions against him of their own superstition, and of one Jesus, which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive” (Acts xxv, 15-19). And when, at the hearing in the presence of King Agrippa, Paul declared that Jesus was raised from the dead and had spoken to him from heaven, Festus exclaimed, “Paul, thou art beside thyself … ; much learning doth make thee mad” (Acts xxvi, 24). These mystical doctrines, which to the converts seemed doubly sacred because they were beyond the reach of a mind untouched by grace, were to the Romans sheer lunacy. Some fifty years later Tacitus, who at one time was a provincial governor, speaks of the Christian belief as a “pernicious superstition” (superstitio exitiabilis). Suetonius, who had served as secretary to the Emperor Hadrian, calls it a “malignant superstition” (superstitio malefica). Pliny, governor of Bithynia, uses the word “madness” (amentia) and the phrase a “degraded and gross superstition” (superstitio prava et immodica). The men who entertained these opinions were, as we see, of the highest rank, and some famous in literature. The Christians were well aware of this attitude of intellectual disdain. From Justin Martyr we learn that the Romans still employed the same word to describe Christian belief that Festus used to Paul; he says, “For this belief the people accuse us of madness …” (Apol. XIII). Minucius Felix says it was considered a “vain and crazy superstition” (superstitio vana et demens). This was the attitude of the educated Roman official; very much the attitude that British rulers in Egypt would take toward the Mahdi or some wild prophet from the desert. The proconsul Vigellius Saturninus, in the course of the trial of The State vs. Speratus et al., held at Carthage (a.d. 180), also uses the same word “madness”. Another word that the Gentiles applied to Christian dogma in St. Paul's time was [mōría], which our authorized version translates as foolishness (I Cor. i, 21, 23). That word, too, was employed over a hundred years later, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. At Pergamum, in the province of Asia, the proconsul who presided at the trial in State vs. Carpos et al., says to the prisoners, “Don't talk foolishness” … ; and again, in the course of the trial, he remarks that he has already “allowed them to talk a great deal of nonsense” … Such was the opinion of all these highly trained civil servants. To them this passionate, irrational religion was a species of frenzy, possible only for uneducated, superstitious, minds of the lowest social classes.

The origin of the infamous calumnies is not quite so plain. But calumny is like a spark that needs but tinder to create a blaze. Here the fuel was ready. In the beginning, the early Christians were mostly Jews, and shared in the unpopularity of that race. Gibbon says of them, “The sullen obstinacy with which they maintained their peculiar rites and unsocial manners seemed to mark them out a distinct species of men, who boldly professed, or who faintly disguised, their implacable hatred to the rest of human kind” (Decline and Fall, etc., Chap. XV). And not only were the first converts to Christianity disliked by the Romans because they were Jews, but they were also hated by their fellow Jews. It was the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders, who raised the clamor that caused Jesus to be crucified, who stoned Stephen, and laid in wait to kill Paul, drove him from city to city, and haled him before magistrates. They regarded Christians as apostates, renegades, and traitors. When Paul arrived in Rome, the chief of the Jews said to him “as concerning this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against” (Acts xxviii, 22). And Justin records that in the Jewish revolt under Hadrian, “Barchochebas, the ringleader, commanded that Christians should be dragged to cruel tortures, unless they would deny Jesus to be Christ, and blaspheme him” (Apol. XXXI). In their synagogues they used to curse the Christians, and those in authority sent out traducers and wrote letters to all nations, accusing Christians of all possible abominations, and in this way poisoned the public mind.

Such slanders found their opportunity in the secret meetings of the early disciples, in their communion rites, and in their kiss of peace; the grosser they were the more readily were they listened to, believed, and repeated. When the terrible conflagration in Nero's reign burned down a great part of Rome, and suspicion pointed to Nero, he tried to divert that suspicion to the Christians, knowing they had none to speak up for them, or perhaps the Jews accused them; and as they were not only detested, so Tacitus says, for their abominations (flagitia) but were also believed to hate the whole human race, Nero's cry was taken up and great numbers of the poor wretches were put to death with horrible tortures (Annals, XV, 44). And various causes contributed, each its share, to load the Christians with obloquy; one cause affected one group of people, another cause affected another group. Christian proselytizers broke up families. When a wife or daughter became converted, her heart went out to her new friends, and was lost to her husband or parents. Various traders, busied about the manufacture of images or some one of the many trades that ministered to the maintenance of pagan worship, felt a falling off in their business, and conceived bitter ill will against those who wrought their pecuniary losses. In Rome itself there was perhaps one added cause of suspicion against the new sect, for their liturgy, preaching, and propaganda were in Greek, which, however well known to the educated class, was an alien tongue to the populace and might well appear to conceal that which the speakers did not wish to be understood by eavesdroppers. Besides this, the Christians held themselves aloof, as superior persons, from their fellows. They would not go to the circus or the games, for they judged circus and games to be wicked; they would not be present at festivals, for all festivals were accompanied by pagan rites; they would not accept public office, and sought to evade military service; they would not illuminate their houses when all the world else was rejoicing; they would not take oaths required in business dealings. In short they constituted a world apart and would not mix with other men. Moreover, the Christians quarrelled among themselves and in consequence of the misbehavior of certain Gnostic sects (so the Christian historian Eusebius says) “a certain impious and most absurd suspicion was spread abroad among the unbelievers respecting us, as of persons who had unlawful commerce with mothers and sisters and made use of execrable food” (Eccles. Hist. IV, 7). From some such causes, and in some such way, the evil reputation of Christians sprang up and reached its height in the time of Marcus Aurelius.