itterness engendered in many thousands of ruined and homeless sufferers, led to the em- peror, either spontaneously, || or at the suggestion of PoppeaT or some malignant courtier, imput- ing the conflagration to the Christians.** Some
I eh ve
* Seneca, however, who had probably not yet retired, may have been an assessor ; and, in any case, to the equitable principles of administration established under his influence, the acquittal of St. Paul was largely due.
t It is accepted as a fact Ὁ: Pliny (AN xvii. 1. 1), who wrote about 4.D. 77; also by Suetonius (Nero, 38) in a.p. 120. Tacitus writes (4.p. 115-117), ‘forte an dolo principis incertum,’ and a that older authorities were divided in opinion (Ann. xv.
! Of this Golden House, which reached from the Palatine to the Eaquiline, and had triple colonnades a mile in length, Nero declared that ‘now at last he was housed like a human being’ ὍΣΣ Nero, 33; cf. Tac. Ann. xv, 42; Middlet. Anc. Rome, it.
δ The story that ‘Nero fiddled while Rome was burning’
originated, doubtless, in the report (Tac. Ann. xv. 42) that he sang, during the fire, of the ruin of Troy—a report based prob- ably on the fact that, a year after the fire, the emperor, with questionable taste, read in public his ‘T7'roica,’ a m con- a7 ae allusions to the recent fire (Renan, Hino. Lect. p. δῖ, ! Nero might have heard from Jews, at St. Paul's trial, calumnies inst the Christians, which, although proved to be baseless in the apostle’s case, would now suggest themselves to the emperor as a convenient foundation for his charge.
“« Clement of Rome (Ep. to Cor. 5,6) writes that the Christians suffered ‘through envy and genlousy The reference is indefi- nite, but may apply (in part) to Jews in Nero’s time who em- ployed Poppwea as a medium for fixing the charge of arson on the Christians (Farrar, Early Days of Christianity, i. 64).
** There seems to be no good reason for questioning the accuracy of Tacitus’ reference to Christians as the sole objects of persecution in connexion with the fire. The ‘ingens multitudo’ of victims (Tac. Ann. xv. 44) referring to judicial executions, ned not ἜΡΙΣ more than several hundreds, Gibbon (Decline and Fall, ch. xvi.) conjectures that the real victims were Jewish Zealots who had received the name Galilewans from ‘udas of Galilee (Ac 537), and thus were afterwards confounded with Christian ‘Galilwans’; but there is no evidence that the
jlausibility would be given to the eps by their ane of pagan temples, many of which perished (Tac. Ann. xv. 41), by their supposed disloyalty and ‘hostility to society’ (ib. 44), and by their expectation of an impending destruction of the world by fire (2Th 15, 2P 37), According to Tacitus, ‘those in the first place were brought to trial who made open profession’ (t.¢. of the Chris- tian faith). ‘Thereafter, on information elicited from these, a great multitude were convicted, far less on the charge of incendiarism than of odiwm humani generis.’ The injustice of conviction was equalled by the brutality of execution. Some were ‘covered with the hides of wild beasts and worried to death by dogs’ ; and the culmination of inhumanity was reached when others, robed in the tunica molesta, covered with pitch, were ‘set on fire at nightfall’ to illuminate the imperial gardens on the occasion of Circensian games (Tac. Ann. xv. 44)—a fiendish exaggeration of the penalty of death by fire inflicted on malignant incendiaries (Juy. vili. 235). Nero does not appear to have organized any persecution of Christians beyond the city of Rome;* but the notorious treatment of them there could not fail to influence provincial governors in dealing with other charges made against Christians within their respective territories. In the Neronian persecution we dis- cern a distinct stage in the development of imperial policy regarding Christians out of prosecution for alleged particular crimes into prosecution on ac- count of Christian faith and profession. Whether this development was completed under Nero is disputable. Ramsay, to whom, mainly, is due the abandonment of the old La that persecution ‘for the name’ began under Trajan, maintains (Church in Rom. Emp. p. 242ff., and Expositor, July 1893) that while the substitution of the charge of ‘hostility to society’ for that of arson was a notable development, the condemnation of Christians even on the later charge ‘was pro- nounced in respect not of the name, but of serious offences (flagitia) connected with the name,’ and that ‘Christianity had not yet come to be recog- nized as in itself a crime.’ There would have been otherwise no occasion (he argues) for an lengthened second trial of St. Paul as describe in2Ti4. Sanday (Ezxpos., June 1893) and Hardy (Christianity and the Rom. Govt.) hold that odiwm humani generis is not a definite charge, but an assumed characteristic of Christianity, and that the condemnation of Christians on this account is tantamount to a proscription of the name. They appeal to 1 P 415; but Ramsay, while not denying the Petrine authorship of the Epistle, dates it c. 80 A.D. At some date soon after the horrors of A.D. 64—perhaps in 65 (see art. CHRONOLOGY OF NT in vol. i. p. 420)—occurred St. Paul’s second imprisonment and trial, issuing in his martyrdom. By this time the ferocity of yokeeedison had abated; and the apostle, while confined in the Mamertine dungeon, appears to have been tried in an orderly manner (2 Ti 4), and would probably be condemned under the charge of ‘odium,’ or as a disturber of the imperial Zealots were ever so called. Merivale (Romans under Empire, ch. liv.) and H. Schiller (Gesch. d. rom. Kais. p. 433 ff.) suppose that the persecution assailed both Jews and Christians, to whom the name of ‘the Christ’ alike belonged, but that the memory of the Christian sufferers alone was preserved. The silence of Josephus, however, who professes (Ant. xx. viii. 3) to record accurately all that happened to the Jews under Nero, and especially their calamities, tells heavily against both theories ; while the limitation of the persecution to Christians by Tacitus is confirmed, so far, by Suetonius (Nero, 16).