of the oracle required only a few alterations to render it applicable to the later situation, when Nero and Domitian had become for Christians what Caligula had been for the Jews half a century earlier. The arguments for this literary hypothesis, however, are not oxen strong enough to pull the plough (cf. notes on xiii.).
Hitherto Christians had been out of the fray. Even Nero’s massacre of them was a freak of personal violence, justified by their reputation for hostility to the State, and apparently prompted by Jewish malevolence. It had nothing whatever to do with the imperial cultus. The latter was not seriously enforced until the second part of Domitian’s reign. Like Caligula’ formerly and Diocletian after- wards, this emperor (cf. Schoener, in Acta Semin. Philologici Erlang. 1881, pp. 476 f.) laid claim to the title of dominus et deus, and though his claim was not official, it was none the less serious. Hence, while he proved a ‘‘ second Nero” to the Christians no less than to his own restive subjects, the former had special reasons for re- membering the reign of terror,
κ When Vespasian’s brutal son Cleared Rome of what most shamed him.”
The strict and harsh enforcement of the poll-tax (Suet. Domit. 12) pressed heavily upon the Jews, indeed, but otherwise they were generally undisturbed, since normally, under the semi-tolerant policy of the empire, they were not obliged to erect or worship statues of the emperor (Joseph. Apion. ii. 6). They sacrificed for him, not to him. As a national religion, Judaism had its own rights like the rest.2 But Christianity was not a religio licita, and the Nazarene faith, by the sheer force of its principles and the success of its contemporary propa- ganda, had soon to face the exercise of the law against illicit cults (especially when these refused the test of swearing by the emperor’s genius). The very differentiation of Christianity from Judaism, which hed become increasingly plain ever since Nero’s outburst, deprived the
1 The bisellium, a splendid double throne, was assigned as a divine honour to Caligula alone after Caesar. Contrast Apoc. xxii. 1.
2 They suffered under Domitian not for their personal faith but for the success of their propaganda in making proselytes; cf. S. Gsell’s Essai sur le Régne de l’Empereur Domitien, pp. 313 f.
3 The most recent discussion is by Klette in Die Christen-Katastrophe unter Nero (1907 ; cf. the present writer’s review in H. ¥., 1908, 704-707). Renan’s coloured pages (pp. 124 f.) and Hausrath’s graphic outline (Hist. of N.T. Times. The Apostles iv. 168 f.) must be checked by the statements of Ramsay (Church in Roman Empire, ch. xi.) and of Mr. B. W. Henderson in his Life and Principate of the Empere Nero (1903).