period when the religion of Jesus was gradually but rapidly taking root in the world of Rome. With one notable exception the writings to which we refer issued from the heart of the New Sect.
We shall give a chain of some of the more striking passages from the fragments of the works in question, the passages which especially bear upon the ceaseless persecution which the Christians had to endure during that period we are dwelling upon in this section—which ended with the death of Marcus and the accession of his son Commodus in A.D. 180.
The quotations will be divided into two groups: the first from writings of apostles and apostolic men; that is, of men who had seen and conversed with the apostles themselves. The dates of this first group of witnesses range from the days of Nero to the days of Trajan, roughly from A.D. 64 to A.D. 107-10. The second group will include writings dating from the days of Trajan to the accession of Commodus, A.D. 180: the approximate dates of each writing and a very brief account of the several authors will be given.
It will be seen that the allusions to a state of persecution grow more numerous, more detailed and emphatic after A.D. 134-5, the date of the close of the last terrible Jewish war in the latter years of the Emperor Hadrian, when the line of separation between the Jew and the Christian became definitely marked, and the position and attitude of the Christians was no longer merely contemptuously viewed, but was misliked and even feared by the State authorities, who then (after
- [Footnote: the early Christian Church was subjected is discussed, the period especially
alluded to stretches from circa A.D. 64 to A.D. 180, including the reigns of the Flavian Emperors, of Hadrian and the Antonines.
But the conditions under which the Christians in the Roman Empire lived during the century and a quarter which followed the period above referred to, in very many respects differed but little from those that prevailed in the earlier years—only in the later period there were more years of comparative immunity from active persecution, while, on the ether hand, when the comparatively "still" years came to an end, the cruelties inflicted upon the Christians were more marked, and the severity of the punishments meted out by the dominant pagan party in the State were greater and more far-reaching than in the earlier days—notably in the reigns of Maximin, Decius and Diocletian.]
