XV
THE DECLINE AND FALL
CHAP, criminal association, might easily multiply his disciples or accomplices. I'he christians of Rome, at the time of the accidental persecution of Nero, are represented by Tacitus as already amounting to a very great mul- titude*^; and the language of that great historian is almost similar to the style employed by Livy, when he relates the introduction and the suppression of the rites of Bacchus. After the bacchanals had awakened the severity of the senate, it was likewise apprehended that a very great multitude, as it were another i)eojjle, had been initiated into those abhorred mysteries. A more careful enquiry soon demonstrated, that the offenders did not exceed seven thousand ; a number indeed suffi- ciently alarming, when considered as the object of public justice^. It is with the same candid allowance that we should interpret the vague expressions of Tacitus, and in a former instance of Pliny, when they exaggerate the crowds of deluded fanatics who had forsaken the established worship of the gods. The church of Rome was undoubtedly the first and most populous of the empire ; and we are possessed of an authentic record which attests the state of religion in that city about the middle of the third century, and after a peace of thirty- eight years. The clergy, at that time, consisted of a bishop, forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, as many sub-deacons, forty-two acolythes, and fifty readers, ex- orcists, and porters. The number of widows, of the infirm, and of the poor, who were maintained by the oblations of the faithful, amounted to fifteen hundred. From reason, as well as from the analogy of Antioch, we may venture to estimate the christians of Rome at about fifty thousand. The populousness of that great capital cannot perhaps be exactly ascertained ; but the ^ Ingens multiludo is the expression of Tacitus, xv. 44. ? T. J-iv. xxxix. 13. 15, 16, 17. Nothing could exceed the horror and consternation of the senate on the discovery of the bacchanalians, whose depravity is described, and perhaps exaggerated, by Livy. " Eusebius, I. vi. c. 43. The Latin translator {M. de Valois) has thought proper to reduce the number of presbyters to forty-four.
