The Study of the 'Persecutions'

Author(s): Hugh Last

Source: The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 27, Part 1: Papers Presented to Sir Henry Stuart
Jones (1937), pp. 80-92
Published by: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
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 THE STUDY OF THE ' PERSECUTIONS'
By HUGH LAST

The relations between the Empire and the Church are a subject
of such major interest, which has attracted so much attention from
historians both ecclesiastical and lay, that it would be rash to sup-
pose anything relevant and of value still to remain unsaid. Never-
theless, if it be permissible to think that the most familiar accounts
are not the most satisfactory, some service may be done by em-
phasizing again certain considerations which, though they have not
completely escaped notice hitherto, have too often been overlooked;
and for such an undertaking the present occasion is perhaps made
appropriate by the interest in early Christian history which the
scholar whom we honour has combined with his studies of pagan
Rome.
I. MOMMSEN ON THE RELIGIOUS POLICY OF ROME

More than a quarter of a century ago W. Warde Fowler, referring

to Mommsen's treatment of religion in the R8mische Geschichte,
observed that ' he looked at this religion, as was natural to him,
from the point of view of law; in religion as such he had no particular
interest. If I am not mistaken,' he added, ' it was for him, except
in so far as it is connected with Roman law, the least interesting part
of all his far-reaching Roman studies.'" What Fowler said of his
attitude to the Roman cults is no less true of Mommsen's contribu-
tions to the problems presented by the so-called Persecutions: his
first great pronouncement on the religious policy of Rome was en-
titled ' Der Religionsfrevel nach romischem Recht,' 2 and the second
is to be found in R8misches Strafrecht itself. Nor is this legal bias
the only peculiarity of his treatment. The second part of R5misches
Staatsrecht, vol. ii, does nothing if it does not reveal the Principate
as an outcome of the Republic: yet, when Mommsen came to
interpret the dealings of the imperial government with strange
religions, though his silence about certain incidents during the
Republic is not complete, he made no attempt to elicit from
republican history such clues as it can yield to what by imperial
times may have become an accepted Roman policy towards novel
and suspected cults. That such a policy, if inherited by the Empire
from the Republic, remained unaltered when Rome came into close
contact with Jewish and Christian monotheists is by no means to be
1 The Religious Experience of the Roman People 2 HZ lxiv, i890, 389 if. FGes. Schr. iii, 389 if.].
(London, 191 1), 2.

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 THE STUDY OF THE 'PERSECUTIONS' 8i

assumed; but if the Romans of the Republic had arrivedat certain

principles to guide them in fixing the limits of the toleration they
would show, those principles-however soon and however drastically
they may have had to be modified-can scarcelyfail of relevanceto
the outlook with which Romansof the Empire first confronted the
problem set by the spread of Christianity.
Mommsen, however, for once refrained from starting with the
Republic, and was content instead to found his doctrine on material
of imperialdate, interpreted at times with an assuranceapproaching
dogmatism. His theory is too familiar to need long description.
Based on the assumption that ' the religion of the Roman common-
wealth, like the religions of antiquity in general, was essentially
national,' 3 it holds that for a Roman citizen, and ultimately for any
inhabitant of the empire, 4 to embrace a belief which involved denial
of the Roman gods was regarded as apostasy, punishable at all times
by magisterial coercitio5 and later, when the maiestas deorumpopuli
Romani had been added to that of the populus Romanus itself,6 as a
form of the crimen maiestatis minutae. In all this there are difficulties,
of which Mommsen himself was not wholly unaware. He noticed7
the significance of Domitian's tolerant attitude towards pagans who
had in some degree or other accepted Judaism,8 and he produced a
characteristic tour de force9 to explain how apostasy could still be
regarded as the essence of the Christian offence though philosophers
were treated in a way which moved Tertullian to write
'quis . . . philosophum sacrificare aut deierare aut lucernas
meridie uanas prostituere compellit ? quin immo et deos uestros
palam destruunt et superstitiones publicas commentariis quoque
accusant laudantibus uobis.' 10
Nevertheless, despite these objections and despite the absence not
only of a Latin term for the crime as he conceived it II but also of
any adequate judicial machinery for the trial of persons charged with
its commission,12 Mommsen clung to his conviction that apostasy
from the gods of Rome was a recognized offence; and thereby he
raised an issue of interest to wider circles than those which are
specially concerned with the history of the early Church. By im-
plying that in religion Rome demanded some measure of that
uniformity to which in her secular dealings with the populations of
the provinces she showed herself indifferent, he set the question
whether (and, if so, when) there appeared a dichotomy in the Roman
mind which reserved for religion a treatment different from that
almost unlimited toleration which marked Rome's handling of social
3 HZ cit. 390 [Ges. Schr. iii, 390]; Stralrecht 570. 8 Suet. Dom. I2, 2.
4 HZ cit. 397 [Ges. Schr. iii, 395];
Stralrecht 57I. 9 HZ cit. 397, n. I [Ges. Schr. iii, 395, n. 2].
5 HZ cit. 407 [Ges. Schr. iii, 4041- 10 Apol. 46, 4.
' HZ cit. 396 f. [Ges. Schr. iii, 3951- "HZ cit. 393 [Ges. Schr.iii, 392]; Stralrecht 56.
12 HZ cit. 413 f. [Ges. Schr. iii, 409 f.]
7 Stralrecht 574, n- 3-

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82 HUGH LAST

and political institutions in all the varied forms to be found within

the empire.
II. PERSECUTION AND ITS MOTIVES

An examination of the relations between the Roman government

and the adherents of questionable religions will perhaps be made
more profitable by some preliminary reflexions on persecution. In the
Oxford English Dictionary the first meaning of ' persecution ' is defined
as 'the action of persecuting or pursuing with enmity and malignity;
esp. the infliction of death, torture, or penalties for adherence to a
religious belief or an opinion as such, with a view to the repression or
extirpation of it.' For persecution to occur there must be an attack
on a religious belief as such ; and the reason for this requirement is
presumably the need to exclude from the right to be described as
persecution cases where common criminals in jeopardy plead their
religion as justification, and claim that their crime was a duty im-
posed upon them by their creed. A hundred years ago the Thugs
professed that their devotion to Kali compelled them to murder
prosperous travellers, and after burying the body of a victim they
seem regularly to have performed the rite of Tapuni. Nevertheless
Lord W. Bentinck's campaign against them was not persecution:
they were condemned for the ordinary crimes of highway robbery
and murder, and their plea of a religious duty did not turn into a
persecution the action of the government in punishing them accord-
ing to the laws which bound all members of the community, irrespec-
tive of their creeds. In the history of the Roman Republic there
are many instances of crime ' ubi deorum numen praetenditur
sceleribus v13; but persecution is not the name for their repression
by the State.
In his essay on ' The Theory of Persecution '14 the late Sir
Frederick Pollock divided persecutions into four classes according to
the motives of the persecutors. One type, where the motive is what
he termed ' theological,' is here irrelevant : it is generally confined to
monotheistic societies, and requires a government which holds that
salvation is the final cause of human endeavour, that the essential
condition of salvation is acceptance of some ' true faith,' and that
the eternal welfare of the people can best be secured by destroying
all who hold, or are in danger of embracing, beliefs different from
those which are the passport to Heaven. The other three, however,
are all in point.
First is what Sir Frederick called ' tribal-' persecution, which
occurs when a group attacks certain of its members because their
practice or their profession is thought to be of a kind which has
alienated, or may alienate, the favour of those supernatural powers
1 3 Livy xxxix, i6, 7.
14Essays in Yurisprudence and Ethics (London, 1882), I44 ff.

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 THE STUDY OF THE PERSECUTIONS 83

on whose good-will the group conceives its safety to depend. This

' tribal' motive may not have actuated the Roman government, or
indeed any persons of enlightenment, during the first three centuries
A.D.; but of its potency among some of the classes opposed to the
early Church there can be no question. ' Si Tiberis ascendit in
moenia, si Nilus non ascendit in rura, si caelum stetit, si terra mouit,
si fames, si lues, statim " Christianos ad leonem." '15
Secondly there is the motive which Sir Frederick labelled
'political.' In his own words, ' where the gods are regarded as in a
manner the most exalted officers of the State ; where their protec-
tion is invoked on all public occasions, and religious ceremonies are
intimately bound up with the outward frame and circumstance of
military and civil institutions ; where, in short, religion is incor-
porated into politics, any rebellion against the established gods is
apt to be regarded as equivalent to treason against the established
order of government.' 16 Such was the case at Athens, 17 as Socrates
may well have known; but of Rome, though at times he uses language
which might seem to contain a clue, so far as I can say Mommsen
nowhere commits himself to the statement that this was the reason
why apostasy from the national gods was regarded as a crime.
Apostasy may have been objectionable because it was symptomatic
of disloyalty to the civil power, or again the objection may have lain
in its threat to provoke divine anger against the group which har-
boured religious renegades; but Mommsen does not attempt to
decide between these alternatives, nor does he indicate when, in his
judgment, one consideration was operative and when the other.
The last of the forms of persecution according to Sir Frederick
is that which he called ' social,' and this he described in words clearly
suggested by our own Common Law. ' It is conceded that individual
citizens must take care of their own souls, and that strict theological
uniformity cannot be enforced. But there is a certain amount of
fundamental religious doctrine, common to all or nearly all per-
suasions, and essential for the maintenance of morality and civil
order. Whoever does not believe this much has no rational motive
for being a good citizen or a good man.' And so ' it becomes need-
ful to impose penalties that shall be sufficient, but not more than
sufficient, to secure a decent observance for the elements of religion
on which the welfare of society rests.' 18 Rome, however, was almost
wholly strange to the idea that human morality depended on super-
natural sanctions supplied by the deities of the State religion.
Scaevola the Pontifex might proclaim that the gods of the statesman
served a useful purpose, 19 but his meaning was wholly different
from that, for instance, of Ashurst, J., when he said, ' If the name
15 Tert. Apol.40, 2. 18 . ciuCt. D59f.
6 Op. cit. I47 f- 19 Augustine, de ciu.. Dei, iv, 27.
I7 L. Schmidt, Die Ethik der alteni Griechen
(Berlin, I882), ii, I5 f.

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84 HUGH LAST

of our Redeemer were suffered to be traduced, and His holy religion

treated with contempt, the solemnity of an oath, on which the due
administration of justice depends, would be destroyed, and the law
stripped of one of its principal sanctions, the dread of future punish-
ments.' 2 0 Apart from the speculations of those who may be classed
as philosophers, the only passage known to me which might seem
to adumbrate the outlook required before ' social' persecution can
be possible is that in which Tacitus asserts that Augustus expressed
his indignation at certain cases of adultery, ' culpam, inter uiros et
feminas uulgatam, graui nomine laesarum religionum ac uiolatae
maiestatis adpellando.' 21l The context, however, concerns the
request of D. Silanus, brother of the consul of A.D. I9, for permission
to return from the exile he had imposed on himself when he was
denied the friendship of Augustus after an afEairwith the younger
Julia; and the suggestion that Augustus' outburst, so far from
applying to adultery in general, was only directed against a specially
objectionable form-that which involved members of his own family
-is perhaps supported by Tacitus' comment that, in speaking as
he did, Augustus ' clementiam maiorum suasque ipse leges egredie-
batur.' 22 If such an interpretation be right, the incident does
nothing to prove that there was more than, at most, a psychological
connection between the Augustan revival of religion and the social
-program, or that morality was regarded in high circles as based
upon divine command and supernatural sanctions.23 Thus, if an
examination of the history of the Roman Republic reveals cases of
persecution, it seems likely that they will belong to one or other
of the classes which Sir Frederick Pollock called 'tribal' and
' political '-unless indeed his classification of the forms of per-
secution is not exhaustive. If there are others, they must be
detected and defined as evidence for them occurs. For the rest,
it must be remembered that what is, or is conceived to be, the mere
repression of simple crime is not persecution, even though the alleged
criminals plead their religion in justification.
III. THE RELIGIOUS POLICY OF THE REPUBLIC

The Romans were proud of their religion: 'si conferre uolumus

nostra cum externis, ceteris rebus aut pares aut etiam inferiores
reperiemur, religione, id est cultu deorum, multo superiores.' 24 In
moments of theoretical speculation they were attracted by religious
uniformity: 'separatim nemo habessit deos neue nouos neue
aduenas nisi publice adscitos.' 25 But their religious policy, if they
had one, is only to be elicited from their action ; and for that reason
20 26 Howell's State Trials, col. 7I8. W. Warde Fowler, Roman Ideas of Deity (London,
21 Ann. iii, 24, 3. 19I4), Is52
22 Cf. Mommsen, Stralrecht, 567, n. 3. 24Cic. de lat. deorumii, 8.
23 See e.g. Horace, Carm. saec. I7 ff. ; 251 Cic. de legg. i i, i19.
cl.

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 THE STUDY OF THE 'PERSECUTIONS 85
it may be worth while briefly to survey the recorded dealings of the
Republic with cults which attracted unfavourable notice.
According to Livy,26 in 428 B.C., two years after the outbreak
of the plague at Athens, a drought caused pestilence in Rome and
pestilence brought demoralization.
' Nec corpora modo adfecta tabo, sed animos quoque multi-
plex religio et pleraqupeexterna inuasit, nouos ritus sacrificandi
uaticinando inferentibus in domos qcuib-s quaestui sunt capti
superstitione animi . . . datum inde negotium aedilibus ut
animaduerterentne qui nisi Romani di neu quo alio more quam
patrio colerentur.'
It would be foolish to suggest that the evidence for Roman history
in the fifth century was such as to preserveany accurateinformation
about the motives of the government in such a case as this ; but
Livy's narrativeis of value because,though he may not have known
what happened in fact, he at least wrote the story of the Roman
past in a way which was plausibleto his contemporaries. Such as it
is, his version seems to suggest a ' tribal ' persecution,2 7 accom-
panied by criminal proceedings against certain persons who prac-
tised the simple swindle of obtaining money by false pretences;28
and this may be accepted as an account of what the Augustan age
thought possible in Rome four hundred years before. Resentment
against self-seeking dishonesty is stressed again by Livy when he
comes to the religious aberrations of 2I3 B.C. ;29 but on this
occasion,though men's nerves were at such tension that they might
well have found relief in intolerance, he says nothing to suggest
that fear of offence to the gods of Rome was a cogent consideracion.
The reception of the Magna Mater nine years afterwardscalls
for no comment except that the restrictive measuressubsequently
applied to her accompanyingpractitionerswere provoked by their
offensively Asiatic behaviour;30 but there is more to be gleaned
from what is the central episode in the story-the affair of the
Bacchantsin I86 B.C. Livy's account of this incident has recently
been depreciated afresh by Mr. Gelzer,31 who argues that the
greater part of his narrative can claim no more than the limited
value which belongs to the productions of the Sullan annalists and
contrasts unfavourablywhat he believes to be derived from them
with an earlier and superiorversion to be detected in Cicero32 and
Varro.33 But, so far at least as the reasonsfor the intervention of
the State are concerned,it is difficultto see any essentialdiscrepancy
26 iv, 30, 7 ff. 30 Dion. Hal. Ant. ii, I9, 4 f.; cf. Val. Max.
27 ' Ne qui nisi Romani di neu quo alio more Vii, 7, 6.
31 Hermes lxxi,
quam patrio colerentur.' I936, 275 f.: cl. S. Reinach,
28 ' Quibus quaestui sunt capti superstitione Cultes, mythes et religions, iii (Paris, I908), Z56 ff.
animi.' 3 2De legg.ii, 37.
29xxv, 6 ff. 33 In Augustine, de ciu. Dei vi, 9.

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86 HUGH LAST

between Livy and his rivals; for the insania which Varro seems to
have mentioned cannot be understood as physical disease, and if it
bears the only other obvious sense-mental or moral instability, or
both-the resulting story is indistinguishable, in the aspect which
concerns us here, from that offered by Livy. About his own opinion
Livy leaves no room for doubt.

' Occult[a] et nocturn[a] sacr[a] . . . additae uoluptates religioni

uini et epularum . . . mixti feminis mares . . . nec unum genus
noxae, stupra promiscua ingenuorum feminarumque erant, sed
falsi testes, falsa signa testamentaque et indicia ex eadem officina
exibant, uenena indidem intestinaeque caedes.' 3

There is evidence enough about Lesbos and other places35 to show

that such allegations ought not to be surprising, and there is no
need to prove that the preservation of public morality was a matter
of steadily increasing concern to the magistrates of the Roman
People. 36 Thus if it be right to say with Mr. Carcopino ' s'il est
impossible de prendre a la lettre le recit de Tite-Live, il est bien
evident que sous ses exagerations subsiste un fonds de realite redoubt-
able,' 37 it is also easy to agree with Manaresi that ' anche questa
volta . . . il governo romano agiva contro un culto straniero, ma solo
in difesa della morale oltraggiata e del pubblico bene gravamente
compromesso.' 38 The Senate took action to repress common crime.
This crime had its origin, indeed, in religious excitement ; but how
far the government was from an attempt to destroy an intrusive
cult merely because it was foreign is shown by the familiar arrange-
ments (of which, despite the developments of the intervening period,
the great inscription from Tusculum3 9may serve as in some sense
a reminder) whereby even Roman citizens who professed an honest
desire to continue the celebration of these rites were allowed to
do so.40
The events of I39 B.C. are more difficult to interpret. At one
time41 Mommsen saw in the attack on Chaldaeans and Jews delivered
by Cn. Cornelius Scipio Hispanus as praetor peregrinus an attempt
to stop that apostasy of Roman citizens from the Roman gods which
he was generally anxious to detect; but a glance at the meagre
evidence is enough to commend the later version of the Strafrecht,42
where he at least admits the moral objection to the financial operations
of astrological quacks. In the case of the Chaldaeans the only clue
to the government's motive is given by the phrases ' ne peregrinam
3 4xxxix, 8, 4-7. 38
L'impero romano e il Cristianesimo (Turin
35 Cf. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, v 1914), 32.
Oxford, I909), I6I ff. and notes on p. 304. 39Ann. ep. 1933, 4: /7A 1933, z15ff-
3 6 Mommsen, Staatsrecht, ii 3, 375 ff. 41ILS i8, 11. 7ff-
3 7Histoire romaine, ii: la ripublique romzainede 41 HZ cit. 405 f. [Ges. Schr. iii, 402 f.].
133 a 44 avant 7.-C. (Paris, 1936), 52. 4 2864, n. I.

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 THE STUDY OF THE 'PERSECUTIONS 87
scientiam uenditarent' 43 and ' leuibus et ineptis ingeniis fallaci
siderum interpretatione quaestuosammendaciis suis caliginem ini-
cientes ' ;44 and both suggest that, as in the affair of 428 B.C.
according to Livy, the cause of resentment on this occasion was a
widespreadattempt to obtain money by false pretences. For the
trouble with the Jews, which there seems no valid reason for con-
necting with the embassyfrom Simon Maccabaeus,the evidence is
slighter still; but the only relevant words-' qui Sabazi louis cultu
Romanos inficere mores conati erant v 4 5-are at least compatible
with a suggestion that the Jews were found objectionable because
their behaviour was thought to threaten the moral health of the
community,46 and they lend themselves at least as readily to this
interpretation as to one which would see in the affairsome sign of
concern for religious uniformity.
The brush between Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbusand M. Aemilius
Scaurus in I04 (or 103) B.C. can add nothing of relevance; for,
when Domitius' criminidabatsacrapublicapopuliR. deumPenatium,
quae Lauini fierent, opera eius minus recte casteque fieri,'47 he was
merely paying off a political score,48 and the excuse for the attack
was almost certainly some act or omissionof Scaurusnot as a private
citizen but as a magistrate.49 Thereafter all that need be noticed'
here is the problem presented by Isis and her devotees. Again the
evidence is regrettablyslight ; but, such as it is, it indicates a simple
tale. The measurestaken by Tiberius against this cult in A.D. 19
were provokedby a peculiarlydisgustingpiece of sexualimmorality, 5 0
and the probability that criminal practices of this or some similar
kind were suspected among the Isiacs of Rome is suggested by a
sentence in Cassius Dio's description of an incident in 48 B.C.
During the excitement which accompaniedthe destructionof places
connected with Isis and Sarapisa shrine of the Asiatic Bellona was
attacked,and in it were found jarsthought to contain human flesh.51
The results of this brief survey may be simply stated. The
affairsof 428 and 2I3 B.C., and the campaignagainst the astrologers
in I39 B.C., must be interpreted, if the evidence allows them to be
interpreted at all, as essentiallypolice-proceedingsagainst swindlers.
Unless it be in 428 B.C., there is no sign that the government,what-
ever may have been thought by the masses, was moved by con-
siderationswhich would have made its action a 'tribal ' persecution.
Then in the sequel to the advent of the Magna Mater, in the drastic
measurestaken against the Bacchants,in the treatment of the Jews
in I39 B.C. and in the conflict with the Isiacs at the end of the
43 Val. Max. i, 3, 3 (Nep.). 48 Cf. G.
Bloch, 'M. Aemilius Scaurus' (Mlanges
44 Ibid. (Par.). d'histoire ancienne-Paris, 1909), 38 n. 3.
4 5 Ibid. 4 9 Mommsen,Staatsrecht, ii3, 322 n. I.
46 Cf. Cumont, Les religions orientales dans le
paganismeromain4(Paris, 1929), 306 n. z5.
50 Jos. 4/ xviii, 65 ff.
4 7 Asconius, p. z I B. 51 xlii, z6, 2.

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88 HUGH LAST

Republic it seems that we should recognize nothing more than the

suppression of groups whose behaviour appeared a threat to that
stable morality which the State was concerned to maintain. But
nowhere is there any cogent proof that a cult was attacked merely
because it was not Roman, and for the Republic at least there is
nothing to show that Rome was less tolerant of variety in religion
than in secular institutions. On the contrary, if it was during the
Republic that the Romans earned their empire, it would seem that
Minucius is justified in making Caecilius say that they earned it
'dum uni-uersarum gentium sacra suscipiunt ' 52 and the attitude
thus implied is a reminder that more should not be read into Cassius
Dio's accounrt of 42 B.C. than it contains.53
IV. THE RELIGIOUS POLICY OF THE EARLY EMPIRE
Space makes it impossible to do more than conclude with a
brief attempt to show that, in this inquiry as in others, a study of
the Republic is of value to an understanding of the Principate. It
can be said with confidence that, if the Principate succeeded to a
Republic which for centuries had been as careless about merely
religious aberration as it was drastic in its repression of crime and
immorality (whether suich conduct was inspired by religion or not),
the Principate showed itself a worthy heir. Though his nationalism
induced him to go so far as to keep Egyptian cults outside the
pomerium,5 4 it was in his dealings with Druidism that Augustus
found himself called upon to be firm. He forbade Roman citizens
to take part in its ceremonies. Tiberius perhaps went farther,55
and Claudius tried to suppress them altogether. Drtuidism was in
as dangerous a predicament as the Christians before long ; and the
reason, though it is too often mistaken, is plain. It was a religio
'dirae immanitatis,' 56 and our numerous authorities agree that the
Roman dislike of it was due, not to any seditious tendencies it may
have shown, but to its barbarous and demoralizing rites. Crime and
immorality again moved Tiberius to act in A.D. I9: his attack on
the worship of Isis and Sarapis in Rome was provoked by a piece
of beastliness,57 and the reason for his measures against the Jews
was apparently their use of religion for the familiar purpose of obtain-
ing money by false pretences.58 And so too, though the cause of
his order to the Jews ascribed by Cassius Dio to A.D. 4I is obscure, 5 9
when Claudius ordered the expulsion which Orosius 6 0 plausibly
assigns to A.D. 49 his action, according to Suetonius,61 was simply
a retort to riots in whiclh they had been involved.
5 2 Octavius, 6, 3. 57 See p. 87, n. 50.
63xlvii, I8, 4 f. 58 Jos. AJ xviii, 65 ff.; Tac. Ann. ii, 85, 5
64 Cassius Dio, liii, 2, 4; cl. liv, 6, 6. (where the context should be noticed).
6 6Pliny, NH xxx, I3.
`6 Suet. Div. Claud. 25, 5.
591x, 6, 6.
Caesar, BG vi,
Cf.
60 vii,
I6; Diodorus v, 31, 3 and Strabo I98-? both 6, IS.
Posidonius; Pliny, loc. cit.; Tac. Ann. xiv, 30, 3. 61 Div. Claud. 25, 4.

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 THE STUDY OF THE 'PERSECUTIONS 89

Thus it is scarcely surprising that in his narrative of the sequel

to the Fire of A.D. 64 Tacitus insists on the fagitia of the
Christians.62 We may indeed accept, without much qualification,
Macaulay's somewhat sweeping pronouncement that 'there never
was a religious persecution in which some odious crime was not,
justly or unjustly, said to be obviously deducible from the doctrines
of the persecuted party; 63 but it must be remembered that there
have been occasions when crimes have been imputed in such cir-
cumstances honestly, if without reason, and others again when the
imputation was just. The supposed criminals are punished; but it
is still more important that the belief that a religion encourages
crime, or even enjoins it, brings upon its adherents at large the
mistrust or malevolence of all those sections of opinion by which
the belief is held. The nature of the fagitia alleged against the
Christians, and the origins of the suspicions which are freely acknow-
ledged by the apologists, have often been examined,64 but here
it is enough to notice that the people whom Tacitus asserts to have
been guilty of fagitia in the first century were widely supposed to
have been guilty in the second. Such, according to Tacitus, was the
position of the Christian community in Rome when rumour began
to say that the author of the Fire was Nero. To deflect suspicion
from himself Nero must announce that the government had dis-
covered the culprits, and if the announcement was to win credence
it was necessary that the alleged culprits should be men of whom
public opinion would readily believe evil. Such the Christians
were. In the mind of the masses their religion authorized and im-
posed practices of a revolting kind; and Tacitus, who clearly did
not accept the theory that it was they who had set Rome on fire,
was nevertheless prepared to say that, however much one might
deplore the brutality of the methods 'by which in some cases they
were put to death, they were ' sontes et nouissima exempla meriti
-sontes, that is, of the flagitia which made them inuisi to the
uulgus. Those who cannot accept the evidence of I Peter and the'
Apocalypse as proof that the troubles of A.D. 64 extended beyond
Rome may therefore be content to hold that in Rome itself Christians
were executed, not because they merely happened to accept a religion
of alien origin, but because the government, looking for an unpopular
class on which to fix the supposed responsibility for the Fire, found
the Christians suited to its purpose, and in that place and on that
occasion behaved as if the profession of Christianity were sufficient
proof of participation in arson. There is, in fact, nothing to suggest
that the Neronian attack was undertaken because the .Christians
were held false to some religious duties imposed upon them either
6 2Ann. xv, 44, 3. 64 See, for instance, J. P. Waltzing, Le crime
63 Critical and Historical Essays (London, I854) rituel reprocbe aux Chritiens du ii* siecle (Brussels,
i, 54 (on Hallam's Constitutional History). I9z5).

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90 HUGH LAST

by their Roman citizenship or by their inclusion in the Roman

empire.
So much will suffice for the action of Nero; but it remains to
add that the Christians themselves might complain with some show
of reason that they were being persecuted-and persecuted ' for the
Name.' It is at least true that, had they not been Christians, they
would not have been molested; and the attack may well have seemed
to them, as it seemed to many of their successors, an attack on
Christianity as such. But it is the policy of the government, and
not what that policy was thought to be by its victims, which is the
subject of this inquiry; and the Christian interpretation of the
affair needs to be mentioned only as a reminder of the mistake,
which is still too common, made by those who use statements of
apologists on the Christian side as evidence, not merely for what
happened, but also for the motives which actuated the pagan power.
With Nero the curtain falls, and when it rises again on Pliny's
Bithynian scene the atmosphere has changed. During the Julio-
Claudian period there is nothing to show that Christians were
habitually attacked: Pliny, on the other hand, despite his many
doubts about details, assumes that in his time they were regularly
punished, and his assumption does not lack confirmation.65 Sir
William Ramsay was right in emphasising the change which came
over the attitude of the imperial government between Nero and
Trajan ;66 but, while it is easy to accept Mommsen's opinion that
' Ramsay is wrong in regarding Vespasian as the true originator of
the warfare against the Christian creed in itself '67 (partly because,
as Mommsen adds, ' Vespasian was far too practical for such a
crusade ' and still more because Tertullian expressly excludes
Vespasian from the list of persecutors6 8), the new policy is not
necessarily to be traced to its origin, and is certainly not to be
explained, by Mommsen's facile reflexion that 'much better
does it agree with the sombre but intelligent despotism of
Domitianus.' In two respects the material on which a conclhsion
must be based has changed since Mommsen's time. On the one
hand, statements to the effect that ' the crypt of the Acilian family
in the first-century Cemetery of Priscilla on the Via Salaria Nova
claims Acilius Glabrio in probability for the new religion, as the
Cemetery of Domitilla at the Tor Maroncia (sic) on the Via Ardeatina
reinforces the tradition which makes Domitilla a Christian ' 6 9 are no
longer defensible unless Styger's criticism of the chronology adopted
by de Rossi and his successors can be refuted: I 0 until that has been
done, archaeology cannot be prayed in aid of other evidence for a
65See, for instance, Justin, I Apol. 7. 6 9 B. W. Henderson, Five Roman Emperors
66The Chbzrchin the Roman Empires (London, (Cambridge, 19Z7), 49.
I897), 256 ff. 7 P. Styger, Die romiscben Katakomben (Berlin,
6 7 Ges. Schr. vi,
544- 1933), 63 ff., IOO ff.
68A-pol. 5, 7.

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 THE STUDY OF THE PERSECUTIONS 91

Domitianic persecution. But on the other side closer study, par-

ticularly of the Jewish material, has shown with increasing clearness
that it was towards the end of the first century that Judaism and
Christianity, 'isdem ab auctoribus profectae,' 71 became finally
aware of themselves as two distinct religions 7 2 and if this happened
at a time when ' ludaicus fiscus acerbissime actus est,' 73 it might
not be unreasonable to suppose that in the course of its tax-collection,
as well as in the general routine of administration, the government's
knowledge of Christianity grew more precise and that this growing
precision produced a more clearly defined policy.
Whatever its origin, the nature of that policy in practice is
revealed by Pliny: Christians, if brought to official notice, were
punished. But to the reason for that policy neither Pliny nor
Trajan gives a clue. One thing, however, is certain: the cor-
respondence does not prove that the Christians were oppressed
because they refused to supplicate pagan gods. When Pliny wrote
' qui negabant esse se Christianos aut fuisse, cum praeeunte
me deos adpellarent et imagini tuae, quam propter hoc iusseram
cum simulacris numinum adferri, ture ac uino supplicarent,
praeterea male dicerent Christo, quorum nihil posse cogi dicuntur
qui sunt re uera Christiani, dimittendos esse putaui,'74
he was describing an apparently extemporized test designed to
distinguish Christians from pagans; but his words do nothing to
indicate why this distinction had to be made. Far as he is from
proving that denial of the Roman gods was not the essence of the
Christian offence, he is farther still from proving that it was; and
he therefore gives no support to the view that the gravamen of the
charge against Christians was apostasy from the national religion.
But to the more pertinent question whether it was the ' nomen
ipsum si flagitiis caret ' to which objection was taken, or the ' flagitia
cohaerentia nomini,' the letters supply no answer. For the time
of Domitian at least, that emperor's acquiescence in the attachment
of the aso6VvorL to Judaism suggests that conversion to a belief
which claimed allegiance for one god alone was not necessarily
visited with persecution, and at a later date the letter of Hadrian
preserved by Eusebius and Rufinus 7 5 (if it is genuine) might confirm
the suspicion that, whether for their character or for their effect on
public opinion, it was still the ' flagitia cohaerentia nomini' by
which official anger had been stirred. In that case the further
question why the 'nomen ipsum si flagitiis caret ' had become
objectionable would not arise. But space prevents a discussion of
the problems presented by the experience of the Church under
71 SuIp. Sev. Chros. ii 30, 7. 73 Suet. Dom. I2, 2.
7 2 See,
for instance, J. Parkes, The Conflict of the 74 Ep. ad Trai. 96 (97), 5.
Church and the Synagogue (London, I934), 77 ff. '5 HIE iv, 9 [Justin, I Apol. 68].

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92 THE STUDY OF THE PERSECUTIONS

Trajan and HEadrian,and fortunately they are problems which for

the present purposehave less importancethan the attention devoted
to them might imply. For they occur on the threshold of the age
of Celsus-a new period in the relations between Christianity and
paganism, because in it pagans were becoming -anxious at the pro-
gress of a belief which seemed to destroy the loyalty of the masses
to tradition and therewith their loyalty to the State itself.
In ending these slight remarks I would ask Sir Henry Stuart
Jones to accept them as the prolegomena they are. The limitations
of an article demand both many omissions and a brevity in the
treatment of what it has been possible to mention which I hope for
an opportunity to repair. But if, ignoring details, I may summarize
the suggestions here offered for his consideration, the summary is
this-that, in a study of the dealings of the empire with the Church,
religious persecution should be distinguished from the mere punish-
ment of crime, whether imagined or real ; that a persecution is not
adequately explained until the motives of the persecutor have been ex-
posed ; that for those motives the evidence of the victims and their
sympathizers is weak; that in tracing the relations between State and
Church we should begin as usual, not at the end, but at the begin-
ning (in this particular case with that chapter on the religious policy
of the Republic which, had it been written, would have made
M. Conrat's book on Die Christenverfolgungenim r8mischen Reiche
vom Stanclpunkte des Juristen76 even more valuable than it is);
that each period should be treated on its merits, with no attempt to
solve the problems of all by a simple formula derived from one;
and that, to answer the question of fundamental interest, whether
Rome was less liberal in religion than in secular affairs, the view
that before the third century A.D. apostasy from the national gods
was accounted in itself a crime should be examined with especial care.77
76 Leipzig, I897. the Soci6te des ttudes latines in Paris on December
7x7 SoeM suggestive comments on the views here I2, 1936, will be found in the Revue des Ltudes
expressed, provoked hy a summary communicated to latines xiv, 1936, 2, 230 ff.

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