Volume I Part 30 (2/2)

868 Tacitus has a very ingenious remark on this subject, which ill.u.s.trates happily the half-scepticism of the Empire. After recounting a number of prodigies that were said to have taken place in the reign of Otho, he remarks that these were things habitually noticed in the ages of ignorance, but now only noticed in periods of terror. ”Rudibus saeculis etiam in pace observata, quae nunc tantum in metu audiuntur.”-_Hist._ i. 86.

869 M. de Champagny has devoted an extremely beautiful chapter (_Les Antonins_, tome ii. pp. 179-200) to the liberty of the Roman Empire.

See, too, the fifty-fourth chapter of Mr. Merivale's _History_. It is the custom of some of the apologists for modern Caesarism to defend it by pointing to the Roman Empire as the happiest period in human history. No apology can be more unfortunate. The first task of a modern despot is to centralise to the highest point, to bring every department of thought and action under a system of police regulation, and, above all, to impose his shackling tyranny upon the human mind. The very perfection of the Roman Empire was, that the munic.i.p.al and personal liberty it admitted had never been surpa.s.sed, and the intellectual liberty had never been equalled.

870 Sueton. _Aug._ x.x.xi. It appears from a pa.s.sage in Livy (x.x.xix. 16) that books of oracles had been sometimes burnt in the Republic.

871 Tacitus has given us a very remarkable account of the trial of Cremutius Cordus, under Tiberius, for having published a history in which he had praised Brutus and called Ca.s.sius the last of Romans.

(_Annal._ iv. 34-35.) He expressly terms this ”novo ac tunc primum audito crimine,” and he puts a speech in the mouth of the accused, describing the liberty previously accorded to writers. Cordus avoided execution by suicide. His daughter, Marcia, preserved some copies of his work, and published it in the reign and with the approbation of Caligula. (Senec. _Ad. Marc._ 1; Suet. _Calig._ 16.) There are, however, some traces of an earlier persecution of letters. Under the sanction of a law of the decemvirs against libellers, Augustus exiled the satiric writer Ca.s.sius Severus, and he also destroyed the works of an historian named Labienus, on account of their seditious sentiments. These writings were re-published with those of Cordus. Generally, however, Augustus was very magnanimous in his dealings with his a.s.sailants. He refused the request of Tiberius to punish them (Suet. _Aug._ 51), and only excluded from his palace Timagenes, who bitterly satirised both him and the empress, and proclaimed himself everywhere the enemy of the emperor. (Senec. _De Ira_, iii. 23.) A similar magnanimity was shown by most of the other emperors; among others, by Nero. (Suet. _Nero_, 39.) Under Vespasian, however, a poet, named Maternus, was obliged to retouch a tragedy on Cato (Tacit. _De Or._ 2-3), and Domitian allowed no writings opposed to his policy. (Tacit. _Agric._) But no attempt appears to have been made in the Empire to control religious writings till the persecution of Diocletian, who ordered the Scriptures to be burnt. The example was speedily followed by the Christian emperors. The writings of Arius were burnt in A.D. 321, those of Porphyry in A.D. 388. Pope Gelasius, in A.D. 496, drew up a list of books which should not be read, and all liberty of publication speedily became extinct. See on this subject Peignot, _Essai historique sur la Liberte d'ecrire_; Villemain, _etudes de Litter. ancienne_; Sir C. Lewis on the _Credibility of Roman Hist._ vol. i. p. 52; Nadal, _Memoire sur la liberte qu'avoient les soldats romains de dire des vers satyriques contre ceux qui triomphoient_ (Paris 1725).

872 See a collection of pa.s.sages on this point in Pressense, _Hist. des Trois premiers Siecles_ (2me serie), tome i. pp. 3-4.

_ 873 Trypho._

_ 874 Apol._ x.x.xvii.

875 Euseb. vi. 43.

876 Eusebius, it is true, ascribes this persecution (vi. 39) to the hatred Decius bore to his predecessor Philip, who was very friendly to the Christians. But although such a motive might account for a persecution like that of Maximin, which was directed chiefly against the bishops who had been about the Court of Severus, it is insufficient to account for a persecution so general and so severe as that of Decius. It is remarkable that this emperor is uniformly represented by the Pagan historians as an eminently wise and humane sovereign. See Dodwell, _De Paucitate Martyrum_, lii.

877 St. Cyprian (_Ep._ vii.) and, at a later period, St. Jerome (_Vit.

Pauli_), both notice that during this persecution the desire of the persecutors was to subdue the constancy of the Christians by torture, without gratifying their desire for martyrdom. The consignment of Christian virgins to houses of ill fame was one of the most common incidents in the later acts of martyrs which were invented in the middle ages. Unhappily, however, it must be acknowledged that there are some undoubted traces of it at an earlier date. Tertullian, in a famous pa.s.sage, speaks of the cry ”Ad Lenonem” as subst.i.tuted for that of ”Ad Leonem;” and St. Ambrose recounts some strange stories on this subject in his treatise _De Virginibus_.

878 St. Cyprian has drawn a very highly coloured picture of this general corruption, and of the apostasy it produced, in his treatise _De Lapsis_, a most interesting picture of the society of his time. See, too, the _Life of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus_, by Greg. of Nyssa.

879 ”La persecution de Dece ne dura qu'environ un an dans sa grande violence. Car S. Cyprien, dans les lettres ecrites en 251, des devant Pasque, et mesme dans quelques-unes ecrites apparemment des la fin de 250, temoigne que son eglise jouissoit deja de quelque paix, mais d'une paix encore peu affermie, en sorte que le moindre accident eust pu renouveler le trouble et la persecution. Il semble mesme que l'on n'eust pas encore la liberte d'y tenir les a.s.semblees, et neanmoins il paroist que tous les confesseurs prisonniers a Carthage y avoient este mis en liberte des ce temps-la.”-Tillemont, _Mem. d'Hist. ecclesiastique_, tome iii. p.

324.

880 Dionysius the bishop wrote a full account of it, which Eusebius has preserved (vi. 41-42). In Alexandria, Dionysius says, the persecution produced by popular fanaticism preceded the edict of Decius by an entire year. He has preserved a particular catalogue of all who were put to death in Alexandria during the entire Decian persecution. They were seventeen persons. Several of these were killed by the mob, and their deaths were in nearly all cases accompanied by circ.u.mstances of extreme atrocity. Besides these, others (we know not how many) had been put to torture. Many, Dionysius says, perished in other cities or villages of Egypt.

881 See St. Cyprian, _Ep._ viii.

882 There was much controversy at this time as to the propriety of bishops evading persecution by flight. The Montanists maintained that such a conduct was equivalent to apostasy. Tertullian had written a book, _De Fuga in Persecutione_, maintaining this view; and among the orthodox the conduct of St. Cyprian (who afterwards n.o.bly attested his courage by his death) did not escape animadversion. The more moderate opinion prevailed, but the leading bishops found it necessary to support their conduct by declaring that they had received special revelations exhorting them to fly.

St. Cyprian, who constantly appealed to his dreams to justify him in his controversies (see some curious instances collected in Middleton's _Free Enquiry_, pp. 101-105), declared (_Ep._ ix.), and his biographer and friend Pontius re-a.s.serted (_Vit. Cyprianis_), that his flight was ”by the command of G.o.d.” Dionysius, the Bishop of Alexandria, a.s.serts the same thing of his own flight, and attests it by an oath (see his own words in Euseb. vi. 40); and the same thing was afterwards related of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus. (See his _Life_ by Gregory of Nyssa.)

883 ”E veramente che almeno fino dal secolo terzo i fedeli abbiano posseduto cimiteri a nome commune, e che il loro possesso sia stato riconosciuto dagl' imperatori, e cosa impossibile a negare.”-Rossi, _Roma Sotterranea_, tomo i. p. 103.

884 This is all fully discussed by Rossi, _Roma Sotterranea_, tomo i.

pp. 101-108. Rossi thinks the Church, in its capacity of burial society, was known by the name of ”ecclesia fratrum.”

885 See, on the history of early Christian Churches, Cave's _Primitive Christianity_, part i. c. vi.

886 Dodwell (_De Paucit. Martyr._ lvii.) has collected evidence of the subsidence of the persecution in the last year of the reign of Decius.

887 This persecution is not noticed by St. Jerome, Orosius, Sulpicius Severus, or Lactantius. The very little we know about it is derived from the letters of St. Cyprian, and from a short notice by Dionysius of Alexandria, in Eusebius, vii. 1. Dionysius says, Gallus began the persecution when his reign was advancing prosperously, and his affairs succeeding, which probably means, after he had procured the departure of the Goths from the Illyrian province, early in A.D.

252 (see Gibbon, chap. x.). The disastrous position into which affairs had been thrown by the defeat of Decius appears, at first, to have engrossed his attention.

888 Lucius was at first exiled and then permitted to return, on which occasion St. Cyprian wrote him a letter of congratulation (_Ep._ lvii.). He was, however, afterwards re-arrested and slain, but it is not, I think, clear whether it was under Gallus or Valerian. St.

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