ts
Nero gave one more proof of the close connection between effeminate
aestheticism and sanguinary callousness. As in old days, "on that
opprobrious hill," the temple of Chemosh had stood close by that of
Moloch, so now we find the _spoliarium_ beside the _fornices_--Lust hard
by Hate. The _carnificina_ of Tiberius, at Capreae, adjoined the
_sellariae_. History has given many proofs that no man is more
systematically heartless than a corrupted debauchee. Like people, like
prince. In the then condition of Rome, Nero well knew that a nation,
"cruel, by their sports to blood inured," would be most likely to forget
their miseries and condone their suspicions by mixing games and gayety
with spectacles of refined and atrocious cruelty, of which, for eighteen
centuries, the most passing record has sufficed to make men's blood run
cold.

Tacitus tells us that "those who confessed were first seized, and then
on their evidence _a huge multitude_[35] were convicted, not so much on
the charge of incendiarism as for their hatred to mankind." Compressed
and obscure as the sentence is, Tacitus clearly means to imply by the
"confession" to which he alludes the confession of Christianity, and
though he is not sufficiently generous to acquit the Christians
absolutely of all complicity in the great crime, he distinctly says that
they were made the scapegoats of a general indignation. The phrase--"a
huge multitude"--is one of the few existing indications of the number of
martyrs in the first persecution, and of the number of Christians in the
Roman Church. When the historian says that they were convicted on the
charge of "hatred against mankind" he shows how completely he confounds
them with the Jews, against whom he elsewhere brings the accusation of
"hostile feelings toward all except themselves."

Then the historian adds one casual but frightful sentence--a sentence
which flings a dreadful light on the cruelty of Nero and the Roman mob.
He adds: "And various forms of mockery were added to enhance their dying
agonies. Covered with the skins of wild beasts, they were doomed to die
by the mangling of dogs, or by being nailed to crosses, or to be set on
fire and burned after twilight by way of nightly illumination. Nero
offered his own garden for this show, and gave a chariot race, mingling
with the mob in the dress of a charioteer, or actually driving about
among them. Hence, guilty as the victims were, and deserving of the
worst punishm