ng the calamity which he had occasioned, amused himself
with singing to his lyre the destruction of ancient Troy. To divert
a suspicion, which the power of despotism was unable to suppress,
the emperor resolved to substitute in his own place some fictitious
criminals. "With this view," continues Tacitus, "he inflicted the most
exquisite tortures on those men, who, under the vulgar appellation of
Christians, were already branded with deserved infamy. They derived
their name and origin from Christ, who in the reign of Tiberius had
suffered death by the sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate. For a
while this dire superstition was checked; but it again burst forth;
* and not only spread itself over Judaea, the first seat of this
mischievous sect, but was even introduced into Rome, the common asylum
which receives and protects whatever is impure, whatever is atrocious.
The confessions of those who were seized discovered a great multitude
of their accomplices, and they were all convicted, not so much for the
crime of setting fire to the city, as for their hatred of human kind.
They died in torments, and their torments were imbittered by insult and
derision. Some were nailed on crosses; others sewn up in the skins of
wild beasts, and exposed to the fury of dogs; others again, smeared
over with combustible materials, were used as torches to illuminate
the darkness of the night. The gardens of Nero were destined for the
melancholy spectacle, which was accompanied with a horse-race and
honored with the presence of the emperor, who mingled with the populace
in the dress and attitude of a charioteer. The guilt of the Christians
deserved indeed the most exemplary punishment, but the public abhorrence
was changed into commiseration, from the opinion that those unhappy
wretches were sacrificed, not so much to the public welfare, as to the
cruelty of a jealous tyrant." Those who survey with a curious eye the
revolutions of mankind, may observe, that the gardens and circus of
Nero on the Vatican, which were polluted with the blood of the first
Christians, have been rendered still more famous by the triumph and by
the abuse of the persecuted religion. On the same spot, a temple, which
far surpasses the ancient glories of the Capitol, has been since erected
by the Christian Pontiffs, who, deriving their claim of universal
dominion from an humble fisherman of Galilee, have succeeded to the
throne of the Caesars, given laws to the barbari