titude.

Doubtless the imperial author of these scenes took more pleasure in them
than did any of his subjects. Renan thus pictures him: "As he was
nearsighted, he used to put to his eye on such occasions a concave lens
of 'emerald,' which served him as an eyeglass. He liked to exhibit his
connoisseurship in matters of sculpture; it is said that he made brutal
remarks on his mother's dead body, praising this point and criticising
that. Living flesh quivering in a wild beast's jaw, or a poor shrinking
girl, screening herself by a modest gesture, then tossed by a bull and
cast in lifeless fragments on the gravel of the arena, must exhibit a
play of form and color worthy of an artist-sense like his. Here he was,
in the front row, on a low balcony, in a group of vestals and curule
magistrates,--with his ill-favored countenance, his short sight, his
blue eyes, his curled light-brown hair, his cruel mouth, his air like a
big silly baby, at once cross and dull, open-mouthed, swollen with
vanity, while brazen music throbbed in the air, turned to a bloody mist.
He would, no doubt, inspect with a critic's eye the shrinking attitudes
of these new Dirces; and I imagine he found a charm he had never known
before in the air of resignation with which these pure-hearted girls
faced their hideous death."

Were these poor women, as they awaited in prison their doom, comforted
and encouraged by the presence of the Apostle charged to "feed my
lambs"? We do not know. But the firmness and constancy with which they
endured trials so horrible even unto death bespeak the marvellous effect
of the early enthusiasm of the Christian faith. These women were in the
vanguard of the Christian army which first met the deadly force of
heathen opposition; and because they did not flinch, but bore the pains
of martyrdom for their faith, that faith ultimately triumphed and filled
the world with its light. For more than two hundred years, however, the
women who embraced this faith were to live in the daily dread of the
terrible cry: "The Christians to the lions."

After the death of Nero, for a time the Church was, comparatively
speaking, unmolested; though as Christianity was increasing in strength,
it was regarded with greater hatred on the part of the general populace.
Ugly stories began to be set afloat referring to the practices of this
new sect. Later on it came to be believed that its adherents were in the
habit of feasting, in their secret gatherin