ors had been cut
off, six of them in a few months; and who could tell but the successor of
the present might revert to the policy of Philip, and feel no thanks to
those who had suddenly left it for a policy of blood.

In this cautious course they would be powerfully supported by the
influence of personal considerations. The Roman _officia_, the city
magistrates, the heads of the established religions, the lawyers, and the
philosophers, all would have punished the Christians, if they could; but
they could not agree whom to punish. They would have agreed with great
satisfaction, as we have said, to inflict condign and capital punishment
upon the heads of the sect; and they would have had no objection, if
driven to do something, to get hold of some strangers or slaves, who might
be a sort of scapegoats for the rest; but it was impossible, when they
once began to persecute, to make distinctions, and not a few of them had
relations who were Christians, or at least were on that border-land which
the mob might mistake for the domain of Christianity--Marcionites,
Tertullianists, Montanists, or Gnostics. When once the cry of "the gods of
Rome" was fairly up, it would apply to tolerated religions as well as to
illicit, and an unhappy votary of Isis or Mithras might suffer, merely
because there were few Christians forthcoming. A duumvir of the place had
a daughter whom he had turned out of his house for receiving baptism, and
who had taken refuge at Vacca. Several of the decurions, the _tabularius_
of the district, the _scriba_, one of the exactors, who lived in Sicca,
various of the retired gentry, whom we spoke of in a former chapter, and
various _attaches_ of the praetorium, were in not dissimilar circumstances.
Nay, the priest of Esculapius had a wife, whom he was very fond of, who,
though she promised to keep quiet, if things continued as they were,
nevertheless had the madness to vow that, if there were any severe
proceedings instituted against her people, she would at once come forward,
confess herself a Christian, and throw water, instead of incense, upon the
sacrificial flame. Not to speak of the venerable man's tenderness for her,
such an exposure would seriously compromise his respectability, and, as he
was infirm and apoplectic, it was a question whether Esculapius himself
could save him from the shock which would be the consequence.

The same sort of feeling operated with our good friend Jucundus. He was
attached to h