associated, Agrippa had no real religion. At
Jerusalem he embellished the Temple and made offerings to Jehovah; at
Berytus he embellished the temple and made offerings there to Jupiter.
He was all things to all men and to himself--nothing but a voluptuous
time-server. As for these Christians, he never troubled himself about
them. Why should he? They were few and insignificant, no single man of
rank or wealth was to be found among them. To persecute them was easy,
and--it pleased the Jews. Therefore he persecuted them. One James, a
disciple of the crucified man called Christ, who had wandered about the
country with him, he seized and beheaded at Jerusalem. Another, called
Peter, a powerful preacher, he threw into prison, and of their followers
he slew many. A few of these were given over to be stoned by the Jews,
but the pick of the men were forced to fight as gladiators at Berytus
and elsewhere. The women, if young and beautiful, were sold as slaves,
but if matrons or aged, they were cast to the wild beasts in the circus.

Such was the fate, indeed, that was reserved for these poor victims in
the prison on this very day of the opening of our history. After the
gladiators had fought and the other games had been celebrated, sixty
Christians, it was announced, old and useless men, married woman and
young children whom nobody would buy, were to be turned down in the
great amphitheatre. Then thirty fierce lions, with other savage beasts,
made ravenous by hunger and mad with the smell of blood, were to be let
loose among them. Even in this act of justice, however, Agrippa suffered
it to be seen that he was gentle-hearted, since of his kindness he had
decreed that any whom the lions refused to eat were to be given clothes,
a small sum of money, and released to settle their differences with the
Jews as they might please.

Such was the state of public feeling and morals in the Roman world of
that day, that this spectacle of the feeding of starved beasts with live
women and children, whose crime was that they worshipped a crucified
man and would offer sacrifice to no other god, either in the Temple
or elsewhere, was much looked forward to by the population of Caesarea.
Indeed, great sums of money were ventured upon the event, by means of
what to-day would be called sweepstakes, under the regulations of which
he who drew the ticket marked with the exact number of those whom the
lions left alive, would take the first prize. Already