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"To put an end therefore to this report, he laid the guilt, and inflicted the most cruel
punishments, upon a set of people who were held in abhorrence for their crimes, and
called by the vulgar, Christians. The founder of that name was Christ, Who suffered
death in the reign of Tiberius, under his Procurator Pontius Pilate. This pernicious
superstition, thus checked for a while, broke out again and spread, not only over Judæa,
where the evil originated, but through Rome also, whither everything bad upon the earth
finds its way, and is practiced. Some who confessed their sect were first seized, and
afterwards, by their information, a vast multitude were apprehended, who were
committed, not so much of the crime of burning Rome, as of hatred to mankind. Their
sufferings at their execution were aggravated by insult and mockery, for some were
disguised in the skin of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs, some were crucified,
and others were wrapped in pitched shirts, and set on fire when the day closed, that they
might serve as lights to illuminate the night. Nero lent his own gardens for these
exhibitions, and exhibited at the same time a mock circussian entertainment, being a
spectator of the whole in the dress of a charioteer, sometimes mingling with the crowd on
foot, and sometimes viewing the spectacle from his car. This conduct made the sufferers
pitied, and though they were criminals and deserving the severest punishment, yet they
were considered as sacrificed, not so much out of regard to the public good, as to gratify
the cruelty of one man" (Tac. Ann. 15: 44).
Perhaps the reader will more fully appreciate, after reading this extract, the intensity of
meaning in the Apostle's words to Timothy:
"Wherein I suffer trouble as an evil doer, even unto bonds" (II Tim. 2: 9).
When the Apostle writes in the same epistle: "I was delivered out of the mouth of the
lion" (II Tim. 4: 17) he is probably referring to Nero, just as at the death of Tiberius, the
information was imparted by the words "The Lion is dead".
When Nero perceived that nothing could save him from the consequences of his
shame, he made several attempts at suicide, and eventually died with the words of vanity
upon his lips: Qualis artifex peres--"What an artist to perish!"
We shall have more to say concerning Nero when we come to deal with Paul's trial,
but for the moment we must conclude. We trust that as the series proceeds, the dark
background against which the early ministers of the faith lived and died, may become
more real and living.