it from him. Eccl. Hist. ii. 2. The antient Christians might have been misinformed in this, as in some other points. Tiberius was of an irreligious disposition, and a fatalist, and little disposed to increase the number of the gods and the burthen of Atlas. Circa deos ac religiones negligentior: quippe addictus mathematica; persuasionisque plenus cuncta fato agi.' He hated foreign superstitions, Egyptian and Jewish rites. Externas cæremonias, Ægyptios Judaicosque ritus compescuit. He and the senate had expelled the Jews from Rome d; and about the time of Christ's crucifixion he had destroyed an illustrious family, for this amongst other reasons, that divine honours had been paid to one Theophanes, an ancestor of theirs. Datum erat crimini quod Theophanem Mitylenæum proavum eorum Cn. Magnus inter intimos habuisset: quodque defuncto Theophani cœlestes honores Græca adulatio tribuerat. Augustus commended Caius for not worshipping at Jerusalem. Caium nepotem, quod Judæam prætervehens, apud Hierosolymam non supplicasset, collaudavit ':' and Tiberius made it a rule, 'omnia facta dictaque ejus vice legis observare,' as he says of himself in Tacitus Ann. iv. 37. Observe also that the Jews persecuted the apostles and slew Stephen; and that Saul made havock of the church, entering into every house, and, haling men and women, committed them to prison; and that Pilate connived at all this violence, and was not afraid of the resentment of Tiberius on that account. The custom which the Romans had to deify and adore their emperors, most of them after their decease, and some of them during their lives, even though they were the vilest of mankind; the apotheosis of Antinoüs, Adrian's favourite ; the contempt which many emperors, as Tiberius, and Caius, and Nero, showed towards their gods; the endeavour of Heliogabalus to suppress the worship of the b Sueton. Tiber. 69. Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus. Religionum usquequaque contemtor, Hanc mox ita sprevit, ut urinâ contaminaret. Suet. Ner. 56. Heliogabalum in Palatino monte juxta ædes imperatorias conseeravit, eique templum fecit, studens et Matris typum, et Vestæ ignem, antient deities, and to introduce a ridiculous god of his own; the strange Ægyptian deities which had crept into Italy, and were there adored by some and detested by others; the liberty which many learned persons had taken with the popular religion: these things had a tendency to wean the pagans by slow degrees from their attachment to idolatry, and to facilitate the worship of one God and Father of all, who by his Son, or his Word, reconciled to himself and instructed mankind, and by his Spirit assisted virtuous minds in their progress to wisdom and happiness, as a religion more simple, and noble, and philosophical, and reasonable than paganism. The senate, says Dio, ordered the temples of Isis and Serapis to be pulled down, and afterwards would not suffer any to be erected intra pomerium. Τοὺς νάους, οὓς ἰδία τινὲς ἐπεποίηντο, καθελεῖν τῇ βούλῃ ἔδοξεν· οὐ γὰρ δὴ τοὺς θεοὺς où dù ἐνόμισαν, καὶ ὅτε γε καὶ ἐξενίκησεν, ὥστε καὶ δημοσίᾳ αὐτοὺς σέβεσθαι, ἔξω τοῦ πωμηρίου σφᾶς ἱδρύσαντο. xl. p. 142. A little after the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey, the haruspices ordered the temples of these deities to be demolished. Dio xlii. p. 196. How much the goddess Isis and her sacred rites were despised, may be seen in Propertius ii. 24. Lucan viii. 831. ix. 158. Juvenal vi. 489. 526. ix. 22. not to mention several others. The apotheosis of the Roman emperors is made the subject of the utmost contempt and ridicule by Seneca in his Aποκολοκύντωσις. The Romans knew not much of Christianity, and in a great measure overlooked it, till its professors were so considerably increased that they could not easily be destroyed. Christianity at first was more likely to prosper under bad than under good emperors, if these were tenacious of their religious rites and ceremonies. The bad emperors had usually other crimes and other mischief in view, and no leisure et Palladium, et Ancilia, et omnia Romanis veneranda in illud transferre templum, et id agens, ne quis Romæ deus nisi Heliogabalus coleretur, &c. Lampridius 3. i It is related somewhere of Diogenes the cynic, that, to show his contempt of sacrifices, he took a louse, and cracked it upon the altar of Diana. to plague such a little sect,-little when compared to pa ganism. And accordingly from the death of Christ to Vespasian, for about the space of thirty-seven years, the Romans did not much mind the progress of the gospel. They were ruled by weak, or frantic, and vicious emperors; the magis trates and senators, and every worthy man of any note, stood in continual fear for their own lives. Under Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, the empire was a scene of confusion, desolation, and misery... Nero indeed destroyed several christians at Rome, but it was for a supposed crime, of which all the world knew them to be innocent; so that this cruel treatment raised compassion, and rather did service than harm to the christian cause, and the persecution was soon over. If Claudius and the senate in his time had known the nature of the gospel in this point, that it was directly opposite to the national religion, and that, if it prospered, pagan, ism must decline and come to nothing, and that every Christian thought himself bound to spread his opinions by all arts and means which were not immoral, they would have endeavoured to suppress it effectually; but it lay screened then under judaism, and the Jews had leave to worship God in their own way. The Christians who suffered under Nero are called 'malefici' by Suetonius, c. 16. that is, sorcerers, magicians. Probably the pagans had heard of their miracles, and ascribed them to magic arts, which yet was a kind of indirect acknowledgment of them. Juvenal iii. 41. Quid Romæ faciam? mentiri nescio-motus where the old scholiast says, motus astrorum: maleficus non sum.' But here I doubt it should be, mathematicus non sum;' which is a more literal interpretation. Nemo mathematicus genium indemnatus habebit.— Ante tamen de te, &c. vi. 562. [With the reader's leave, I will step out of my way to correct a passage in this poet, xiii. 64. Egregium sanctumque virum si cerno, bimembri Culmine delubri, tanquam in mare fluxerit amnis Henninius has given in the text mirandis. Lubin we must read' mirantis,' not 'miranti.' Gataker conjectures liranti.' These honest men were all disposed to feed upon acorns, whilst other copies had 'miranti,' which was very well explained by Britannicus, sub aratro miranti, ut rei inanimæ dederit sensum. Miranti aratro is just such an expression as irato sistro,' xiii. 93. esuriens ramus olivæ,' xiii. 99, &c. &c. I need not observe how flat and unmeaning and unpoetical is the expression gurgitibus miris, and how ill it comes in after miranti. The poet intended to speak of a prodigy, of a river running bloody, which together with showers of blood has been often mentioned amongst prodigies. See Cicero De divin. i. 43. The word which he used was somewhat uncommon, and therefore lost, and ill supplied. He wrote, I believe, Gurgitibus miniis, et lactis vortice torrens. The Miniis,' that is sanguineis, rubris instar minii.' adjective minius or mineus,' from 'minium,' red lead, vermilion, is twice used by Apuleius, fulgentium rosarum minius color,' and cervicula psittaci circulo mineo. Faber's Thesaurus. If there were no example extant of the adjective minius,' that would not be a sufficient reason to reject the emendation, since the Greek and Latin poets frequently turn substantives into adjectives. So Juvenal himself, xi. 94. according to the best copies; Qualis in oceano fluctu testudo nataret. Litore ab oceano Gallis venientibus..... Catullus, lxiii. according to Scaliger's emendation, And hence Milton, 1. hugest that swim th' ocean stream. • Minium in Greek is μίλτος, and the Sibylline oracles speak thus of a bloody shower; Καὶ ψεκάδες πίπτωσιν ἀπ ̓ οὐρανοῦ, οἷά τε μίλτος. The old scholiast says, ο Gurgitibus miris] Aut lacteis, aut sanguineis.' But you have nothing in Juvenal that answers to 'sanguineis,'unless you change 'miris' into ' miniis,' which is also a very slight alteration. The poet might have so contrived it as to have used 'sanguis,' or 'cruor,' or their adjec tives; but 'gurgitibus miniis' pleased him better, as it had a more ludicrous cast, and he chose rather to stain his river with red ochre than with blood. It threw a contempt upon portents and prodigies, things which he was not much disposed to believe. Lucian, or whosoever he be who wrote the treatise De Dea Syria,' says that the river Adonis was stained with blood every year, ὁ δὲ ποταμὸς ἑκάστου ἔτος αἱμάσσεται, καὶ τὴν χροιὴν ὁλέσας, ἐσπίπτει ἐς τὴν θά λασσαν, καὶ φοινίσσει τὸ πολλὸν τοῦ πελάγεος. “Illud fumen singulis annis cruentatur, suoque amisso colore in mare effunditur, et magnam maris partem inficit.' 8. He adds that an inhabitant of Byblus explained the phænomenon thus : ὁ Αδωνις ὁ πόταμος, ὦ ξεῖνε, διὰ τοῦ Λιβάνου ἔρχεται ὁ δὲ Λίβανος κάρτα ξανθογιώς ἐστι ἄνεμοι ὧν τρηχές ἐκείνησι τῇσι ἡμέρῃσι ἱστάμενοι τὴν γῆν τῷ ποταμῷ ἐπιφέρουσι, ἔοῦσαν ἐς τὰ μάλιστα ΜΙΛΤΩΔΕΑ· ἡ δὲ γῆ μιν αἱμώδεα τίθησι. • Adonis fumen, o hospes, venit per Libanum. At Libanus multum rubicundæ terræ habet. Venti ergo vehementes, qui ftatos illis diebus flatus habent, terram Alumini inferunt `minio valde similem. Hæc illud terra reddit sanguineum.' ~ This account has been since confirmed by Maundrel in his Voyages. • Sanguinem pluisse, says Cicero, senatui nuntiatum est, Atratum etiam fluvium fluxisse sanguine.-Sed et décoloratio quædam ex aliqua contagione terrena potest sanguini similis esse.' De div. ii. 27. |