slave in the house, male or female, old or young, should be put to death. On this case the senate has debated. A famous patriot has insisted that the law should take its course, chiefly on ground of the public security. "Our ancestors," said he, "suspected the disposition of slaves even when they had been born and bred on our country estates or in our own household, and had imbibed at once affection for their masters: but from the time that we have been embracing whole nations in our families, who have different religious rites, and foreign religions, or none at all, there is no means of keeping down that seething mass of corruption, save by terror." This pleading prevailed: the law was left to take its course; and lest the public pity should be more yielding than the prudent ferocity of the senate, the emperor has lent the assistance of an armed force to carry out the decision.

In the evening the stranger is proceeding by the Campus Martius. He finds, as he goes along, the squares and public places resplendent with torches. The emperor's freedman Tigellinus gives a banquet to-night on the lake of Agrippa, in the gardens close by the Pantheon.* There, says Tacitus, a platform has been erected, moved by ships superbly decorated with gold and silver, whose crews are formed of the most abandoned slaves, each having his station according to his age and skill in the practice of debauchery. The

• Tacitus, Annal. xv. 37.

country has been ransacked for birds and game, and fish has been brought even from the ocean. On the borders of the lake are buildings filled with ladies of rank, who invite every comer; on the opposite side a band of harlots make no secret of their persons. Wanton dances succeed; and as night comes on, a blaze of light, with a concert of music, breaks over the lake. There in person the Emperor Nero revels in every turpitude: but not yet satisfied until, a few days afterwards, he had solemnly espoused one of that abominable crew named Pythagoras. The emperor puts on the bridal veil; the augurs assist; the dowry is paid; the genial bed is displayed, and the nuptial torches lighted: "all," says the historian, "is public, even those endearments which natural marriage veils in secrecy."

And, in order to give the measure of the world's morality at that time, it must be added that the abominable crime thus committed by her emperor in the face of Rome lies equally upon the memory of fifteen out of sixteen who first wore the purple.* Julius with his matchless genius, Augustus with his wise good fortune, Trajan the

* See Gibbon, ch. iii. p. 100, note p. For Antoninus Pius, see Döllinger, Heid. und Jud., 718. Marcus Aurelius, in his Meditations, lib. i. 16, praises his father for having overcome this vice: Παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς—καὶ τὸ παῦσαι τὰ περὶ τοὺς ἔρωτας τῶν μειρακίων.—It was reserved for the first Christian who became emperor, Philip, exoletos vetare. See note of Champagny, Les Antonins, vol. iii. p. 346, quoting Lamp. in Alexand.

great ruler in peace and war, and Adrian with his varied talents, and Titus the delight of the human race, and Antoninus Pius in spite of his sirname, -were no less stained with this blot than those emperors who seemed to exhaust the capacity of human nature for crime, Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, or Domitian. Out of the sixteen there is but the husband of Messalina and Agrippina who escapes at least this pollution. And to the fifteen emperors we must add the greatest names of Latin literature, Horace, and Virgil, and Catullus, and Cicero.*

And the stranger who beholds this double triumph of cruelty and lust, this utmost disregard of human life joined with the utmost debasement of man's dignity as a moral being, why has he come to Rome, and what is he doing there? Poor, unknown, a foreigner in dress, language, and demeanour, he is come from a distant province, small in extent, but the most despised and the most disliked of Rome's hundred provinces, to found in Rome itself a society, and one, too, far more extensive than this great Roman empire, since it is to embrace all nations; far more lasting, since it is to endure for ever. He is come to found a society by means of which all that he sees around him, from the emperor to the slave, shall be changed. He will first teach that slave, now the secret

It does not seem possible to extricate Cicero from this crime after the testimony of Pliny, in his letter to Pontius, lib. vii. 4.

enemy in every household, to be "subject to his master with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward;" and reciprocally he will teach the master "to give to his slave that which is just and equal, because he has himself a Master in heaven."* But more, under the effect of his teaching, that great work of injustice and oppression, which had grown up, flourished, and increased in all nations, will be dissolved as it were of itself, and the master accept the slave to equality of civil rights; while at the same time towards the sovereign power, which had made its will the rule of law, he will learn to exercise an obedience compatible with a freeman's liberty, and a new virtue will find for itself the new name of loyalty.

But what remedy will our foreign teacher apply to the disease prevailing all around him, the contempt of man as man, and of human life? What power of persuasion does he bear within him which was wanting to those philosophers, men of ability, learning, and eloquence, who from age to age, and out of every clime, had sought in Rome, as the world's centre, to establish a doctrine and gather a following? They have come with many varied gifts of human genius, and after shining for a while and attracting attention, have dropt away, and their followers after them. But the stranger of whom we are speaking has none of

• 1 Pet.

these gifts. He has neither the wisdom nor the eloquence of the Greeks; he is even without the learning of a cultivated mind: a fisherman by trade, poor, old, obscure, a foreigner of the most despised race, how can he succeed as a teacher among these lords of the world? He has two things within him for want of which society was perishing and man unhappy; a certain knowledge of God as the Creator, Ruler, Judge, and Reward of men, and of man's soul made after the image and likeness of this God. This God he has seen, touched, and handled upon earth; has been an eye-witness of His majesty, has received His message, and bears His commission. In this name he will speak to Nero and his court; to the patrician, the freeman, and the slave; to the female sex, the victim and instrument of the corruption around. He will speak; the few will listen and believe; the many will reject. Presently persecution will arise; he will be tried, condemned, and crucified on a hill overlooking the city. But in that death he will take possession of the city lying beneath him, which from him will receive the germ of a new life. In that city, the centre of idolatry, heathenism, and tyranny, and of all the corruption that is in the world through lust, he will have been the first of a line of rulers which is never to cease, and which, while the crown of temporal empire falls away from the Capitol, will substitute for it the