Nero's games in the Vatican Gardens, of A. D. 64, evidently left a profound impression on the Roman world. The spectators were used to these pitiless exhibitions. The crowds who thronged the amphitheatre had often seen men die; but they had never seen men die like those Christians who, in scenes of unexampled horror, by the sword, under the teeth of wild beasts, or in the flames, passed to their rest. The memory of the scene evidently was still fresh in Seneca's mind when, a year or two later, he wrote to Lucilius urging him to bear up bravely under sickness and bodily pain.
In the bloody naval games given by the Emperor Claudius in A. D. 52 on Lake Fucinus, as many as nineteen thousand condemned criminals fought together.—Tacitus, Ann., xii. 56.
"What," he wrote, "are your sufferings compared with the flames, and the cross, and the rack, and the nameless tortures that I have watched men endure, without shrinking, without a complaint, without a groan? And as if all this quiet endurance and brave patience was not sufficient, I have seen these victims even smile in their great agony."
We have dwelt in some detail on this first memorable "wholesale" martyrdom under Nero, for it was the commencement of a new era in the Christian life. Up to A. D. 64 the profession of the new faith was made in quiet and, comparatively speaking, in secret. Up to that date, throughout the Empire, in the eyes of all magistrates, the disciples of Jesus were more or less included among the Jews, who enjoyed toleration, and in some quarters even favor. But henceforth the Christians occupied a new position. They belonged from this time to a proscribed sect. Hitherto their existence had, indeed, been known to many, including, of course, the police and magistrates; but, politically speaking, it had been ignored. Now, however, the action of Nero, when he sought for victims on whom he could cast the odium of being the incendiaries on the occasion of the great fire which had desolated Rome, completely changed the situation. As Christian writers universally affirm, it was the wicked Emperor who first dragged the Christian body into publicity, who first drew the sword of the State against them, who gave the signal for the long drawn-out persecution of Christians which lasted about two centuries and a half During that time there were no doubt intervals, even long intervals, when persecution slept; but only to awaken to fresh violence.
From the day of the Neronic games of A. D. 64, the sword drawn by Nero ever hung over the heads of the condemned sect until the hour of the Christians' triumph some two hundred and fifty years later, when the peace of the Church was at last guaranteed by the Edict of Constantino, A. D. 313.
Until A. D. 64 the Roman officials had, on the whole, treated the Christians with indifference, or even with favor mingled with contempt, as exemplified several times in the treatment of Paul when brought before the Imperial magistrates. If they acted harshly, either they were influenced by the enmity of influential Jews or they punished the Christians as being connected with disturbances which were due in part to their presence and actions.
But in A. D. 64, a year after Paul's acquittal from the charges brought against him as related in the "Acts," Nero began a bitter persecution against the sect for the sake of diverting popular attention in the matter of the burning of Rome. It was soon seen that they had had no real hand in that terrible crime; but in substituting the charge of "hatred for mankind" the Emperor in fact introduced the principle of punishing Christians for their Christianity. His example became inevitably the guide for all officials, in the provinces as well as at Rome. The general persecution of Christians was established as a permanent police measure, directed against a sect considered dangerous to the public safety. No edict or formal law at that early period was passed, but the precedent of Rome was quoted in every case when a Christian was accused. The attitude of the State towards the sect gradually, in the course of a few years, became settled. No proof of definite crimes committed by the Christians was required. An acknowledgment of the "Name" alone sufficed for condemnation; as is shown by the well-known correspondence of the proconsul Pliny with the Emperor Trajan, which we shall presently again refer to in detail, some fifty years later in A. D. 112. "The action of Nero inaugurated a new era in the relation of the Empire towards Christianity, says Suetonius; and Tacitus does not disagree."
On the other hand, the action of Nero among the Christians themselves had a far-reaching effect. It gave them a new and mighty power, or rather it revealed to them what a power they possessed—an absolute fearlessness of death. Possibly this was unsuspected before the Neronic persecution. A historian of rare skill, no friend indeed to the religion of Jesus, does not hesitate to style the day of Nero's bloody games in his gardens of the Vatican "the most solemn day in the Christian story after the Crucifixion on Golgotha." The expression is a rhetorical one, but though exaggerated, it has a basis of truth. With the exception of the prominent and militant leaders, Stephen and James, who were victims of Jewish jealousy, we have no records of Christians during the first thirty years which followed the Resurrection and Ascension of the Founder of the religion laying down their lives for the Name; nor does it appear that in any of the communities of the followers of Jesus was the dread alternative of death or denial ever put before them in that first period.
The Neronic persecution presenting that alternative must have come upon the Roman Church, a community probably numbering several thousands, with startling suddenness; revealing what apparently was before unknown or at least ignored—the repulsion with which the Christians were generally regarded by the great world lying outside the little circle who happened to know something about them. They were charged, says Tacitus, with "hatred of the world" (i.e. the Roman world), in Professor Ramsay's words, "with being enemies to the customs and laws which regulated civilized (i.e. Roman) society. The Christians, so said their enemies, were bent on destroying civilization, and civilization must in self-defense destroy them."
Thus put to the test, the events of the summer of the year 64 showed what was the secret of the Christians' strength, demonstrated the intensity of their convictions; young and old, slave and free, the trader and the patrician-born alike, proved that while ready and willing to live quiet, homely lives as loyal true citizens, as faithful servants of the Emperor, to them "to depart (to die) and to be with Christ was far better." In the Vatican Gardens of Nero began, as it has been well said, that marvelous epic of "martyrdom" which amazed and confounded a skeptical though superstitious world for two centuries and a half.
Out of this passion for martyrdom sprang the ennobling enfranchisement of woman, and the elevation of the vast slave class from the position of hopeless and demoralizing degradation. For in the many and striking scenes of martyrdom, the woman and the slave played again and again an heroic and even a leading part. What had taken place at Rome when Nero was Emperor was repeated on a smaller scale before less distinguished and less numerous audiences again and again in famous provincial centers, such as Smyrna, Carthage, Lyons, Caesarea, now in groups, now singly. When the supreme hour of trial struck and the Christian had to choose between death and life—life being the guerdon offered for the simple renouncement of Christ—very rarely indeed was hesitation shown; the guerdon was at once rejected. The contempt of Christians for death puzzled, irritated, disturbed the Pagan writers and philosophers as much as the magistrates. They were utterly at a loss to comprehend the secret power which inspired this wonderful sect. As much as possible they avoid all allusion to Christians; whenever a mention of them occurs irritation and surprise are plainly visible. The one reference made to them by the great Emperor Marcus Aurelius is a curt and angry allusion to their contempt for death. This strange readiness to die for their belief was the characteristic feature which especially struck the Roman mind. So ready, so eager were the Christians to give up dear life that we find that their great teachers were now and again obliged to curb and even to restrain what had positively become a too passionate desire for martyrdom.
The example of the first martyrs of Rome was followed with a curious persistence, alike in Syria and Asia, in Africa and in Gaul, whenever, indeed, in the course of these two centuries and a half they were challenged to deny the "Name." The number of waverers was comparatively small.
The first persecution, begun at Rome with the Vatican Games of 64, but soon, as we have noted, spreading through the Provinces, continued to press heavily on the Christian congregations until the death of the Emperor Nero in 68.
The martyrdom of Peter and Paul, according to an immemorial tradition, took place in the year 67-8. Peter probably, as we have seen, was at Rome in A. D. 64, but was not one of the victims on that occasion. Paul was absent from the capital in 64, but returned a year or two later, probably with the idea of gathering together and strengthening the scattered and decimated Roman congregations. Tradition speaks of the two great Christian leaders perishing at or about the same date, before the tyrant's downfall and death in 68.
Two of the most ancient Christian documents, which by the consent of the whole Christian Church have been placed in the canon of inspired books, were probably written under the shadow of this first great calamity. They contain many and undoubted references to persecution. These documents are the First Epistle of Peter and the Apocalypse of John (the Revelation). The letter of Peter, dated from Rome (for well nigh all scholars are now agreed that under the mystic name of Babylon which occurs in the salutation at the close of the letter—1 Peter v. 13—Rome is signified), is a writing addressed to Oriental Christians, bidding them take courage in view of the grave trials which lay immediately before them. No book, with the exception of the Apocalypse of John, is so evidently marked with references to trial and suffering as is this First Epistle of Peter. And the references are evidently to no solitary burst of persecution, however terrible, but to a systematic proscription, to which all Christians dwelling in different parts of the Roman world were liable.
The Apocalypse of John was also evidently written under the dark shadow of persecution. The only question is whether the persecution referred to therein is that suffered by the Church in the days of Nero, or that endured some twenty years later under Domitian. If the first, then the writing would date from circa A. D. 68; if the second, the Apocalypse would have been put out circa A. D. 90. The witness of Irenaeus, who wrote about a century later, circa A. D. 170-80, and who gives the later date, is of course a very weighty one. The general, though not the universal, consensus of modern scholars, however, prefers the earlier date. In the words of Professor Sanday: "Apart from details, I question if any other date fits so well with the conditions implied in the Apocalypse as that between the death of Nero (A. D. 68) and the destruction of Jerusalem (A. D. 70); on all hands there were wars and rumors of wars. ... It might well seem as if the crash of empires was a lit prelude to the crash of a world. Never was the expectation of the approaching end so keen, never were men's minds so highly strung . . . there were no such tremendous issues, no such clash of opposing forces, no such intense expectation of the end under Domitian. The background seems inadequate."
With strange pathos, John the beloved, the survivor of the Apostolic band, in his inspired utterance expresses the mind of the Christian Church after the first terrible persecution. The fiery trial had done its work; henceforth we see the Church braced up, ready to suffer and to be strong, in the face of the most deadly persecution. "How grandly over all echoes the voice which borrows its tones straight from the prophets of the older covenant: 'Righteous art Thou, which art and which wast. Thou Holy One, because Thou didst thus judge . . . yea, O Lord God the Almighty, true and righteous are Thy judgments.' Whenever it is, Christians are being persecuted; the Empire is making its hand heavy upon them; they are as incapable of offering resistance as a child. And yet the prophet's gaze hardly seems to dwell upon the sufferings of himself and his people. They are a school of steadfastness and courage. 'Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life,' is the chief moral to be drawn from them. But the prophet looks away beyond the persecution to the fate of the persecutors. . . . The central feature of the Apocalypse is its intense longing for the advent of Christ and His kingdom, with its confident assertion of the ultimate victory of good over evil, and of the dawning of a state of blissful perfection where sorrow and sighing shall flee away."
The confusion and disorder which followed immediately upon Nero's death were speedily closed by the accession of Vespasian to supreme power.