growth and a suspicion of their
motives. The Romans could not understand such devotion to a mere
religion; and they always feared lest the faith was something more, a
cloak for nameless crimes, or a secret conspiracy of rebellion among
their slaves, who would some day turn and rend them.

Thus while Nero's attack on the Christians was in a sense an accident,
the blind rush of a half-crazed beast, the later persecutions were often
directed by serious and well-intentioned emperors and magistrates. The
Romans were far from being intolerant. They had interfered very little
with the religions of their subject races, and had, indeed, adopted more
than one foreign god into their own temples. They were quite willing
that the Christ should be worshipped. What they could not understand was
that reverence to one god should forbid reverence to another.

It was the new religion which was intolerant, which, in the passionate
intensity of its faith, attacked the old gods, denied their existence,
or declared them devils. When a man was summoned before a Roman court on
the charge of being a Christian, he was not, as a rule, asked to deny
Christ; only, there being a general impression that his sect was evil,
he was required to prove his honest citizenship and general good
character by doing reverence to the Roman gods.[9]

In spite of persecution, some writers say because of it, Christianity
spread. Toward the end of the first two hundred years of the Empire, it
seemed about the only prosperous institution in a world which was
beginning to go badly. During the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the last of
the "good" emperors (161-180), troubles, some accidental, some inherent
in the Roman system, were gathering very dark.

The curse of inaction, of wealth without liberty, of intellect without a
goal to strive toward, had long been corrupting the upper classes. Now,
a terrible plague swept the world from end to end, so that laborers
became scarce, lands went untenanted, taxes unpaid. The drain of
supporting Rome's boundless extravagance, in buildings, feasts, and
gladiatorial displays, began to tell upon the provinces at last. Newer
and ever harsher methods had to be employed to wring money from
exhausted lands. Driven by their sufferings to cling to religion as a
support, men thought of it more seriously; and a cry went up that earth
was being punished for its neglect and insult of the ancient gods. The
Christians were persecuted anew.[10]