d
there nearly two years, and from thence sent letters to the
Thessalonians, who were neglecting their daily duties, expecting that our
Lord was about immediately to return. After Paul had left Corinth, he
wrote to that city also, first to correct certain evils that had arisen
in the Church there, and afterwards to encourage those who had repented,
and promise another visit. This visit, as well as one to his Macedonian
churches, was paid in his third journey; and when he had been arrested at
Jerusalem, and was in Rome awaiting his trial before the emperor, Nero,
he wrote to his friends at Philippi what is called the Epistle of Joy, so
bright were his hopes of his friends there.

St. Andrew also laboured in Greece, and was put to death in Achaia, by
being fastened to a cross of olive-wood, shaped like an X, where he hung
exhorting the people for three days before he died. When St. Paul was
released, he and the great evangelist St. John, and such of the apostles
as still survived, set the Church in order, appointing bishops over their
cities, and Dionysius of Athens became Bishop of Corinth, and St. Paul's
pupil from Antioch, Titus, was Bishop of Crete, and received an epistle
from Paul on the duties of his office. In process of time Christianity
won its way, and the oracles became silent, as the demons which spoke in
them fled from the Name of JESUS.

[Picture: Distant view of Parnassus]

CHAP. XL.--UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

[Picture: Decorative chapter heading]

For three hundred years Rome reigned over all the countries round the
Mediterranean, with one emperor at her head, and the magistrates of his
appointment to rule in all the provinces, while garrisons were placed to
quell risings of the people, or to keep in order the wild tribes on any
dangerous border. For a long course of years Greece was quiet, and had
no need of such troops. The people of her cities were allowed to manage
their own affairs enough to satisfy them and make them contented, though
they had lost all but such freedom as they could have by being enrolled
as citizens of Rome, and they were too near the heart of the empire to be
in danger from barbarous neighbours, so that they did not often have
troops among them, except those passing through Corinth to the East.

Towards the end of these three hundred years, however, Thrace and
Thessaly began to be threatened by wild nations who came from the b