the hope
of the succession, and invested their father with the honors of the
consulship.

But he had scarcely finished the term of his annual magistracy, when, on
a slight pretence, he was condemned and executed; Domitilla was banished
to a desolate island on the coast of Campania; and sentences either of
death or of confiscation were pronounced against a great number of who
were involved in the same accusation. The guilt imputed to their charge
was that of Atheism and Jewish manners; a singular association of ideas,
which cannot with any propriety be applied except to the Christians, as
they were obscurely and imperfectly viewed by the magistrates and by
the writers of that period. On the strength of so probable an
interpretation, and too eagerly admitting the suspicions of a tyrant as
an evidence of their honorable crime, the church has placed both Clemens
and Domitilla among its first martyrs, and has branded the cruelty of
Domitian with the name of the second persecution. But this persecution
(if it deserves that epithet) was of no long duration. A few months
after the death of Clemens, and the banishment of Domitilla, Stephen, a
freedman belonging to the latter, who had enjoyed the favor, but who
had not surely embraced the faith, of his mistress, * assassinated
the emperor in his palace. The memory of Domitian was condemned by the
senate; his acts were rescinded; his exiles recalled; and under the
gentle administration of Nerva, while the innocent were restored to
their rank and fortunes, even the most guilty either obtained pardon or
escaped punishment.

II. About ten years afterwards, under the reign of Trajan, the younger
Pliny was intrusted by his friend and master with the government of
Bithynia and Pontus. He soon found himself at a loss to determine by
what rule of justice or of law he should direct his conduct in the
execution of an office the most repugnant to his humanity. Pliny had
never assisted at any judicial proceedings against the Christians,
with whose lame alone he seems to be acquainted; and he was totally
uninformed with regard to the nature of their guilt, the method of their
conviction, and the degree of their punishment. In this perplexity he
had recourse to his usual expedient, of submitting to the wisdom of
Trajan an impartial, and, in some respects, a favorable account of the
new superstition, requesting the emperor, that he would condescend to
resolve his doubts, and to instruct his ig