oman town was
like--amphitheatre, shops, bake-houses, and all. Some skeletons have
been found: a man with his keys in a cellar full of treasure, a priest
crushed by a statue of Isis, a family crowded into a vault, a sentry at
his post; and in other cases the ashes perfectly moulded the impression
of the figure they stifled, and on pouring plaster into them the forms
of the victims have been recovered, especially two women, elder and
younger, just as they fell at the gate, the girl with her head hidden in
her mother's robe.

[Illustration: PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS.]

Titus died the next year, and his son-in-law Tacitus, who wrote the
history of those reigns, laid the blame on his brother Domitian, who was
as cruel and savage a tyrant as Nero. He does seem to have been shocked
at the wickedness of the Romans. Even the Vestal Virgins had grown
shameless, and there was hardly a girl of the patrician families in Rome
well brought up enough to become one. The blame was laid on forsaking
the old religion, and what the Romans called "Judaising," which meant
Christianity, was persecuted again. Flavius Clemens, a cousin of the
Emperor, was thus accused and put to death; and probably it was this
which led to St. John, the last of the Apostles, being brought to Rome
and placed in a cauldron of boiling oil by the Lateran Gate; but a
miracle was wrought in his behalf, and the oil did him no hurt, upon
which he was banished to the Isle of Patmos.

The Colosseum was opened in Domitian's time, and the shows of
gladiators, fights with beasts, and even sea-fights, when the arena was
flooded, exceeded all that had gone before. There were fights between
women and women, dwarfs and cranes. There is an inscription at Rome
which has made some believe that the architect of the Colosseum was one
Gandentius, who afterwards perished there as a Christian.

Domitian affronted the Romans by wearing a gold crown with little
figures of the gods on it. He did strange things. Once he called
together all his council in the middle of the night on urgent business,
and while they expected to hear of some foreign enemy on the borders, a
monstrous turbot was brought in, and they were consulted whether it was
to be cut in pieces or have a dish made on purpose for it. Another time
he invited a number of guests, and they found themselves in a black
marble hall, with funeral couches, each man's name graven on a column
like a tomb, a feast laid as at a fun