eral, and black boys to wait on
them! This time it was only a joke; but Domitian did put so many people
to death that he grew frightened lest vengeance should fall on him, and
he had his halls lined with polished marble, that he might see as in a
glass if any one approached him from behind. But this did not save him.
His wife found that he meant to put her to death, and contrived that a
party of servants should murder him, A.D. 96.

[Illustration: COIN OF NERO.]

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES.

96--194.

Domitian is called the last of the twelve Caesars, though all who came
after him called themselves Caesar. He had no son, and a highly esteemed
old senator named Cocceius Nerva became Emperor. He was an upright man,
who tried to restore the old Roman spirit; and as he thought
Christianity was only a superstition which spoiled the ancient temper,
he enacted that all should die who would not offer incense to the gods,
and among these died St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who had been bred
up among the Apostles. He was taken to Rome, saw his friend St.
Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, on the way, and wrote him one of a set of
letters which remain to this day. He was then thrown to the lions in the
Colosseum.

It seems strange that the good Emperors were often worse persecutors
than the bad ones, but the fact was that the bad ones let the people do
as they pleased, as long as they did not offend them; while the good
ones were trying to bring back what they read of in Livy's history, of
plain living and high thinking, and shut their ears to knowing more of
the Christians than that they were people who did not worship the gods.
Moreover, Julius Trajanus, whom Nerva adopted, and who began to reign
after him in 98, did not persecute actively, but there were laws in
force against the Christians. When Pliny the younger was propraetor of
the province of Pontica in Asia Minor, he wrote to ask the Emperor what
to do about the Christians, telling him what he had been able to find
out about them from two slave girls who had been tortured; namely, that
they were wont to meet together at night or early morning, to sing
together, and eat what he called a harmless social meal. Trajan answered
that he need not try to hunt them out, but that, if they were brought
before him, the law must take its course. In Rome, the chief refuge of
the Christians was in the Catacombs, or quarries of tufa, from which the
city was chief