us relates how Poppaea befriended him, and he is
enthusiastic in his praise of her "religious nature." So it may very
likely have been--as the gifted author of _Quo Vadis?_ describes--that
the accusation of firing the city was fastened upon the Christians by
the instrumentality of the Jews, and that Nero found a readier access to
this welcome expedient through the counsel of Poppaea.

No description could be more vivid, or more trustworthy,--seeing that
his prejudice is entirely against the Christians,--than that given by
Tacitus of the cruelties perpetrated by Nero upon the followers of
Christ. "He inflicted the most exquisite tortures on those men (we know
from other evidence that there was no discrimination in regard to sex in
these sufferings) who, under the vulgar appellation of Christians, were
already branded with deserved infamy. They derived their name and origin
from Christ, who in the reign of Tiberius had suffered death by the
sentence of Pontius Pilate. For a while this dire superstition was
checked; but it again burst forth; and not only spread itself over
Judaea, the first seat of this mischievous sect, but was even introduced
into Rome, the common asylum which receives and protects whatever is
impure, whatever is atrocious. The confessions of those who were seized
discovered a great multitude of their accomplices, and they were all
convicted, not so much for the crime of setting fire to the city as for
their hatred of human kind. They died in torments, and their torments
were embittered by insult and derision. Some were nailed on crosses;
others sewn up in skins of wild beasts, and exposed to the fury of dogs;
others again, smeared over with combustible materials, were used as
torches to illuminate the darkness of the night. The gardens of Nero
were destined for the melancholy spectacle, which was accompanied with a
horse-race, and honored with the presence of the emperor, who mingled
with the populace in the dress and attitude of a charioteer. The guilt
of the Christians deserved indeed the most exemplary punishment, but the
public abhorrence was changed into commiseration, from the opinion that
those unhappy wretches were sacrificed, not so much to the public
welfare as to the cruelty of a jealous tyrant." Gibbon, commenting on
this passage, adds the reflection that in the strange revolutions of
history those same gardens of Nero have become the site of the triumph
and abuse of the persecuted religion.