Where the first Roman followers of
the Galilean Carpenter suffered for their confession, the successors of
Peter exert a world-embracing hierarchical sway and a power far
surpassing that of the greatest emperor.

No nation besides Rome ever systematically turned the torture of
criminals into a popular pastime; but there the people had become so
accustomed to the butchery of human beings in the public games that
nothing was so welcome as a new device for heightening the effect of
agonized death throes, except a large supply of judicially condemned men
and women on whom to prove it. Nero had good reason to be well assured
that he would not incur the displeasure of the people by condemning the
Christians to the circus and the amphitheatre.

They were arrested in great numbers and crowded into a prison the
loathsomeness of which was itself a horrible torture. A holiday was
appointed so that the whole populace might be regaled by the sufferings
of these men and women. The orgy of cruelty which ensued seems beyond
the power of human nature to witness, much less to inflict. It is with
great reason that the early Christians looked upon Nero as the
Antichrist, the one representing in his nature the infinity of
opposition to the Saviour. From none of those horrors were women exempt.
Like the men they were crucified; they were covered with the skins of
wild beasts and mangled by dogs; and, their garments being dipped in
pitch, they were converted into living torches to light the gardens at
night. Clement of Rome also tells us that many Christian women were made
to play the part of the Danaids and of Dirce. It was the custom to give
realistic representation to mythological subjects by compelling
criminals to take the part of the victim of the tragedy. Consequently,
the women who represented Dirce were tied to the horns of a wild bull
and dragged about the arena until they were dead. The well-known piece
of ancient sculpture known as the Farnese Bull is the original tragedy
pictured in stone. An inscription in Pompeii indicates that this
exhibition was a common sight in the arena, women who were condemned
being frequently put to death in this manner. No point likely to add to
the effect of the scene was sacrificed to decency. The shame at being
exposed naked, which would humiliate a Christian maiden even at the
moment of impending death, simply afforded an element of jocularity to
the tragedy in the eyes of that barbarous Roman mul