rywhere there was much credulity. Men believed in the divinity of
the dead emperors; it was believed that Vespasian had in Egypt healed
a blind man and a paralytic. During the war with the Dacians the Roman
army was perishing of thirst; all at once it began to rain, and the
sudden storm appeared to all as a miracle; some said that an Egyptian
magician had conjured Hermes, others believed that Jupiter had taken
pity on the soldiers; and on the column of Marcus Aurelius Jupiter was
represented, thunderbolt in hand, sending the rain which the soldiers
caught in their bucklers.

When the apostles Barnabas and Paul came to the city of Lystra in Asia
Minor, the inhabitants invoked Barnabas as Jupiter and Paul as
Mercury; they were met by a procession, with priests at the head
leading a bull which they were about to sacrifice.

Cultured people were none the less credulous.[156] The Stoic
philosophers admitted omens. The emperor Augustus regarded it as a
bad sign when he put on the wrong shoe. Suetonius wrote to Pliny the
Younger, begging him to transfer his case to another day on account of
a dream which he had had. Pliny the Younger believed in ghosts.

Among peoples ready to admit everything, different religions, instead
of going to pieces, fused into a common religion. This religion, at
once Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Asiatic, dominated the world at the
second century of our era; and so the Christians called it the
religion of the nations; down to the fourth century they gave the
pagans the name of "gentiles" (men of the nations); at the same time
the common law was called the Law of Nations.

FOOTNOTES:

[145] Inscriptions have been found where the name of Domitian has thus
been cut away.

[146] Suetonius ("Lives of the Twelve Caesars," Nero, ch. lvii.) relates,
that the king of the Parthians, when he sent ambassadors to the Senate
to renew his alliance with the Roman people, earnestly requested that
due honor should be paid to the memory of Nero. The historian continues,
"When, twenty years afterwards, at which time I was a young man, some
person of obscure birth gave himself out for Nero, that name secured him
so favorable a reception from the Parthians that he was very zealously
supported, and it was with much difficulty that they were persuaded to
give him up."--ED.

[147] Italy was not included among the provinces.

[148] A few provinces, the less important, remained to the Senate, but
the emperor was alm