ing public hatred against the Christians; and the legions
were chiefly commanded by those officers who had united with Galerius in
compelling Diocletian to persecute the Christians. The capital of the
empire was the particular stronghold of the ancient creed. "Rome," says
Beugnot, in the work from which I have so largely drawn, "was the cradle
and the focus of the national belief. Many traditions, elevated to the
rank of dogmas, were born within her pale, and impressed upon her a
religious character, which still was vividly shining in the times of
Constantine. The Pagans of the west considered Rome as the sacred city,
the sanctuary of their hopes, the point towards which all their thoughts
were to be directed; and the Greeks, in their usual exaggeration,
acknowledged in her, not a part of the earth, but of heaven."--(_Libanii
Epistolae_, epist. 1083, p. 816.) "The aristocracy, endowed with its many
sacerdotal dignities, and dragging in its train a crowd of clients and
freedmen, to whom it imparted its passions and its attachment to the
error, furnished, by the help of its immense riches, the means of
subsistence to a greedy, turbulent, and superstitious populace, amongst
whom it could easily maintain the most odious prejudices against
Christianity. The hope of acquiring a name, a fortune, or simply to take a
part in the public distributions, attracted to that city from the
provinces all those who had no condition, or, what is still worse, those
who were dissatisfied with theirs. Italy, Spain, Africa, and Gallia sent
to Rome the _elite_ of their children, in order to be instructed in a
school, the principal merit of whose professors was, an envious hatred of
every new idea, and who had acquired a melancholy reputation during the
persecutions of the Christians. The standard of Paganism was waving in
full liberty on the walls of the Capitol. Public and private sacrifices,
sacred games, and the consultation of the augurs, were prevailing to the
utmost in that _sink of all the superstitions_.(29) The name of Christ was
cursed, and the speedy ruin of his worshippers announced, in every part of
that place, whilst the glory of the gods was celebrated, and their
assistance invoked. How cruel must have been the situation of the
Christians, left in the midst of that city, where, at every step, a
temple, an altar, a statue, and horrible blasphemies were revealing to
them the ever active power of the Lie! They dared not either to found