Chapter VIII

Whether the Romans Were Tolerant.

Among the ancient Romans, from Romulus to the time when Christians disputed with the priests of the empire, you will not find a single man persecuted for his opinions. Cicero doubted everything; Lucretius denied everything; and neither incurred the slightest reproach. Freedom went so far that Pliny the Naturalist begins his book by denying a God and saying that, if there is one, it is the sun. Speaking of the underworld, Cicero says: “There is no old woman so foolish as to believe”: “There is not even an old woman foolish enough to believe in it.” Juvenal says: “Nor do children believe”: “Children believe none of it.” On the Roman stage they sang: “After death there is nothing, and death itself is nothing”: “Nothing comes after death; death itself is nothing.” Let us abhor these maxims and, at most, forgive them in a people whom the Gospels had not enlightened. They are false; they are impious. But let us conclude that the Romans were very tolerant, since these maxims never raised the slightest murmur.

The great principle of the Senate and the Roman people was: “Offenses against the gods are the gods’ concern”; “It is for the gods alone to concern themselves with offenses against the gods.” This sovereign people thought only of conquering, governing, and civilizing the world. They were our lawmakers as well as our conquerors; and Caesar, who gave us chains, laws, and games, never sought to force us to abandon our Druids for him, though he was the high priest of the nation that ruled us.

The Romans did not practice every form of worship or give them all public sanction, but they permitted them all. Under Numa they had no material object of worship, no images, no statues; soon they raised them to the gods of the first rank, whom the Greeks had made known to them. The law of the Twelve Tables, “Let them not worship foreign gods,” came to mean simply that public worship was granted only to the greater or lesser divinities approved by the Senate. Isis had a temple in Rome until Tiberius demolished it, after its priests, bribed with Mundus’s money, let him sleep in the temple under the name of the god Anubis, with a woman called Paulina. It is true that Josephus alone tells this story; he was not a contemporary, and he was credulous and prone to exaggeration. It is scarcely likely that, in an age as enlightened as that of Tiberius, a lady of the highest rank would have been foolish enough to believe she was enjoying the favors of the god Anubis.

But whether this anecdote is true or false, it remains certain that Egyptian superstition had raised a temple in Rome with public consent. The Jews had traded there since the time of the Punic War; they had synagogues there in the days of Augustus, and retained them almost without interruption, as they have in modern Rome. Could there be stronger evidence that the Romans regarded tolerance as the most sacred law governing relations among peoples?

We are told that as soon as Christians appeared, they were persecuted by these same Romans, who persecuted no one. It seems plain to me that this assertion is quite false; I ask no other proof than St. Paul himself. Chap. 21. & 22. The Acts of the Apostles tells us that, when the Jews accused St. Paul of seeking to destroy the Mosaic law through Jesus Christ, St. James proposed that St. Paul shave his head and go to purify himself in the temple with four Jews, “so that everyone may know that everything said about you is false, and that you continue to observe the law of Moses.”

Paul, a Christian, therefore went to perform all the Jewish ceremonies for seven days; but before the seven days were over, some Jews from Asia recognized him. Seeing that he had entered the temple not only with Jews but also with Gentiles, they cried sacrilege. He was seized and brought before the governor Felix, and afterward the case was taken to the tribunal of Festus. The Jews thronged together to demand his death. Actes des Apôtres, Chap. 25. Festus answered them: “It is not the custom of the Romans to condemn a man before the accused has his accusers before him and has been given freedom to defend himself.”

These words are all the more remarkable in this Roman magistrate because he seems to have had no regard for St. Paul, and to have felt only contempt for him. Misled by the false light of his reason, he took him for a madman; he told him to his face that he was out of his mind: Act. des Ap. Ch. 26. v. 34. “Your great learning is driving you insane.” Festus, then, listened only to the equity of Roman law when he extended his protection to a stranger he could not esteem.

Here the Holy Spirit himself declares that the Romans were not persecutors, and that they were just. It was not the Romans who rose against St. Paul; it was the Jews. St. James, the brother of Jesus, was stoned by order of a Sadducean Jew, not a Roman; the Jews alone stoned St. Stephen;¹⁴ and when St. Paul guarded the executioners’ cloaks, he certainly was not acting as a Roman citizen.

The first Christians surely had no quarrel with the Romans; their only enemies were the Jews, from whom they were beginning to separate. We know the implacable hatred all sectarians bear those who abandon their sect. There were undoubtedly disturbances in the synagogues of Rome. Suetonius says in the Life of Claudius: “He expelled from Rome the Jews, who were continually rioting at Christ’s instigation.” He was mistaken in saying that it was at Christ’s instigation: he could not have known the details of a people as despised in Rome as the Jewish people were. But he was not mistaken about the occasion of these quarrels. Suetonius wrote under Hadrian, in the second century; in Roman eyes, Christians were not then distinct from Jews. The passage in Suetonius shows that, far from oppressing the first Christians, the Romans were then restraining the Jews who persecuted them. They wanted the synagogue of Rome to show its separated brethren the same indulgence that the Senate showed the synagogue itself. The banished Jews soon returned; they even attained public honors despite the laws that excluded them: Dio Cassius and Ulpian tell us so.¹⁵ Is it possible that, after the destruction of Jerusalem, the emperors showered dignities on the Jews while persecuting Christians, whom they regarded as a Jewish sect, and delivering them to executioners and wild beasts!

Nero, we are told, persecuted them. Tacitus tells us that they were accused of setting fire to Rome and abandoned to the fury of the people. In such an accusation, was their religious belief at issue? Certainly not. Shall we say that the Chinese whom the Dutch slaughtered a few years ago in the outskirts of Batavia were sacrificed to religion? However eager we may be to deceive ourselves, it is impossible to attribute to intolerance the disaster that befell a few wretches, half Jewish and half Christian, under Nero.¹⁶

14 Although the Jews no longer had the power to impose the death penalty after Archelaus had been banished to the land of the Allobroges and Judea was governed as a province of the empire, the Romans often closed their eyes when the Jews carried out the judgment of zeal—that is, when, in a sudden riot, they zealously stoned someone they believed had blasphemed.

15 Ulpianus l.... tit. II. “They permitted those who follow the Jewish superstition to attain public honors, etc.”

16 Tacitus says: “Those whom the common people called Christians, hated for their crimes.”

It is very unlikely that the name Christian was already known in Rome; Tacitus wrote under Vespasian and Domitian, and spoke of Christians as people spoke of them in his own day. I would venture to say that the words “convicted of hatred of the human race” might well mean, in Tacitus’s style, “convicted of being hated by the human race” just as readily as “convicted of hating the human race.”

Indeed, what were these first missionaries doing in Rome? They were trying to win a few souls; they taught them the purest morality; they rose against no authority; the humility of their hearts was as profound as the lowliness of their station and circumstances. They were scarcely known, scarcely distinct from the other Jews: how could the human race, which knew nothing of them, hate them? And how could they be convicted of detesting the human race?

When London burned, Catholics were accused; but this was after wars of religion, after the Gunpowder Plot, in which several Catholics, unworthy of the name, had been proved guilty.

The first Christians in Nero’s time were certainly not in the same position. It is very difficult to penetrate the darkness of history. Tacitus gives no reason for the suspicion that Nero himself had wished to reduce Rome to ashes; there would have been much stronger grounds for suspecting Charles II of burning London. The blood of his father the king, executed on a scaffold before the people who demanded his death, could at least have furnished Charles II with an excuse. But Nero had neither excuse, pretext, nor interest. These senseless rumors may be the common people’s lot in every country; in our own day we have heard some just as foolish and unjust.

Tacitus, who knows the character of princes so well, should also have known that of the people: always vain, always excessive in their violent and fleeting opinions, incapable of seeing anything, and capable of saying everything, believing everything, and forgetting everything.

Philo says that Sejanus persecuted them under Tiberius, but that after Sejanus’s death the emperor restored all their rights. They had the rights of Roman citizens, however much Roman citizens despised them; they shared in the distributions of grain, and even when a distribution fell on the Sabbath, theirs was deferred to another day. This was probably in consideration of the sums of money they had given the state; for in every country they have bought tolerance and very quickly recouped what it cost them.

This passage in Philo perfectly explains the one in Tacitus which says that four thousand Jews or Egyptians were sent to Sardinia, and that if the harsh climate had killed them, it would have been a slight loss, a trifling loss.

I will add to this observation that Philo regards Tiberius as a wise and just prince. I readily believe that he was just only insofar as justice agreed with his interests; but the good that Philo says of him makes me doubt a little the horrors with which Tacitus and Suetonius reproach him. It does not seem at all likely to me that an infirm old man of seventy retired to the island of Capri to indulge in elaborate debaucheries scarcely within the bounds of nature, and unknown even to Rome’s most unbridled youth. Neither Tacitus nor Suetonius had known this emperor; they delighted in gathering popular rumors. Octavian, Tiberius, and their successors had been hated because they ruled a people who ought to have been free. Historians delighted in defaming them, and these historians were taken at their word because there were then no memoirs, journals of the time, or documents available. Thus the historians cite no one; no one could contradict them; they defamed whomever they pleased and settled the judgment of posterity as they chose. It is for the discerning reader to judge how far to distrust historians’ truthfulness, what credence to give public events attested by serious authors born in an enlightened nation, and what limits to set to belief in anecdotes those same authors relate without any proof.

Whether the Romans were tolerant.

Among the ancient Romans, from Romulus to the time when Christians began arguing with the priests of the empire, you do not find a single person persecuted for his beliefs. Cicero questioned everything; Lucretius denied everything. Neither received even the slightest criticism for it. Freedom went so far that Pliny the Naturalist begins his book by denying that there is a God, and saying that if there is one, it is the sun. Speaking of the underworld, Cicero says: “No old woman is so senseless as to believe it”: “There is not even an old woman foolish enough to believe in it.” Juvenal says: “Not even children believe”: “Children do not believe in it.” On the Roman stage people sang: “After death nothing exists, and death itself is nothing”: “There is nothing after death, and death itself is nothing.” We should reject these ideas with horror and, at most, forgive them in a people whom the Gospels had not enlightened. They are false and irreligious. But we must conclude that the Romans were very tolerant, since these ideas never caused the slightest protest.

The great principle of the Roman Senate and people was: “Offenses against the gods are the gods’ concern”: “It is for the gods alone to concern themselves with offenses against the gods.” This ruling people thought only of conquering, governing, and bringing orderly government to the world. They gave us our laws as well as conquering us. And Caesar, who gave us chains, laws, and public games, never tried to force us to give up our Druids in his favor, even though he was the high priest of the nation that ruled us.

The Romans did not practice every religion or give every religion official approval, but they allowed them all. Under Numa they had no material objects of worship, no images, no statues. Soon they put up statues to the major gods, whom the Greeks introduced to them. The law of the Twelve Tables, “Do not worship foreign gods,” came to mean only that public worship was reserved for higher or lower divinities approved by the Senate. Isis had a temple in Rome until Tiberius demolished it. This happened after its priests, bribed by Mundus, let him sleep in the temple with a woman named Paulina, pretending to be the god Anubis. It is true that Josephus is the only one who tells this story. He did not live at the time, and he was gullible and given to exaggeration. It seems unlikely that, in a time as enlightened as that of Tiberius, a woman of the highest rank would have been foolish enough to believe she was enjoying the favors of the god Anubis.

But whether this story is true or false, it is certain that Egyptian superstition had built a temple in Rome with public consent. Jews were trading there as early as the Punic War. They had synagogues there in the time of Augustus, and kept them almost continuously, as they have in modern Rome. Could there be a stronger example showing that the Romans regarded tolerance as the most sacred law governing relations between peoples?

We are told that as soon as Christians appeared, these same Romans, who persecuted no one, began persecuting them. It seems clear to me that this claim is quite false. I ask for no other evidence than St. Paul himself. Chap. 21. & 22. The Acts of the Apostles tells us that the Jews accused St. Paul of wanting to destroy the law of Moses through Jesus Christ. St. James proposed that St. Paul shave his head and go to purify himself in the Temple with four Jews, “so that everyone may know that everything said about you is false, and that you continue to keep the law of Moses.”

So Paul, a Christian, went to carry out all the Jewish ceremonies for seven days. But before the seven days were over, some Jews from Asia recognized him. Seeing that he had entered the Temple not only with Jews but with Gentiles, they cried out that it had been defiled. He was seized and taken before the governor Felix, and later his case came before the court of Festus. A crowd of Jews demanded his death. Actes des Apôtres, Chap. 25. Festus answered: “It is not the Roman custom to condemn a man before the accused has faced his accusers and been given the freedom to defend himself.”

These words are all the more striking from this Roman official because he seems to have had no regard for St. Paul, only contempt. Misled by the false light of his reason, he took Paul for a madman. He told him to his face that he was out of his mind: Act. des Ap. Ch. 26. v. 34. “Your great learning is driving you mad.” In protecting an unknown man whom he could not respect, Festus was therefore following nothing but the fairness of Roman law.

Here the Holy Spirit himself declares that the Romans were not persecutors and that they were just. It was not the Romans who rose against St. Paul, but the Jews. St. James, the brother of Jesus, was stoned on the orders of a Sadducee Jew, not a Roman. The Jews alone stoned St. Stephen;¹⁴ and when St. Paul guarded the executioners’ cloaks, he certainly was not acting as a Roman citizen.

The first Christians surely had no quarrel with the Romans. Their only enemies were the Jews, from whom they were beginning to separate. Everyone knows the relentless hatred that members of a sect feel toward those who leave it. There were undoubtedly disturbances in the synagogues of Rome. In his Life of Claudius, Suetonius says: “He expelled from Rome the Jews who were continually rioting at Christ’s instigation.” He was mistaken in saying it was at Christ’s instigation. He could not have known the details concerning a people as despised in Rome as the Jews were. But he was not mistaken about what gave rise to these quarrels. Suetonius wrote under Hadrian, in the second century. At that time the Romans did not distinguish Christians from Jews. This passage in Suetonius shows that, far from oppressing the first Christians, the Romans were then restraining the Jews who persecuted them. They wanted Rome’s synagogue to show its separated brothers the same tolerance that the Senate showed it. The expelled Jews soon returned. They even rose to public office, despite the laws that excluded them from it. Dio Cassius and Ulpian tell us this.¹⁵ Is it possible that after Jerusalem’s destruction the emperors freely gave public honors to Jews, while persecuting Christians, whom they regarded as a Jewish sect, and handing them over to executioners and wild beasts?

“Nero persecuted them,” we are told. Tacitus tells us that they were accused of setting Rome on fire and were handed over to the people’s fury. Was their belief at issue in such an accusation? Certainly not. Should we say that the Chinese whom the Dutch slaughtered a few years ago in the suburbs of Batavia were sacrificed to religion? However eager people may be to deceive themselves, it is impossible to blame intolerance for the disaster that befell a few unfortunate half-Jews, half-Christians under Nero.¹⁶

14 The Jews no longer had the power to impose death sentences after Archelaus was exiled among the Allobroges and Judea was governed as a province of the empire. Even so, the Romans often looked the other way when the Jews carried out a judgment of zeal. That is, in a sudden riot they would stone, out of religious zeal, someone they believed had blasphemed.

15 Ulpianus l.... tit. II. “They allowed those who follow the Jewish superstition to obtain public office, etc.”

16 Tacitus says: “Those whom the common people called Christians, hated for their crimes.”

It is very unlikely that the name Christian was already known in Rome. Tacitus wrote under Vespasian and Domitian. He spoke of Christians as people spoke of them in his own time. I would venture to say that, in Tacitus’s style, the words “convicted of hatred of the human race” might just as well mean “found to be hated by the human race” as “found to hate the human race.”

What were these first missionaries actually doing in Rome? They were trying to win a few souls. They taught them the purest morality. They did not rise against any authority. Their hearts were extremely humble, like their social standing and circumstances. They were barely known, barely separated from the other Jews. How could the human race, which knew nothing about them, hate them? And how could they be found guilty of hating the human race?

When London burned, Catholics were blamed. But that was after religious wars and after the Gunpowder Plot, in which several Catholics, unworthy of the name, had been proved guilty.

The first Christians in Nero’s time were certainly not in the same position. It is very difficult to see through the darkness of history. Tacitus gives no reason for the suspicion that Nero himself wanted to burn Rome to ashes. There would have been much more reason to suspect Charles II of burning London. The blood of his father the king, executed on a scaffold before the people who demanded his death, could at least have given Charles II an excuse. But Nero had no excuse, pretext, or interest in it. Such senseless rumors may circulate among the common people of any country. In our own day we have heard some just as foolish and unjust.

Tacitus, who understood the character of rulers so well, should also have understood the people’s character. They are always full of themselves, always extreme in their violent, short-lived opinions, incapable of seeing anything, and capable of saying anything, believing anything, and forgetting everything.

Philo says that Sejanus persecuted them under Tiberius, but that after Sejanus’s death the emperor restored all their rights. They had the rights of Roman citizens, however much Roman citizens despised them. They shared in the distributions of grain. Even when the distribution fell on a Sabbath, their share was held over for another day. This was probably in recognition of the money they had given the state. In every country they have bought tolerance, and very quickly recovered what it cost them.

This passage in Philo perfectly explains the one in Tacitus which says that four thousand Jews or Egyptians were sent to Sardinia, and that if the unhealthy climate had killed them, it would have been a small loss, “a loss of little value.”

I will add that Philo regards Tiberius as a wise and just ruler. I readily believe that he was just only when justice agreed with his interests. But the good that Philo says of him makes me doubt, a little, the horrors that Tacitus and Suetonius accuse him of. It does not seem likely to me that a sick old man of seventy retired to the island of Capri to indulge in elaborate forms of sexual excess barely possible in nature, and unknown even to Rome’s most unrestrained young people. Neither Tacitus nor Suetonius had known this emperor. They enjoyed collecting popular rumors. Octavian, Tiberius, and their successors had been hated because they ruled a people who should have been free. Historians took pleasure in slandering them, and people took those historians at their word because memoirs, journals from the time, and documents were then lacking. So the historians cite no one. They could not be contradicted. They slandered anyone they wanted and settled posterity’s judgment as they pleased. A sensible reader must judge how far to distrust historians’ truthfulness; how much to believe public events attested by serious writers born in an enlightened nation; and what limits to put on belief in stories those same writers tell without any evidence.