not allow of the propagation of foreign religions in different parts of the empire.[1] No doubt such religions were spread in wild confusion; but for the most part they were content to exist side by side, without molesting one another, like the various species of birds that live together in a wood. They even went farther than this: they adopted one another's rites and legends, welded together, united in a syncretic amalgam. Such a process could be encouraged as helping towards the unification of the empire. But Christianity was of a very different temper. Enthusiastically missionary, pushing, and aggressive, it was intolerant of any other faith, since it claimed to be the one absolute faith of the one true God, and regarded all other religions as false and wicked and their divinities as demons to be denounced and cast out. For this reason the Christians were very unpopular. Some of them did not hesitate to pour scorn and contempt on the superstition of their neighbours to an extent that was not only insulting, but, as sincere pagans believed, even dangerous; and earthquakes and pestilences were attributed to the anger of the gods at the "atheism" of the Christians. Consequently, it was common for a great natural calamity to be followed by an outbreak against the Christians who were supposed to have provoked it. Thus they frequently suffered from the persecution of panics. Then their refusal to share in the public games while they declaimed against the lewdness of the theatre and the bloodthirsty cruelty of the amphitheatre, their reluctance to join in popular holidays or to accept municipal offices which involved pagan sacrificial rites, and their reiterated prediction of the coming judgment and approaching end of the world by fire, resulted in their being regarded as "enemies of the human race." We can well understand how a Government that was nervously anxious to prevent disorder in its vast and incongruous dominions would be averse to the spread of a sect whose presence provoked antagonism and introduced a disintegrating element into society.
- ↑ The rule to be observed was, Cujus regio, ejus religio.
