The life and work of St. Paul

75SU APPENDIX.
reproaches them with gross sensuality, low cunning, and strong hatred of alt nations but
their own, and gives at full length, and with all gravity, the preposterous story about
their veneration for the ass. 1 In his Annals he speaks with equal horror and equal
ignorance of Jews and Christians, and considers that if the thousands of Jews who were
deported to Sardinia died it would bo a 2
cheap loss ; Juvenal flings scornful allusion at
their squalor, beggary, turbulence, superstition, cheatery, and idleness 3
; Celsus abused
them as 4
jugglers and vagabonds ; Ammianus Marcellinus as " "
disgusting and 5
noisy ;
Kutilius Numatianus closes the long line of angry slanderers by a burst of abuse, in
which he characterises Judaea as a "lying slave-cage." 6 Jeremiah had bidden the Jews
to seek the peace of, and to pray for, the city of their captivity, "for in the peace
thereof shall ye have peace." 7 Better had it been for the ancient Jews if they had lived
in the spirit of that large advice. But the Gentiles were well aware that in the Jewish
synagogues there was an exception to the dead uniformity of the liomish Empire, and
that they and their customs were there treated with open and bitter scorn, which they
repaid tenfold. 8
EXCUESUS XV. (p. 186),
JUDGMENTS OF EARLY PAGAN WRITERS ON OHRISTIANITT.
SUETONIUS (died ciro. A.D. 110).
*' Judaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantes Roma expulit" (Claud. 25).'
"Afflicti suppliciis Christiani genus hominum superstitionis novae et maleficae"
o, 16).
" Percrebuerat Oriente toto vetus et constans opinio, esse in fatis, ot eo tempore.
Judaea profocti rerum potirentur " (Fesp. 4).
TACITUS (Consul suffectus, A.D. 97).
"Ergo abolendo rumori Nero subdidit reos, et quaesitissimis pocnis affecit, quos per
flngitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat. Auctor ejus nominia Christus Tiberio
imperitante per procuratorem Pont. Pilatum supplicio afifectus est ; repressaque in
praesens oxitiabilis superstitio rursum erumpebat non modo per Judaeam originem ejus
in.ili, sed per urbem etiam quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebran-
turque. Igitur primum correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum multitude ingens,
haud perinde in crimine incendii quam odio generis humani convicti aunt. Et pereuntibus
addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis contecti laniatu canum interirent, aut criicibus
affixi aut flammandi, atque ubi defecisset dies,
in usum nocturni luminis urerentur . . .
undo quamquam adversus sontes et novissima exempla meritos miseratio oriebatur
tamquam non utilitate publica sed in saevitiam unius absumerentur " (Ann. rv. 44).
Gentiles in the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons complain, fenji- nva