Stoicism - College of Stoic Philosophers

2 28 STOICISM.paid to man ; they seemed at times to push theircourage to defiance in the hot wish to win the martyr'scrown. They were thought to be churlish andmorose, for they could not take a part in the merrymakingsof their neighbours, associated as these werewith the symbols and practices of a false religion.For themselves they had no image in their homesor chapels, and they were therefore branded asatheists by ignorant dislike. Wild stories spreadof all the horrors of their secret meetings how; theyjoined in sensual revelry, and shed the blood ofmurdered innocents, till the outraged gods markedtheir displeasure by some scourge of pestilence orflood or fire.The thunderclouds of popular frenzyhere and there in fierceburst outexplosions when the peoplesrose against the Christians in wild tumult, and hurriedthem with vengeful cries before the governor orjudge. There was little to be proved, indeed, againstthem but the membership in an illegal sect and theseeming bigotry with which they clung to their profession.The magistrates did not always credit thewild charges brought against them, nightmare shapesas they were of vulgar fancy, but still the Christiansociety, with its organized unity and widespreadmembers, with its notorious dislike to the institutionsof the age and its prophecies of speedy change, naturallyseemed to worldly eyes like a permanent menaceto the established order. When the barbarians wereon the move, and every man was needed to defendthe frontiers, the vital forces of society were weak-