Tfhio - JScholarship - Johns Hopkins University

APOLOGETICVS 5, 6 21
up in Rome. But we even glory in being first dedicated to
destruction by such a monster. For whoever knows him can
understand that it could only have been something of supreme
excellence that could have called forth the condemnation of
Nero. Domitian too had tried the same experiment as Nero,
with a large share of Nero's cruelty, but inasmuch as he retained
something of humanity also, he was easily able to change his
course, even restoring those whom he had banished. Such have
always been our persecutors, unjust, impious and treacherous,
whom even ye yourselves have been wont to condemn and to
reinstate those who were condemned by them. But out of so
many emperors who reigned from that time to the present, men
versed in knowledge, human and divine, show us one who set
himself to destroy the Christians. We on the other hand can
show you a protector, if the letters of the honoured emperor
M. Aurehus be searched, in which he testifies that the famous
drought in Germany was put a stop to by the rain which fell
in answer to the prayers of the Christians who happened to be
in his army. Thus, although he did not openly abohsh punishment
incurred by such men, yet in another way he openly
neutraUzed it, adding also a condemnation, and indeed a more
shocking one, for their prosecutors. Of what sort then are
these laws, which are put into force against us by the impious,
the unjust, the base, the cruel, the foohsh, the mad, and by
them alone ? Laws which Trajan made less effective by forbidding
Christians to be sought out; to which no Hadrian,
although an investigator of all curiosities, no Vespasian,
although conqueror of the Jews, no Pius, no Verus ever set
his mark. Certainly the worst of men would be more readily
sentenced to death by all the best, as their enemies, than by
their own accomphces.
CHAP. VI. Now I should hke these scrupulous champions
and avengers of laws and ancestral institutions to answer with
regard to their own loyalty, respect and obedience towards the
decrees of their ancestors, whether they have abandoned none,
whether they have transgressed in none, whether they have
not abohshed what were the necessary and most appropriate
elements of their rule of life. What has become of those laws
which checked extravagance and ostentation? those which
ordered that not more than a hundred pence should be allowed
for a dinner, that not more than one fowl and that not specially
fattened should be served, which removed a patrician from the
senate, because he had ten pounds weight of wrought silver,
on the ground that this was a notable proof of ostentation,