‘He, Nero, inflicted the most exquisite tortures on those men who under the vulgar appellation of Christians were already branded with deserved infamy.... They died in torments, and their torments were embittered by insult and derision. Some were nailed on crosses; others sewn up in the skins of wild beasts and exposed to the fury of dogs; others again, smeared over with combustible materials, were used as torches to illuminate the darkness of the night. The gardens of Nero were destined for this melancholy spectacle, which was accompanied with a horse race and honoured with the presence of the Emperor.’ Tacitus was himself a pagan and hostile to the Christians, yet he admits that this cruelty aroused sympathy. Nevertheless the persecutions continued under different emperors, some of them, unlike Nero, wise rulers and good men. ‘These people’, wrote the Spanish Emperor Trajan (98-117), referring to the Christians, ‘should not be searched for, but if they are informed against and convicted they should be punished.’ Marcus Aurelius (161-180) declared that those who acknowledged that they were Christians should be beaten to death; and during his reign men and women were tortured and killed on account of their faith in every part of the Empire. The test required by the magistrates was nearly always the same, that the accused must offer wine and incense before the statue of the Emperor and revile the name of Christ. The motive that inspired these later emperors was not Nero’s innate love of cruelty or desire of finding a scapegoat, but genuine fear of a sect that grew steadily in numbers and wealth, and that threatened to interfere with the ordinary worship of the temples, so bound up with the national life. In the reign of Trajan the Governor of Bithynia wrote to the Emperor complaining that on account of the spread of Christian teaching little money was now spent in buying sacrificial beasts. ‘Nor’, he added, ‘are cities alone permeated by the contagion of this superstition, but villages and country parts as well.’ Emperors and magistrates were at first confident that, if only they were severe enough in their punishments, the new religion could be crushed out of existence. Instead it was the imperial government that collapsed while Christianity conquered Europe. Very early in the history of Christianity the Apostles had found it necessary to introduce some form of government into the Church; and later, as the faith spread from country to country, there arose in each province men who from their goodness, influence, or learning, were chosen by their fellow Christians to control the religious affairs of the neighbourhood. These were called ‘Episcopi’, or bishops, from the Latin word _Episcopus_, ‘an overseer’. Tradition claims that Peter was the first bishop of the Church in Rome, and that during the reign of Nero he was crucified for loyalty to the Christ he had formerly denied.