We can prove by the clearest evidence that Christian persecutions sprang chiefly from the causes I have alleged. The causes of Pagan persecutions, though different, are equally manifest, and I shall proceed shortly to indicate them. They were partly political and partly religious. The Governments in most of the ancient States, in the earlier stages of their existence, undertook the complete education of the people; professed to control and regulate all the details of their social life, even to the dresses they wore, or the dishes that were served upon their tables; and, in a word, to mould their whole lives and characters into a uniform type. Hence, all organisations and corporations not connected with the State, and especially all that emanated from foreign countries, were looked upon with distrust or antipathy. But this antipathy was greatly strengthened by a religious consideration. No belief was more deeply rooted in the ancient mind than that good or bad fortune sprang from the intervention of spiritual beings, and that to neglect the sacred rites was to bring down calamity upon the city. In the diminutive Greek States, where the function of the Government was immensely enlarged, a strong intolerance existed, which extended for some time not merely to practices, but to writings and discourses. The well-known persecutions of Anaxagoras, Theodorus, Diagoras, Stilpo, and Socrates; the laws of Plato, which were as opposed to religious as to domestic freedom; and the existence in Athens of an inquisitorial tribunal,(747) sufficiently attested it. But long before the final ruin of Greece, speculative liberty had been fully attained. The Epicurean and the Sceptical schools developed unmolested, and even in the days of Socrates, Aristophanes was able to ridicule the gods upon the stage. In the earlier days of Rome religion was looked upon as a function of the State; its chief object was to make the gods auspicious to the national policy,(748) and its principal ceremonies were performed at the direct command of the Senate. The national theory on religious matters was that the best religion is always that of a man’s own country. At the same time, the widest tolerance was granted to the religions of conquered nations. The temples of every god were respected by the Roman army. Before besieging a city, the Romans were accustomed to supplicate the presiding deities of that city. With the single exception of the Druids, whose human sacrifices it was thought a matter of humanity to suppress,(749) and whose fierce rebellions it was thought necessary to crush, the teachers of all national religions continued unmolested by the conqueror.