This first great persecution of the Christians under the authority of the Roman emperor, is sufficiently characteristic to describe the other persecutions which were intermittingly perpetrated upon the Christians through the two succeeding centuries. What seems to be the most incongruous circumstance connected with these persecutions is, that they occurred not only under such wretches as Nero and Domitian, but under such virtuous emperors as Trajan, Adrian, Marcus Aurelius and Diocletian. Intermittingly, then, through three troubled centuries, and under circumstances of the utmost cruelty, persecution raged against the Christians. As the highest authority on Roman history remarks: "If the empire had been afflicted by any recent calamity, by a plague, a famine, or an unsuccessful war; if the Tiber had, or the Nile had not risen above its banks; if the earth had shaken, or if the temperate order of the seasons had been interrupted, the superstitious pagans were convinced that the crimes and impurities of the Christians, who were spared by the excessive lenity of the government, had at length provoked the divine justice." [47] And however virtuous the emperors were, or however mild and equitable in character the governors of the provinces, it is certain that they did not hesitate to appease the rage of the people by sacrificing the obnoxious Christian victims. All this at a time, too, when religious tolerance and in large measure even religious freedom were enjoyed by those of all other religions within the empire, and in fact we may say that the persecution of the Christians was the only circumstance which broke in upon the religious concord of the world. From the apologies of the early church fathers, addressed to some of the emperors of the second and third centuries, we find them making the most pathetic complaints to the effect, "that the Christians who obeyed the dictates, and solicited the liberty of conscience, were alone, among all the subjects of the Roman empire, excluded from the common benefits of their auspicious government."