And “by the power of this other cross, raised in Rome, Babylon became that day the Holy City, while Zion must forever rest under malediction for having crucified her Saviour. Rome may reject the Man-God as she will, she may shed His blood in that of His martyrs, but no crime of hers can avail against the tremendous fact accomplished in this hour; the cross of Peter has transferred to her all the rights in the Cross of Jesus,—it is she who is now Jerusalem.” ... “This tribute of death, Levi knew it not; this dower of blood, Jehovah demanded it not of Aaron; men die not for a slave—and the Synagogue was not the Spouse.”[8] The Vatican crypt which received the body of St. Peter immediately after his martyrdom, was excavated under a temple of Apollo, the deity supposed to preside over public games, near the old circus of Nero. By the year 89 or 90 A.D., when St. Peter’s fourth successor, St. Anacletus, became Pontiff, during the reign of the Emperor Domitian, one is led to suppose that this temple was more or less forsaken as a place of pagan worship, since Anacletus was able to “build,” as the phrase runs, a tiny oratory, just large enough for two or three persons to kneel in, around the tomb of St. Peter. Here again, apparent accident served the ultimate designs of Providence in regard to this fore-hallowed site. The Christians desired greatly to deposit the Apostle’s remains in the deep and secret excavations, already crowded with the bodies of martyrs, near the fourth milestone on the Appian Way, the vaults which had more than once afforded refuge to the persecuted brethren and to the Apostle himself. But with the persecution that was raging at the moment of his death, it would have been impossible to transport the body without attracting notice, so the nearest spot was chosen, regardless of the fact that it was in the close neighbourhood of a number of pagan tombs. As we shall see later, this humble resting-place was threatened with desecration in its turn, and was emptied of its treasure for many years in favour of the more distant cemetery. The martyrdom of St. Peter attracted little notice except from the poor Christians who gathered round his hard deathbed, to weep and pray and receive his last blessing; that of St. Paul, the Roman citizen, was a much more public and popular affair. The intrepid band of disciples who followed him to the chosen spot on the Ostian Way, not far from the other (but divided by the slopes of the Janiculum), risked death more certainly in doing so, and some of them doubtless paid its penalty.