Decius is looked upon as a hero by the _Scriptores Historiæ Augustæ_ and by Zosimus, a zealous partisan of paganism; but he is just as much hated by the writers of ecclesiastical history for his cruelty to the Christians, against whom indeed he was the first, after a long pause, to set on foot a fierce persecution. The motive for it, in all likelihood, was a sort of antagonism to the tendencies of his predecessor. What Dodwell has asserted is strictly true, that the accounts of the numbers of the victims are exaggerated; but the persecution of Decius was in right earnest, and it interrupted the peace which, with the exception of some little casualties, the Christian Church had long enjoyed. The Roman see remained vacant for a year and a half; and Decius is represented to have said, that he would rather allow an emperor to be chosen by his side than a bishop. This shows how much the Christians had already increased. Their number was great among the middle classes at Rome, Carthage, Alexandria, and above all, at Antioch: in the East, they were scattered; in the West, there were hardly any in the country, but they were in the towns, especially in the large cities. The greater part of Gaul knew nothing of this religion, except at Arles, Marseilles, and some other chief towns: the acts of the martyrs of Lyons are quite authentic. Just as little as in Gaul, does Christianity seem to have spread in Spain; in Africa, there was at an early period a numerous and zealous church; in Greece proper, there were few Christians; in the Ionian towns, on the other hand, there were many. STATE OF THINGS AT HOME. FINE ARTS. LITERATURE. I make a pause in the middle of the third century, to give a general view of some leading points. There is now a circumstance which begins from this time to be strikingly seen. Most of the sepulchral inscriptions which we have, are from the end of the first to the middle of the third century; and of these the great majority are to the memory of freedmen, there being about ten _libertini_ to one _ingenuus_. The fine marble tombs of the great families were most of them destroyed during the middle ages, and they are now very scarce: the stones were used for building at the time of the restoration of the city. As the names of free men were everywhere getting confused from the beginning of the third century, there is indeed hardly a tomb, after the first half of the third century, in which _libertini_ are to be met with. The importation of slaves must have stopped, and therefore the custom of having households of them must have immensely fallen off: the development of the system of colonies must have absorbed the greater part of them. Moreover, at this time, the difference between imperial and senatorial provinces is done away with. Severus is said to have taken the provinces from the senate, thereby paving the way for the arrangements made by Diocletian and Constantine.