We will now trace briefly the history of those persecutions which glutted the Catacombs with victims, and at times drove the church for sanctuary to their deepest recesses. We have seen that Christianity grew up under the protection accorded to Judaism as one of the tolerated religions of Rome. But this toleration did not long continue. In Rome as well as elsewhere the new creed was doomed to a baptism of blood. The causes of this persecution are not far to seek. The Christian doctrine spread rapidly, and early excited the jealousy of the Roman authorities by its numerous converts from the national faith, many of whom were of exalted rank. These carefully refrained from the idolatrous adulation by which the servile mob were wont to 71 express their loyalty to the imperial monster who aspired to be a god. Hence they were accused of disaffection, of treason.[74] They were the enemies of Cæsar, and of the Roman people.[75] They were supposed to exert a malign influence on the course of nature. If it did not rain the Christians were to blame.[76] “If the Tiber overflows its banks,” says Tertullian, “or the Nile does not; if there be drought or earthquakes, famine or pestilence, the cry is raised, ‘_The Christians to the lions!_’”[77] If the pecking of the sacred chickens or the entrails of the sacrificial victims gave unfavourable omens, it was attributed to the counter spell of “the atheists.” At Rome, as well as at Ephesus and Philippi, the selfish fears of the shrine and image makers, whose “craft was in danger,” and the hostility of the priests and dependents on the idol-worship, inspired or intensified the opposition to Christianity, as did also the jealousy of the Jews, who regarded with especial hostility the believers in the lowly Nazarene, whom their fathers with wicked hands had crucified and slain.[78] The terrible conflagration which destroyed the greater part of the city during the reign of Nero was made the excuse for the first outburst of persecution against the Christian community. By public rumour this deed was attributed to Nero himself. “To put an end to 72 to this report,” says Tacitus, “he laid the guilt, and inflicted the most cruel punishment, upon these men, who, already branded with infamy, were called by the vulgar, Christians.... Their sufferings at their executions,” he adds, “were aggravated by insult and mockery; for some were sewn up in the skins of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs; some were crucified, and some, wrapped in garments of pitch, were burned as torches to illumine the night.”[79] During this persecution St. Paul fell a victim, A. D. 64. He was beheaded “without the gate,” on the Ostian Way, and weeping friends took up his bleeding corpse and laid it, according to tradition, in one of the most ancient crypts of an adjoining Catacomb, where Eusebius asserts that his tomb could be seen in his day.[80]