For more than sixty years--that is, from the day that Nero charged the then comparatively little band of Roman Christians with being the authors of the great fire which reduced so large a portion of Rome to ashes--had the sword of persecution hung over the Christian communities. From that day, the follower of Jesus was an outlaw in the great Empire. His home, his life, were exposed to a perpetual danger; ever and anon a period of bitter persecution set in, and lives were sacrificed and homes were wrecked to gratify some wild and senseless popular clamour, or even as the result of some private and often malicious information. There was no security any more for a member of the proscribed sect. It is true that a great and wise Emperor like Trajan reluctantly allowed the law as it stood to be carried out, but he made no effort to change it or to mitigate its stern penalties. Hadrian, certainly in his early and middle life, was like his predecessor generally averse to harrying the quiet sect, and his well-known rescript even threatened the severest penalties to the false informer who denounced a Christian; but in spite of these just efforts the Christian lived in a state of perpetual unrest,--a martyr’s death was ever before the eyes of one who elected to be a follower of Jesus. This position of the Christians in the Roman Empire continued from A.D. 64-5 until the later days of Hadrian, A.D. 135-8. But after the close of the great Jewish war, A.D. 135, as we have said, things grew even graver for the Christians. They now stood out conspicuous as an irreconcilable sect, quite different from the Jews, who after the great war had quietly submitted to Roman law and order. II HADRIAN’S POLICY TOWARDS CHRISTIANITY IN HIS CLOSING YEARS In the last years of Hadrian and during the reigns of Pius and Marcus must be dated not a few of the accounts of early martyrs. The “Acts” which contain these recitals, it is true, are for the most part of doubtful authority.[33] They contain details which are clearly not historical, and critical investigation generally pronounces them untrustworthy. But the studies of later years, especially in the lore of the catacombs, show us that even for the more improbable and precarious records, evidently edited and enlarged at a date considerably later than the events which they purport to chronicle, there is evidently a basis of truth; and it is clear that the men and women whose sufferings and brave deaths for the faith are told in the “Acts,” for the most part were historical persons.