At once with the accession of Marcus Aurelius a temper of greater severity to Christians is shown. The sort of toleration expressed in the rescript of Pius to the province of Asia is withdrawn. No new law about them is enacted, for none is needed, but the old law is let loose. The almost sublime clemency of Marcus towards his revolted general Cassius, his reign of nineteen years unstained with senatorial blood, and the campaigns prolonged from year to year of one who loved his philosophic studies above all things, and yet at the call of imperial duty gave up night and day to the rudest toils of a weary conflict with barbarous tribes on the frontier, have won for him immortal honour: his regard for his subjects in general has sometimes given him in Christian estimation the place of predilection among all princes ancient and modern.(256) It is well, then, to consider his bearing towards Christians. Now among his teachers was that Junius Rusticus, grandson of the man who perished for the sake of liberty in Domitian’s time, and in his day no doubt a perfect specimen of the Roman gentleman and noble, a blending of all that was best in Cicero, Lælius, and Cato, whom Marcus made Prefect of Rome, and to whom when bearing that office he addressed a rescript containing the words, “to Junius Rusticus, Prefect of the city, our friend.” And what this friend of Marcus thought on the most important subjects we may judge from the sentiments of another friend and fellow-teacher of the emperor, Maximus of Tyre, who has left written, “how God rules a mighty and stable kingdom having for its limits not river or lake or shore or ocean, but the heaven above and the earth beneath, in which He, impassive as law, bestows on those who obey him the security of which He is the fountain: and the gods his children need not images any more than good men statues. But just as our vocal speech requires not in itself any particular characters, yet human weakness has invented the alphabetical signs whereby to give expression to its remembrance, so the nature of the gods needs not images, but man, removed from them as far as heaven from earth, has devised these signs, by which to give them names. There may be those strong enough to do without these helps, but they are rare, and as schoolmasters guide their scholars to write by first pencilling letters for them, so legislators have invented these images as signs of the divine honour, and helps to human memory. But God is the father and framer of all things, older than heaven, superior to time and all fleeting nature, legislator ineffable, unexpressed by voice, unseen by eye; and we who cannot grasp his essence rest upon words and names, and forms of gold, ivory, and silver, in our longing to conceive Him, giving to His nature what is fair among ourselves. But fix Him only in the mind; I care not whether the Greek is kindled into remembrance of Him by the art of Phidias, or the Egyptian by