That Christianity made its headway unmolested must not be supposed. While at first the tendency of educated Romans and of the government was to ignore or tolerate it, its challenge was so direct and provocative that this attitude could not long continue. Under the Emperor Claudius (41-54 A.D.) "all the Jews who were continually making disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus" were unsuccessfully ordered banished from Rome. In the reign of the Emperor Nero, in 64 A.D., many horrible tortures were inflicted on this as yet small sect. It was not, however, till later, when the continued refusal of the Christians to offer sacrifices to the Emperor brought them under the law as disloyal (R. 30 a) subjects, that they began to be much punished for their faith (R. 31 a-b). The times were bad and were going from bad to worse, and the feelings of many were that the adverse conditions in the Empire--war, famine, floods, pestilence, and barbarian inroads--were due to the neglect of the old state religion and to the tolerance extended the vast organized defiance of the law by the Christians. In the first century they had been largely ignored. In the second, in some places, they were punished. In the third century, impelled by the calamities of the State and the urging of those who would restore the national religion to its earlier position, the Emperors were gradually driven to a series of heavy persecutions of the sect (R. 30 a). But it had now become too late. The blood of the martyrs proved to be the seed of the Church (R. 35). The last great persecution under the Emperor Diocletian, in 303 (R. 33), ended in virtual failure. In 311 the Emperor Galerius placed Christianity on a plane of equality with other forms of worship (R. 36). In 313 Constantine made it in part the official religion of the State [12] and ordered freedom of worship for all. He and succeeding Emperors gradually extended to the Christian clergy a long list of important privileges (R. 38) and exemptions, [13] analogous to those formerly enjoyed by the teachers of rhetoric under the Empire (R. 26), and likewise began the policy, so liberally followed later, of endowing the Church. In 391 the Emperor Theodosius forbade all pagan worship, thus making the victory of Christianity complete. In less than four centuries from the birth of its founder the Christian faith had won control of the great Empire in which it originated. In 529 the Emperor Justinian ordered the closing of all pagan schools, and the University of Athens, which had remained the center of pagan thought after the success of Christianity, closed its doors. The victory was now complete.