Even for a prince that, perhaps, was excessive. Nero may have felt that he had gone too far. An emperor was omnipotent, he was not inviolable. Tiberius was suffocated, Caligula was stabbed, Claud was poisoned. Nero, it may be, in feeling that he had gone too far, felt also that he needed a scapegoat. Christian pyromania suggested itself. But probably it suggested itself first to the Jews, who, Renan has intimated, denounced the Christians accordingly. Such may have been the case. In any event, then it was that Christianity received its baptism of blood. All antiquity was cruel, but, barring perhaps the immense Asiatic butcheries, Nero contrived then to surpass anything that had been done. Bloated and hideous, his hair done up in a chignon, a concave emerald for monocle, in the crowded arena he assisted at the rape of Christian girls. Their lovers, their brothers and fathers were either eaten alive by beasts or, that night, dressed in tunics that had been soaked in oil, were fastened to posts and set on fire, in order that, as human torches, they might illuminate palace gardens, through which, costumed as a jockey, Nero raced. The spectacle in the amphitheatre, which fifty thousand people beheld; the succeeding festival at which all Rome assembled, were two acts in the birthday of a faith. Then, to the cradle, presently, Wise Men came with gifts--the gold, the frankincense, the myrrh, of creeds anterior though less divine. VIII THE NEC PLUS ULTRA It was after fastidious rites, the heart entirely devout and on his knees, that Angelico di Fiesole drew a picture of the Christ. The attitude is emulative. It is with brushes dipped in holy water that Jesus should be displayed, though more reverent still is the absence of any delineation. Reverence of that high character history formerly observed. There is no mention of the Saviour in the chronicles of those who were blessed in being his contemporaries. One indiscreet remark of Josephus has been recognized as the interpolation of a later hand, well-intentioned perhaps, but misguided. Jesus glows in the Gospels. Yet they that awaited the day when, in a great aurora borealis, the Son of man should appear, had passed from earth before one of the evangels was written. It was a hundred years later before the texts that comprise the New Testament were complete. It was nearly two hundred before they were definitive. In the interim many gospels appeared. Attributed indifferently to each of the Twelve, one was ascribed to Judas. There was a Gospel to the Hebrews, a Gospel to the Egyptians. There were evangels of Childhood, of Perfection and of Mary.