CHAPTER XXXV.

We are called 'public enemies' because we refuse to join in your useless acts of worship and lewd festivities. The real traitors are always found amongst yourselves, whether of lower or higher rank.

ON these grounds the Christians, then, are public enemies, because they render to the emperors neither empty, nor false, nor ill-advised honours, and because as men of true religion they celebrate their solemn festivals rather with mental rejoicing than with wanton gaiety. A noble ceremony it is forsooth to drag out hearths and couches in public, to feast throughout the streets, to efface the city under the disguise of a tavern, to thicken the mud with wine, and to roam about in groups for the committal of outrages, insults, and illicit lusts ⁸⁷. Is the public rejoicing to be thus expressed by the public dishonour? Do those acts become the solemn festival days of your princes which befit not other days? Shall they who observe orderly quietness out of respect for Caesar desert it on Caesar's account, and shall loyalty grant a licence for immorality, shall religion be regarded as the occasion for indulgence? O how greatly do we deserve to be condemned! For do we not perform our prayers and rejoicings for the Caesars in purity and soberness and modesty? Do we not on a festal day refuse to either [104] overshadow our doors with laurels, or to violate the light of day with lamps? It is a note of respectability when a public festival demands it, to dress up your house in the guise of some new brothel!

But with respect to this religion of a second majesty, concerning which we Christians are judicially accused of a second sacrilege, in that we do not join in your celebrations of the Caesars' festivals, in a manner which neither propriety nor modesty nor shamefastness would allow, but which the opportunity of pleasure rather than any worthy reason has counselled, I wish to demonstrate your fidelity and truth; lest perchance in this particular also those who will not have us regarded as Romans, but only as enemies of the Roman princes, should be found to be worse than the Christians. You yourselves, O Quirites, the native populace of the seven hills, I judicially charge to say whether that Roman tongue of yours spares its own Caesar. There is the witness of the Tiber ⁸⁸, and of the school of the wild beasts ⁸⁹. If nature had only covered human breasts with some mirror-like substance that would shew through, whose heart would not be found to be engraven with the picture of a constant succession of Caesars presiding [105] over the distribution of largesses at their accession? aye, even at the very hour in which they shout

'May Jupiter increase thy years from ours ⁹⁰ !'

These words a Christian knows no more how to utter than how to wish for a new Caesar.

'But these are the vulgar,' you say. Even so, they are yet Romans; nor are there any greater clamourers for the punishment of the Christians than the vulgar. Of course the other orders in proportion to their rank are most truly loyal: nothing hostile is ever breathed from the senate itself, from the knighthood, from the camp, from the very palace! whence come your Cassii ⁹¹ and Nigri and Albini ⁹²? Whence come those who attack a Caesar between two laurels ⁹³? whence those who practice the athletic art by throttling a Caesar ⁹⁴? Whence come those who burst into a palace [106] armed ⁹⁵, bolder than all Sigerii or Parthenii ⁹⁶? From amongst Romans, unless I am mistaken; that is, not from the Christians. And yet indeed all these traitors, up to the very moment of their disloyalty bursting forth, were both performing sacred rites for the emperor's welfare, and were swearing by his genius,— one thing out of doors, another within,—and were certainly giving the name of public enemies to the Christians! Take the case, too, of those who are now daily being detected as having lent their aid or sanction to criminal factions, the gleaning that remains after the vintage of traitors ⁹⁷,—how they decked out their doors with freshest and leafiest laurels! how they lighted up their porches with tallest and brightest lamps! how they apportioned the forum amongst themselves with most elegant and most splendid couches!—and all this, not in order to celebrate the public festivities, but to utter even at such a time their private wishes, and to inaugurate the model and image of their own hope at the festival of another, by mentally substituting the name of a different prince! The same acts of homage those also perform who consult the astrologers and soothsayers and augurs and magicians about the life of Caesar,—arts which, since they were communicated [107] by fallen angels and are forbidden by God, the Christians do not resort to even about their own business. For who has need of investigating the welfare of the emperor but he who is meditating or wishing something adverse to it, or is hoping for and expecting something after his death? For consultations are not made with the same intent about one's loved ones as about one's rulers. The solicitude inspired by kinship is an anxiety of quite a different nature to that which servitude calls forth.