Freethought & Rationalism Archive

spin · 04-02-2011, 07:23 AM

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

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Originally Posted by spin

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

I'll ask again: If Tacitus was writing in his "normal" style, what would you have expected him to have written here?

I've already functionally answered this question. Given his demonstrated style I can't see him having written it at all. Not at all. He would merely have alluded to their executions.

If you say so. So the burden is on me now?

Perhaps I didn't cite an analysis of Tacitus's style on the issue. Oh, that's right, I did.

You certainly won't find anything similar to the dogs tearing people or people being burnt alive.

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

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Originally Posted by spin

You seem to want a typical martyrdom story inserted in a pagan source.

I do, if you are assuming a Christian interpolator. If he is a crafty one, then that's fine.

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Originally Posted by spin

It's a matter of discourse necessity. He opened the gardens up for the homeless.... He gave the gardens over for a spectacle of burning bodies.... But the homeless people were still there/had been moved.

What we have is the implication that the writer of the christian material had forgotten that he'd already indicated that the gardens were occupied.

Or perhaps the interpolator thought there was still room in the gardens?

The writer obviously didn't think about the matter.

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Or that Nero might have wanted to punish the evil-doers in front of those suffering from the fire?

By lighting more fires after dark.

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Or that it happened at a point after people had moved from the gardens?

Back to creating really long periods in which Nero would leave himself accused of being responsible for the fire. Perhaps he waited a few years. Oh, that's right, he was dead in a few years. We are firmly in 64. Perhaps, you'd like to imagine superfast building of new living quarters.

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

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Originally Posted by spin

What would be the point of trying to pin the blame on someone long after the event? How long would the emperor have waited while rumors circulated against him??

What are the correct answers, spin?

As I said, raising doubts does not constitute evidence. Anyway, is Nero going to say "The fire happened years ago, no point being upset that people are complaining I ordered it"?

Answer 1. long after the event would obviously be out of the question.

Answer 2. he has already attempted many things, so he didn't wait at all.

Tacitus's report of Nero's actions shows that Nero was upset that people were complaining he'd ordered it.

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

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Originally Posted by spin

Is it that you don't get why Nero built colonnades, offered rewards, or chose the Ostian marshes for rubbish?

It's a clean-up after the fire. Tacitus mentions this before the passage about the Christians.

To be precise, he mentions it before his conclusion of Nero's failure. The passage about christians came later.

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

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Originally Posted by spin

Sorry, but did one of us miss the fact that "all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order."

All human efforts? Well, not all human efforts... just most of them, because I have another one up my sleeve. And I didn't mean "all" at all.

Did killing Christians banish the sinister belief that Nero set the fire? Is that what you are claiming? Because I don't see it.

No, killing christians obfuscates Tacitus's discourse which ended in the persistence of the sinister belief that Nero set the fire. The sinister belief is forgotten about because of the christian passage. The juicy Suetoniesque people torn at by dogs or burnt alive kill all the subtlety of Tacitus's efforts.

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

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Originally Posted by spin

This sentence is the concluding summary of Nero's failure regarding the fire. Nothing worked to get rid of the belief that the fire was started by an order. Whoosh, let's go off on a tangent that will make my readers forget the fact that I'm pinning the fire on Nero and tell everyone about killing some bunch of religionists.

I don't think you are reading the text. Tacitus hasn't gone on a tangent. He writes that not only did people think Nero did it, but to deflect attention Nero pinned the blame on a group that everyone hated.

After the summary of Nero's failure ("all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the conflagration was the result of an order"), we are whisked away onto deaths of christians by gruesome means, oops another human effort.

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

But in an ironic twist, people felt compassion for them. As Tacitus writes: "even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion;

Such an ironic twist that the reader is now thinking of punishments of christians and not Nero's cupability for the fire.

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty". This isn't a tangent, it is high-lighting Nero's cruelty.

Bingo! We are talking about the fire, not Nero's cruelty. All you are doing is showing how the subject has been changed by sleight of hand, which is the problem.

In fact, given the scale of such cruelty, why did Tacitus waste his time basing his attack on Nero on pure innuendo? He could have cut back his efforts on the fire details trying to pin it on Nero, and played up the obvious horrendous cruelty. However, it's obvious that Tacitus had nothing so succulent as crispy crackly christians and had to make do with innuendo.

Roger Pearse · 04-02-2011, 09:07 AM

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Originally Posted by Toto

I'm tired of bringing this up, but has anyone actually found a source to confirm that mainstream authorities actually have considered the possibility that this passage is an interpolation and rejected it? ...

So far we have Van Voorst, not a Tacitus expert, who quotes Norma Miller without any context to the effect that the passage must be valid, but then relegates about 6 scholars who think it was interpolated to footnotes ...

I am not persuaded about the state of scholarly opinion.

I think we can be fairly sure what scholarly opinion is, although my own view is that I'd prefer to know. My own search of JSTOR suggested that the authenticity of the passage is taken for granted pretty much (although I don't regard that search as at all comprehensive or conclusive). If so, it says that the allegation of interpolation has failed to gain any traction at all.

Obviously people don't go through Tacitus (or any other author), verse by verse, proving that it is not an interpolation. It's presumed not, unless there are good reasons for it.

But I don't think JSTOR really includes much French, German or Italian scholarship, and I'd want their views. In Classics and Patristics we in the English-speaking world are somewhat second-rate as a rule. Frankly, we should find out.

What I would tend to do, as a first step, is to get those six references and see who they quote as the opposing party. Unfortunately real life will prevent me doing so any time soon, but there must be people with better access to research libraries than me.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

aa5874 · 04-02-2011, 09:41 AM

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Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

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Originally Posted by Toto

I'm tired of bringing this up, but has anyone actually found a source to confirm that mainstream authorities actually have considered the possibility that this passage is an interpolation and rejected it? ...

So far we have Van Voorst, not a Tacitus expert, who quotes Norma Miller without any context to the effect that the passage must be valid, but then relegates about 6 scholars who think it was interpolated to footnotes ...

I am not persuaded about the state of scholarly opinion.

I think we can be fairly sure what scholarly opinion is, although my own view is that I'd prefer to know. My own search of JSTOR suggested that the authenticity of the passage is taken for granted pretty much (although I don't regard that search as at all comprehensive or conclusive). If so, it says that the allegation of interpolation has failed to gain any traction at all....

All analyses of the word "CHRISTIANOS" before the use of ULTRA-VIOLET light in 2008 are not really VALID.

It can NOW be proven without REASONABLE doubt that "CHRESTIANOS" was the ORIGINAL word.

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.........In 2008, Dr. Ida Giovanna Rao, the new head of the Laurentian Library's manuscript office, repeated Lodi's study, and concluded that it is likely that the 'i' is a correction of some earlier character (like an e), the change being made an extremely subtle one.

Later the same year, it was discovered that under ultraviolet light, an 'e' is clearly visible in the space, meaning that the passage must originally have referred to chrestianos, a Latinized Greek word which could be interpreted as the good, after the Greek word χρηστός (chrestos), meaning 'good, useful'.[10]....

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Christ

SCIENTIFIC TECHNIQUES, the use of ULTRA-VIOLET LIGHT, have RESOLVED that the earliest surviving texts of "ANNALS" was MANIPULATED.

Toto · 04-02-2011, 11:43 AM

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Originally Posted by aa5874

...
SCIENTIFIC TECHNIQUES, the use of ULTRA-VIOLET LIGHT, have RESOLVED that the earliest surviving texts of "ANNALS" was MANIPULATED.

The earliest surviving texts are quite late, and possibly all are derived from one manuscript from the 9th century.

Toto · 04-02-2011, 11:53 AM

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Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

...
I think we can be fairly sure what scholarly opinion is, although my own view is that I'd prefer to know. My own search of JSTOR suggested that the authenticity of the passage is taken for granted pretty much (although I don't regard that search as at all comprehensive or conclusive). If so, it says that the allegation of interpolation has failed to gain any traction at all. . . .

If scholarly opinion is to mean anything, it has to be based on some expertise beyond what an interested amateur can gather.

spin has been quoting Martin to the effect that the passage is too gory to be typical of Tacitus. But Martin endorsed the validity of the Christian passage, although he admits that it is "riddled with vexatious problems."

Tacitus and the Writing of History (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Ronald H. Martin

Extensively previewed on Google books
http://books.google.com/books?id=jYlNjWx1gw8C

p.182-3

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One important feature of Tacitus' account of the Great Fire is found in no other ancient author. He asserts that Nero, conscious that he had so far failed to allay the suspicion that he himself was responsible for the fire, sought to put the blame on Christians, who were crucified, torn to bits, or set alight as a public spectacle. That some Christians were executed in Rome during Nero's reign is not in doubt; Suetonius (16.2) indeed seems to commend it as a salutary measure designed to preserve law and order. The surprising thing is that no early Christian writer [28] used this example to blacken Nero's character as a persecutor of the faith. Yet Tacitus' account (15.44.2-5) is so circumstantial that its general veracity must be accepted, as must the explicit connection he makes with the fire; ergo abolendo rumori . . . ('accordingly, to scotch the rumour . . .') he executed Christians as scapegoats.

The whole of this passage, which is the earliest pagan testimony to the execution of Christ (Christus), the founder of the sect of Christiani, by the procurator Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius, is riddled with vexatious problems. These, however, do not affect an understanding of Tacitus' attitude to the whole affair. As an ex-consul and former governor he shared the belief of his contemporary Pliny the Younger that Christianity was a subversive foreign belief not deserving of that general tolerance that Rome showed other religions . . .

This is very unsatisfactory - a passage riddled with vexatious problems that nevertheless must be accepted because it is "so circumstantial?"

He comments on the manuscript tradition at p 236ff

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...it is possible -- thought no more than a hypothesis -- that all that survives of Tacitus goes back to a copy or copies made in Fulda in the ninth century.

This would imply that a lack of manuscript variations is not especially relevant.

Toto · 04-02-2011, 01:04 PM

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Originally Posted by spin

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Originally Posted by Frank

What's your other one? That Tacitus never included the gory details? What bullshit. For anyone who's curious, here's a link to the Annals:

http://classics.mit.edu/Tacitus/annals.html

Pretty easy, start by reading the first one (put the word "blood" in your browsers search box, and see what you get).

OK, let's see what you have found. How many instances are reported of people being burnt alive? of people being torn by dogs? You know the answer: just one.

These are the closest I can find:

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Away they hurried hither and thither, altered men, and dragged the chief mutineers in chains to Caius Caetronius commander of the first legion, who tried and punished them one by one in the following fashion. In front of the throng stood the legions with drawn swords. Each accused man was on a raised platform and was pointed out by a tribune. If they shouted out that he was guilty, he was thrown headlong and cut to pieces. The soldiers gloated over the bloodshed as though it gave them absolution. Nor did Caesar check them, seeing that without any order from himself the same men were responsible for all the cruelty and all the odium of the deed.

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Germanicus ... sent a despatch to Caecina, which said that he was on the way with a strong force, and that, unless they forestalled his arrival by the execution of the guilty, he would resort to an indiscriminate massacre. ...

Upon this, they sounded those whom they thought best for their purpose, and when they saw that a majority of their legions remained loyal, at the commander's suggestion they fixed a time for falling with the sword on all the vilest and foremost of the mutineers. Then, at a mutually given signal, they rushed into the tents, and butchered the unsuspecting men, none but those in the secret knowing what was the beginning or what was to be the end of the slaughter.

The scene was a contrast to all civil wars which have ever occurred. It was not in battle, it was not from opposing camps, it was from those same dwellings where day saw them at their common meals, night resting from labour, that they divided themselves into two factions, and showered on each other their missiles. Uproar, wounds, bloodshed, were everywhere visible; the cause was a mystery. All else was at the disposal of chance. Even some loyal men were slain, for, on its being once understood who were the objects of fury, some of the worst mutineers too had seized on weapons. Neither commander nor tribune was present to control them; the men were allowed license and vengeance to their heart's content. Soon afterwards Germanicus entered the camp, and exclaiming with a flood of tears, that this was destruction rather than remedy, ordered the bodies to be burnt.

Given the nature of the scene, it does seem lacking in gory details.

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Drusus presided over a show of gladiators which he gave in his own name and in that of his brother Germanicus, for he gloated intensely over bloodshed, however cheap its victims. This was alarming to the populace, and his father had, it was said, rebuked him.

That's just Book I.

DCHindley · 04-02-2011, 01:31 PM

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

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Originally Posted by hjalti

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There is nothing about Christians dying for their faith there...

So you think that Tacitus is telling us that what the Christians confessed to was starting the fire, and not their faith?

Anything is possible, including that this is an interpolation. But there is nothing that makes it read like an interpolation. There is no mention of Christians dying for their faith, which you would expect in a martyrdom account. Here is what Tacitus said:

Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty [of setting the fire]; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.

If the author wanted to make this about Christians dying bravery, and still leave the sense of the account largely unchanged, it would have been easy. Could it be implying martyrdom? Sure. Assuming a crafty enough interpolator, then anything is possible.

Does your bracketed clarification accurately reflect what Tacitus says? Other translations paraphrase it to seem as though they confessed to being Christians, not of setting the fire, such that Tacitus muses they were convicted "not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind".

Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.

igitur [therefore] primum [firstly] correpti [he arrested/brought to trial] qui [who] fatebantur [acknowledge], deinde [then] indicio [informed] eorum [they] multitudo [a multitude] ingens [vast], haud [not so much] proinde [accordingly] in [to] crimine [charge] incendii [of fire/arson] quam [rather] odio [of hatred] humani [to human] generis [race] convicti [to convict] sunt [they are].

Both the Latin and English above are from Perseus.org. On the basis of this admittedly crib translation what was really said was something like:

Accordingly, first he [Nero] arrested for trial those who admitted it [probably to being a Christian, as Nero earlier is said to blame the fire on the Christians], then (they) informed on a great multitude, so that they are convicted not so much of the crime of arson as of hatred of the human race.

This "hatred of mankind" must refer back to something he previously said about them, and that is likely to be "Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators [sic prefects] Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome". The extreme penalty is generally reserved for sedition, or crimes against the state itself.

But all we really know is that followers of this "Christus" had a bad enough reputation, possibly due to the extreme penalty, usually reserved for sedition against the state, that had been given to their founder. If as you suspect, a period elapsed after the fire as Nero rebuilt Rome in a safer and more appealing manner, before the prosecution of christians occurred, what might have happened in the meanwhile that made Christians an easy target for blame shifting? Could it be as simple as becoming aware of something like the following pericope from Revelation?

RSV Revelation 18:1 After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority; and the earth was made bright with his splendor. 2 And he called out with a mighty voice, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! It has become a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit, a haunt of every foul and hateful bird; 3 for all nations have drunk the wine of her impure passion, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich with the wealth of her wantonness."

4 Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, "Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; 5 for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. 6 Render to her as she herself has rendered, and repay her double for her deeds; mix a double draught for her in the cup she mixed. 7 As she glorified herself and played the wanton, so give her a like measure of torment and mourning. Since in her heart she says, `A queen I sit, I am no widow, mourning I shall never see,' 8 so shall her plagues come in a single day, pestilence and mourning and famine, and she shall be burned with fire; for mighty is the Lord God who judges her."

9 And the kings of the earth, who committed fornication and were wanton with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning; 10 they will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say,
"Alas! alas! thou great city, thou mighty city, Babylon! In one hour has thy judgment come."
11 And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo any more, 12 cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet, all kinds of scented wood, all articles of ivory, all articles of costly wood, bronze, iron and marble, 13 cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and slaves, that is, human souls.
14 "The fruit for which thy soul longed has gone from thee, and all thy dainties and thy splendor are lost to thee, never to be found again!"
15 The merchants of these wares, who gained wealth from her, will stand far off, in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud,
16 "Alas, alas, for the great city that was clothed in fine linen, in purple and scarlet, bedecked with gold, with jewels, and with pearls! 17 In one hour all this wealth has been laid waste."
And all shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off 18 and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning, "What city was like the great city?" 19 And they threw dust on their heads, as they wept and mourned, crying out,
"Alas, alas, for the great city where all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth! In one hour she has been laid waste. 20 Rejoice over her, O heaven, O saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her!"
21 Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, "So shall Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence, and shall be found no more; 22 and the sound of harpers and minstrels, of flute players and trumpeters, shall be heard in thee no more; and a craftsman of any craft shall be found in thee no more; and the sound of the millstone shall be heard in thee no more; 23 and the light of a lamp shall shine in thee no more; and the voice of bridegroom and bride shall be heard in thee no more.

If R H Charles was wrong about this section belonging to a source written in the time of Vespasian, but rather Nero, Then there it would be, proof positive that Christians hated the Great City and the culture of money, luxury and power it represented (i.e. the way of mankind) and wanted to see her destroyed by fire.

DCH

Frank · 04-02-2011, 02:09 PM

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Originally Posted by spin

That is a major problem. Tacitus isn't linear with his time here. You want to add up the time to say when the conclusion was made. Wrong....

Prove it? His end remark (all the lavished gifts of the emperor) makes it quite obvious that he's referring to the aforementioned.

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Same problem as Gak: the concluding summary says that everything Nero tried failed to shake the belief... hey, wait, not everything.

(The reader has to deal with Tacitus's persistent insinuation that he was guilty.)

Why is the fact Tacitus is trying to lay blame at the feet of Nero very important in the context of this topic? I don't think anyone here is unaware of the fact that Tacitus is biased against Nero.

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I can understand your confusion. You haven't understood what Tacitus was doing with the passage. You don't get how Tacitus was putting the full blame on Nero by pure imputation and no evidence: at the beginning he starts with imputation, "whether accidental or treacherously contrived by the emperor, is uncertain". Tacitus hasn't accused Nero of starting the fire, though he does go on to accuse him of being tardy in arrival and being ineffective at all stops. And of course nothing he could do could alleviate the belief that he had started the fire.

Right, which is the main problem scholars usually note with this writing. Tacitus seems to have an obvious bias against Nero (but so what .... how is this important in THIS CONTEXT)?

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http://classics.mit.edu/Tacitus/annals.html

Pretty easy, start by reading the first one (put the word "blood" in your browsers search box, and see what you get).
OK, let's see what you have found. How many instances are reported of people being burnt alive? of people being torn by dogs? You know the answer: just one.

Sure:

Book I:

"but it was a peace stained with blood"

"envoys imprisoned, camps and rivers stained with blood"

"soldiers gloated over the bloodshed as though it gave them absolution"

"Uproar, wounds, bloodshed, were everywhere visible"

Book II:

"while the rest till nightfall glutted themselves with the enemy's blood"

http://classics.mit.edu/Tacitus/annals.html

This pretty much goes on throughout Tacitus' writings, because Rome was a bloodly fucking place (there was no way to avoid the gory details for any historian who wanted to provide a reasonably accurate depiction of Roman history). You can maybe say that Nero's alleged persecution of Christians was exceptionally gory, but to say it indicates a non-Tactean spurious paragraph (or a major deviation from his writing style), is complete bullshit. As we see by simply reading his work, he had no aversion to reporting gory details, it's just that in this instance, the details were perhaps more gory than average (but the "average" was pretty freakin gory).

Someone asked for something regarding modern scholarship on this issue (I did provide it previously, but here it is again)

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The surviving copies of Tacitus' works derive from two principal manuscripts, known as the Medicean manuscripts, which are held in the Laurentian Library, and written in Latin. It is the second Medicean manuscript which is the oldest surviving copy of the passage allegedly describing Christians. In this manuscript, the first 'i' of the Christianos is quite distinct in appearance from the second, looking somewhat smudged, and lacking the long tail of the second 'i'; additionally, there is a large gap between the first 'i' and the subsequent 'long s'. Latin scholar Georg Andresen was one of the first to comment on the appearance of the first 'i' and subsequent gap, suggesting in 1902 that the text had been altered, and an 'e' had originally been in the text, rather than this 'i'.

In 1950, at historian Harald Fuchs' request, Dr. Teresa Lodi, the director of the Laurentian Library, examined the features of this item of the manuscript; she concluded that there are still signs of an 'e' being erased, by removal of the upper and lower horizontal portions, and distortion of the remainder into an 'i'. In 2008, Dr. Ida Giovanna Rao, the new head of the Laurentian Library's manuscript office, repeated Lodi's study, and concluded that it is likely that the 'i' is a correction of some earlier character (like an e), the change being made an extremely subtle one. Later the same year, it was discovered that under ultraviolet light, an 'e' is clearly visible in the space, meaning that the passage must originally have referred to chrestianos, a Latinized Greek word which could be interpreted as the good, after the Greek word χρηστός (chrestos), meaning 'good, useful', rather than strictly a follower of 'Christ'.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidenc...Christ#Tacitus

Hopefully I don't have to repeat why evidence showing an alteration of the original document bolsters its authenticity (except, obviously, as it pertains to the altered letter).

Toto · 04-02-2011, 02:24 PM

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Originally Posted by Frank

...
Someone asked for something regarding modern scholarship on this issue (I did provide it previously, but here it is again)

...
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidenc...Christ#Tacitus

Hopefully I don't have to repeat why evidence showing an alteration of the original document bolsters its authenticity (except, obviously, as it pertains to the altered letter).

This is not an original document. It is merely the oldest scribal copy, dating from the 10th century, based on a copy of a copy of a copy ... of a copy, most of which copies were made by Christians. There is nothing here that is relevant to the question of whether the Neronian persecution was a Christian or other insertion.

Toto · 04-02-2011, 02:31 PM

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Originally Posted by DCHindley

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Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Anything is possible, including that this is an interpolation. But there is nothing that makes it read like an interpolation. There is no mention of Christians dying for their faith, which you would expect in a martyrdom account. Here is what Tacitus said:

Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty [of setting the fire]; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.

If the author wanted to make this about Christians dying bravery, and still leave the sense of the account largely unchanged, it would have been easy. Could it be implying martyrdom? Sure. Assuming a crafty enough interpolator, then anything is possible.

Does your bracketed clarification accurately reflect what Tacitus says? Other translations paraphrase it to seem as though they confessed to being Christians, not of setting the fire, such that Tacitus muses they were convicted "not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind".

...

Drews has a comment on that issue.

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Then there is the word “fatebantur.” Theological writers like Renan, Weizsäcker, etc., refer the expression to the belief of those who were captured, and so make them out to have been persecuted on account of their Christianity. Von Soden also translates it: “All who openly confessed Christianity were at once arrested,” etc. (p. 11). Schiller, however, rightly holds that it is not probable, in view of the close life of the Christians at the time, that some of them, apart from all the others, “had openly professed a doctrine that was not yet a peculiar creed, and would be intelligible to nobody.”[47] Others, therefore, such as Arnold, think that the word “fatebantur” refers rather to the crime of setting fire to Rome. In that case, there would, as many historians, such as Neumann, admit, be no question of a persecution of Christians as such, but merely of a police procedure.[48]

In the next place, however, the Christians are not so much “convicted” of the fire as of “hatred of the human race.” Holtzmann (in Sybel's Historischer Zeitschrift) has translated this phrase as “completely devoid of any humane and political culture,” “so that they might be relieved of considerations of humanity in dealing with them.” Schiller sees in it a reference to the custom of the Christians to withdraw from all intercourse with the world, celebrate forbidden festivals in secret meetings, and never sacrifice to the genius of the emperor.[49] Arnold conceives the expression as “an opposition on principle to the omnipotence of the Roman State.”[50] But, as Hochart rightly asks, could Tacitus, who never took seriously the faith of the Jews, and presented the Jewish and, according to Tertullian, even the Christian God to his readers as a deity with an ass's head, regard the existence of a Jewish sect, which differed in no respect from the Jews in the eyes of the Romans, as so menacing to the welfare of the empire that he must call down on it the full anger of the gods of Olympus? “It is inconceivable that the followers of Jesus formed a community in the city at that time of sufficient importance to attract public attention and the ill-feeling of the people. It is more probable that the Christians were extremely discreet in their behaviour, as the circumstances, especially of early propaganda, required. Clearly we have here a state of things that belongs to a later date than that of Tacitus, when the increase and propagandist zeal of the Christians irritated the other religions against them, and their resistance to the laws of the State caused the authorities to proceed against them.”[51] The interpolator, Hochart thinks, transferred to the days of Nero that general hatred of the Christians of which Tertullian speaks. Indeed, the French scholar thinks it not impossible that the phrase “odium humani generis” was simply taken from Tertullian and put in the mouth of Tacitus. Tertullian tells us that in his time the Christians were accused of being “enemies of the human race” (paene omnes cives Christianos habendo sed hostes maluistis vocare generis humani potius quam erroris humani).[52] And even the “Thyestean meals” and “Oedipodic minglings,” of which Arnold is reminded by the circumstance that Tacitus ascribes those horrors and scandals to the Christians, hardly suit the age of Nero, and have all the appearance of a projection of later charges against the Christians into the sixties of the first century—supposing, that is to say, that the writer was thinking of them at all in the expression quoted. It cannot be repeated too often that charges of this kind, if, as is usually gathered from similar expressions of Justin and Tertullian, they were really put forward by the Jews,[53] have no ground or reason whatever in the historical relations between the two during the first century, especially before the destruction of Jerusalem. The schism between Jews and Christians had not yet taken place, and the hatred of the two for each other was as yet by no means such as to justify such appalling accusations.[54] If, on the other hand, they are supposed to be brought by the pagans against the Christians, there is a complete absence of motive.[55]

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