amusement with Titus.  At one time he exhibited shows of gladiators, which lasted one hundred days, during which the amphitheatre was flooded with human blood.  At another of his public exhibitions he caused five thousand wild beasts to be baited in the amphitheatre.  During the siege of Jerusalem, he set ambushes to seize the famishing Jews, who stole out of the city by night to glean food in the valleys:  these he would first dreadfully scourge, then torment them with all conceivable tortures, and, at last, crucify them before the wall of the city.  According to Josephus, not less than five hundred a day were thus tormented.  And when many of the Jews, frantic with famine, deserted to the Romans, Titus cut off their hands and drove them back.  After the destruction of Jerusalem, he dragged to Rome one hundred thousand captives, sold them as slaves, and scattered them through every province of the empire.

The kindness, condescension, and forbearance of Adrian were proverbial; he was one of the most eloquent orators of his age; and when pleading the cause of injured innocence, would melt and overwhelm the auditors by the pathos of his appeals.  It was his constant maxim, that he was an Emperor, not for his own good, but for the benefit of his fellow creatures.  He stooped to relieve the wants of the meanest of his subjects, and would peril his life by visiting them when sick of infectious diseases; he prohibited, by law, masters from killing their slaves, gave to slaves legal trial, and exempted them from torture; yet towards certain individuals and classes, he showed himself a monster of cruelty.  He prided himself on his knowledge of architecture, and ordered to execution the most celebrated architect of Rome, because he had criticised one of the Emperor’s designs.  He banished all the Jews from their native land, and drove them to the ends of the earth; and unloosed the bloodhounds of persecution to rend in pieces his Christian subjects.

The gentleness and benignity of the Emperor Aurelius, have been celebrated in story and song.  History says of him, ’Nothing could quench his desire of being a blessing to mankind;’ and Pope’s eulogy of him is in the mouth of every schoolboy—­’Like good Aurelius, let him reign;’ and yet, ‘good Aurelius,’ lifted the flood gates of the fourth, and one of the most terrible persecutions against Christians that ever raged.  He sent orders into different parts of his empire, to have the Christians murdered who would not deny Christ.  The blameless Polycarp, trembling under the weight of a hundred years, was dragged to the stake and burned to ashes.  Pothinus, Bishop of Lyons, at the age of ninety, was dragged through the streets, beaten, stoned, trampled upon by the soldiers, and left to perish.  Tender virgins were put into nets, and thrown to infuriated wild bulls; others were fastened in red hot iron chairs; and venerable matrons were thrown to be devoured by dogs.