Christians put to death because they were thought traitors. Christians
who died for Christ’s sake were called martyrs. The first martyr was
named Stephen. He was stoned to death about 33 A.D.
One of the men who helped in putting Stephen to death was a man
named Saul. Saul was a Roman citizen and, like other Roman citizens,
was proud of that fact. He thought the Christians were enemies of
his country, and he did everything he could to have the Christians
punished. Then, all of a sudden, Saul had a change of heart and came to
believe in the religion of the very people whom he had been fighting.
Whatever Saul did or whatever he believed he did or believed with his
whole soul. Though he had never seen Christ, he became one of the
chief Christians and then was made an apostle and was called by his
Roman name, Paul.
Paul preached the new religion far and wide just as earnestly as he had
fought against it at first. Then he, too, was condemned to death. Paul,
however, was, as I have said, a Roman citizen, and a Roman citizen
could not be put to death by the ordinary judges who were not Roman
citizens nor in the ordinary way by crucifying. So Paul appealed to
the emperor. Nevertheless, he was put in prison in Rome and afterward
beheaded. And so he is called St. Paul.
Peter was another of the chief apostles. Christ had said to him, “I
will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”[2] Peter, too,
was thrown into prison, and was sentenced to be crucified. But he asked
to be crucified with his head downward. He thought it too great an
honor to die in just the same way as his Lord. On this spot in Rome
where Peter was put to death was built long afterward the largest
church in the world, the Cathedral of St. Peter.
[2] Matthew, xvi, 19.
As everything before Christ’s birth is called B.C. and everything since
His birth is called A.D., you would naturally suppose that 0 would be
the date of His birth.
But it was not until some five hundred years later that people began
to date from Christ’s birth. And then, when they did begin to date
from this event, they made a mistake. It was found out that Christ was
really born four years before He was supposed to have been born--that
is, in 4 B.C.--but when the mistake was found out, it was then too late
to change.
[Illustration]
36
Blood and Thunder
I once had a big Newfoundland dog, and he was one of the best friends
a boy ever had. I don’t know who it was that named him; he was named
before I got him; but whoever it was must either have been ignorant of
history or a bad chooser of names. He was called Nero, and even a dog
would have hated such a name, had he known whose it once was.
Every good story usually has a villain to make it interesting. Nero is
the prize villain of history. He was a Roman emperor who lived not long
after Christ, and he is considered the most terribly cruel and wicked
ruler that ever lived.
He killed his mother.
He killed his wife.
He killed his teacher, who was named Seneca. He was not a bad teacher,
either.
We think that Nero ordered both St. Peter and St. Paul put to death,
for they were executed at this same time.
Nero seemed to take great pleasure in making others suffer. He loved to
see men torn to pieces by wild beasts; it amused him greatly. I have
seen boys who liked to throw stones at dogs just to hear them yelp, or
tear the wings off of butterflies. Such boys must have some Nero in
them; don’t you think?
If a man was a Christian, that gave Nero an excuse to torture him
horribly. Nero had some of the Christians wrapped in tar and pitch,
then placed around the garden of his palace and set fire to, as if
they were torches. It is even said that Nero set Rome on fire just for
the fun of seeing the city burn. Then he sat in a tower and, while he
watched the blaze spreading, played on a harp. The saying is that “Nero
fiddled while Rome burned”; but there were no fiddles at that time, and
so we know it must have been a harp. The fire burned day and night for
a whole week and destroyed more than half of the city. Then Nero laid
the blame on the Christians, who, he said, started the fire. Did you
ever blame another for something you had done?
Some think Nero really was crazy, and we hope he was, for it is hard to
think any human being who was not crazy could act as he did.
Nero built himself an immense palace and overlaid it extravagantly with
gold and mother-of-pearl. It was known as Nero’s House of Gold. At its
front door he put up a colossal statue of himself in bronze fifty feet
high. Both the House of Gold and the statue were later destroyed,
but the Colosseum, which was built a few years afterward, was named
Colosseum from this “coloss-al” statue of Nero that was once there.
Nero was very conceited. He thought he could write poetry and sing
beautifully. Although he did both very badly, he liked to show off, and
no one dared to laugh at him. Had any one been so bold as to make fun
of him or even to smile, he would have had that person put to death
instantly.
Even the Roman people who were not Christians feared and hated Nero.
So they voted to have him put out of the way. But before they had a
chance to do anything, Nero heard what they were planning, and in order
to save himself the disgrace of being put to death by his own people
he decided to kill himself. He was such a coward, however, that he
couldn’t quite bring himself to plunge the sword into his heart. But
as he hesitated, holding the sword to his breast and whimpering, his
slave, impatient to finish the job, shoved the blade in. Thus was Rome
rid of its worst ruler.
So much for the first part of this “blood and thunder” story. Here is
the second part:
The Jews in Jerusalem didn’t like to have Rome rule over them. They
never had. But they were afraid to do much about it. But in the Year
70 A.D. they rebelled; that is, they said they would no longer obey
Rome or pay her money. The emperor sent his son, who was named Titus,
with an army to put an end to the rebellion, to punish them as if they
were disobedient children.
The Jews crowded into their city of Jerusalem to make a last stand
against the Romans. But Titus destroyed that city completely and the
Jews in it, a million of them, it is supposed. Then he robbed the great
temple of all its valuable ornaments and brought them back to Rome.
To celebrate this victory over Jerusalem an arch was built in the Forum
at Rome, and through this arch Titus and his army marched in triumph.
On this arch was carved a procession, showing Titus leaving the city
of Jerusalem with these ornaments. Chief among these ornaments was a
golden seven-branched candlestick he had taken from the temple. To-day
we see many copies in brass of this famous seven-branched candlestick.
Perhaps you may have one in your home on the mantelpiece.
The city was rebuilt later, but most of the Jews who were left have
ever since been living in all the other countries of the earth.
Titus became emperor, but in spite of the way in which he had massacred
so many Jews, he was not such a bad emperor as you might suppose. He
thought he was doing right in killing these men because they had
rebelled against Rome. But Titus had a rule of life, much like that the
Boy Scouts now have. This rule was, “Do at least one good turn a day.”
The third part of this story is the “thunder.”
In Italy there is a volcano named Vesuvius. You remember that “volcano”
came from the name “Vulcan,” the blacksmith god, and people imagined
that his forge in the heart of a volcano made the smoke and flame and
ashes. From time to time this volcano, Vesuvius, thunders and quakes
and spouts forth fire and throws up stones and gas and boils over with
red-hot melted rock called lava. It is the hot inside of the earth
exploding. Yet people build houses and towns near-by and live even
on the sides of the volcano. Every once in a while their homes are
destroyed when the volcano quakes or pours forth fire. Yet the same
people go right back and build again in the same place!
[Illustration: Vesuvius erupting, Pompeii in foreground.]
There was at the time of Titus a little town named Pompeii near the
base of Vesuvius. Wealthy Romans used to go there to spend the summer.
Suddenly, one day in the year 79 A.D., just after Titus had become
emperor, Vesuvius began to spout forth fire. The people living in
Pompeii rushed for their lives, but they hadn’t time to get away. They
were smothered with the gases from the volcano before they hardly had
time to move and, falling down dead, were buried deep in a boiling rain
of fire and ashes, just where they happened to be when the eruption, as
it was called, took place.
The people and their houses lay buried beneath the ashes for nearly
two thousand years, and in the course of time every one had forgotten
there ever had been such a place. People came back as they had before
and built houses over the spot where every one had forgotten there once
was a city. Then one day a man was digging a well over the spot where
Pompeii had once been. He dug up a man’s hand--no, not a real hand,
but the hand of a statue. He told others, and they set to work and dug
and dug to see what else they could find until the whole town was dug
out. And now one can go to Pompeii and see it very much as it was in 79
A.D., before it had ever been destroyed.
There are houses of the Romans who went there to spend their vacations.
There are shops and temples and palaces and public baths and the
theater and the market place or forum. The streets were paved with
blocks of lava, once melted stone. They still show ruts which were worn
into them by the wheels of the chariots that the Romans used to drive.
Stepping-stones were placed at some crossings, so that in case of heavy
rains, when the streets were full of water, one could cross on them
from curb to curb. These stepping-stones are still there. The floors of
the houses were made of bits of colored stone to form pictures. They
are still there. In the vestibule of one house, there is in the floor
a mosaic picture of a dog. Under it are the Latin words, “Cave canem.”
What does that mean? Can you guess? It means, “Look out for the dog!”
That was a Roman’s idea of a joke two thousand years ago!
The bones of the people who were caught and buried alive in the ashes
were also found. There were also found bronze ornaments worn by the
women, vases that decorated the home, lamps which they used to light
the houses, pots and pans and dishes. Beds and chairs were found just
as they had been buried. Still more remarkable, cakes were found on the
table, a loaf of bread half eaten, meat ready to be cooked, a kettle on
the fire with the ashes still underneath it--beans and peas and _one
egg_ unbroken--probably the oldest egg in the world!
37
A Good Emperor and a Bad Son
Have you ever said, “I don’t care,” when you really did care?
I have. Every one has.
Perhaps you have been naughty and have been told you could have no
dessert or must go to bed early, and you tossed your head and said, “I
don’t care.”
Well, once upon a time there was a society or club formed of grown-up
people who said they weren’t ever going to care what happened to them;
whether it was good or whether it was bad would make no difference.
I should call them the “Don’t Care Club,” but they called themselves
“Stoics,” and they thought the way to be good was “not to care.”
If a Stoic’s house burned down, he would say to himself and try to make
himself believe, “I don’t care; it doesn’t matter.”
If some one gave him a million dollars, he would say, “I don’t care; it
doesn’t matter.”
If he was told by the doctor he was going to die next week, he would
say, “I don’t care; it doesn’t matter.”
This Society of Stoics was started by a Greek philosopher named Zeno.
Zeno lived in Athens later than those philosophers, Socrates and Plato,
whom you have already heard about. Zeno said that the only way to be
good and the only way to be happy was not to care for pleasure and not
to mind pain or suffering but calmly to put up with everything, no
matter how unpleasant or disagreeable it was, and the Stoics believed
him. Even to-day people who bear troubles and pain and hardships
without a murmur are called stoics.
One of the chief members of the society was a Roman emperor.
Rome’s worst emperor, Nero, had been dead a hundred years when there
came to the throne this new emperor, who was just as good as Nero was
bad. This emperor was named Marcus Aurelius. Although he was so very
good and pious, he was not a Christian. Indeed, Marcus Aurelius treated
the Christians terribly, as they had been treated terribly by the
previous emperors, for he thought them traitors to the empire.
At this time most of the Romans had very little religion of any sort.
They were not Christians, but neither did they put much faith in their
own gods, Jupiter and Juno and the rest. They honored them because
they were brought up to honor them and because they thought if they
didn’t honor them they might have bad luck, so they took no chances.
But instead of believing in such gods, people usually believed in the
teachings of some wise man or philosopher and obeyed more or less the
rules he made. Zeno was one of these philosophers, and the Stoics were
the members of this society.
Although Marcus Aurelius was an emperor, he would rather have been a
Stoic philosopher or a priest. Although he had to be a soldier and a
general, he would rather have been a writer. When he was off, fighting
with his army, he carried his writing-materials with him, and he would
go to his tent at night and write out his thoughts. These thoughts he
called his “Meditations.” Here is one of the things he wrote:
When you find you do not want to get up early in the morning, make
this short speech to yourself. I am getting up now to do the business
of a man. Was I made to do nothing but doze and keep warm under the
covers?
That was written long years ago, yet your father might have told you
the same thing this morning.
People read this book of Marcus Aurelius to-day, either in the Greek in
which it was written or translated into English.
A great many of Marcus Aurelius’ sayings seem almost as if they might
have been in the Bible. Indeed, some people keep his book by their
bedside as if it were a Bible.
One of his rules was, “Forgive your enemies,” and he seemed almost
glad to have enemies so that he might have a chance to forgive them.
Indeed, he took such a special delight in forgiving his enemies that
he even went out of his way to do so. Though Marcus Aurelius was not a
Christian, nevertheless he was more Christian in the way he acted than
some of the later emperors who were supposed to be Christians.
But like many people who are very good themselves, Marcus Aurelius was
unable to bring up his son to be so. His son was named Commodus, and
Commodus was just as bad as his father was good. He may have been bored
when a child by too many of his father’s instructions, for when he grew
up and was able to choose for himself and do as he pleased, instead of
following Zeno and joining the Stoics, he joined the society of another
philosopher called Epicurus.
Epicurus had lived about the same time as Zeno. But he had taught
what at first seems almost the opposite of what Zeno taught. Epicurus
said that the chief end and aim of man and the only good in the world
was pleasure; _but_, said he, the pleasure must be of the right kind.
Nowadays people who are very fond of eating nice things, whose whole
thought in life is the pleasure of eating, are called “epicures.”
Commodus’s one thought was pleasure, and the worst kind of pleasure at
that. A friend of mine thought Marcus Aurelius was such a fine man that
he named his son after him, “Marcus Aurelius Jones,” but when the son
grew up he was not at all like his namesake. The name “Commodus” would
have suited him much better, for instead of being good and pious, he
thought of nothing but pleasure and he was so bad that he ended in jail.
Commodus thought nothing of giving his people a good government; he
only thought of giving himself a good time. He was an athlete and had
beautiful muscles and a handsome figure, of which he was so proud that
he had a statue made of himself. The statue showed him as the strong
and muscular god Hercules. Commodus made the people worship him as
if he were this god. Just to show off his muscles and his muscular
ability, he himself took part in prize-fights--quite bad taste for
an emperor. He poisoned or killed any one who found fault with or
criticized him. He led a wild and dissipated life, but at last he met
the end he deserved. He was strangled to death by a wrestler.
Lycurgus would have said again:
“I told you so.”
38
I-- H-- S---- V-----
The name of this story I’m going to put at the end, for you wouldn’t
know what it means, anyway, until you have heard the story, and so it’s
no use looking ahead.
All through the years since Christ was crucified, those who said they
believed in Christ had been terribly treated--“persecuted,” we call
it--because they were Christians. They had been flogged; they had been
stoned; they had been torn with iron hooks; they had been roasted and
burned to death. Yet, strange as it may seem, in spite of this terrible
treatment, more and more people were becoming Christians every day.
They believed so strongly in life after death, and they believed that
they would be so much happier after death if they died for Christ’s
sake, that they seemed even glad to suffer and to be killed. But at
last the emperor himself put a stop to all these persecutions. This is
how it happened.
About the year 300 A.D. Rome had an emperor by the name of Constantine.
Constantine was not a Christian. His gods were the old Roman gods. He
probably did not put much faith in them, however.
Well, once upon a time Constantine was fighting with an enemy when he
dreamed one night that he saw in the sky a flaming cross. Beneath this
cross were written the Latin words, “In hoc signo vinces.” In English
this is, “In this sign thou shalt conquer.” Constantine thought this
meant that if he carried the Christian cross into battle he would
conquer. He thought it would at least be worth while to give the
Christian God a trial. So he had his soldiers carry the cross, and he
did win the battle. Then immediately he became a Christian himself and
asked every one in the Roman Empire to become a Christian also. From
that time on, all the Roman emperors who came after Constantine, all
except one, were Christians.
To celebrate Constantine’s victory the Roman Senate built a triumphal
arch in the Forum of Rome and called it the Arch of Constantine. If has
three openings; the Arch of Titus has only one.
Constantine’s mother was named Helena. She was one of the very first
to become a Christian and be baptized. Then she gave up her life to
Christian works and built churches at Bethlehem and on the Mount of
Olives. It is said that she went to Palestine and found the actual
cross on which Christ had been crucified three hundred years before and
sent part of it to Rome. When she died she was made a saint, and so
she is now called St. Helena.
Constantine built a church over the spot where St. Peter was supposed
to have been crucified. Many years later, this church was torn down so
that a much larger and grander church to St. Peter might be built there.
But Constantine did not care for Rome. He preferred to live in another
city in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire. This city was called
Byzantium. So he moved from Rome to Byzantium and made that city his
capital. Byzantium was called New Rome, and then the name was changed
to Constantine’s city. In Greek, the word for “city” is “polis.” We see
the word used in Anna_polis_ and Indiana_polis_. So Constantine’s City
became Constantinepolis, and then shortened to Constantinople.
Hardly had the Roman Empire become Christian before a quarrel arose
between those Christians who believed one thing and those who believed
another. The chief thing they quarreled about was whether Christ was
equal to God the Father or not equal to Him. Constantine called the
two disagreeing sides together at a place called Nicæa to settle the
question. There the leaders of each side argued the matter hotly.
Finally, it was decided that the Christian Church should believe that
God the Son and God the Father were equal. Then they agreed to put
what they believed in words. This was called a creed, which means
“believe,” and because it was made at Nicæa it was known as the Nicene
Creed, which many Christians still say every Sunday.
Before the time of Constantine, there were no weekly holidays. Sunday
was no different from any other day. People worked or did just the
same things on Sunday as they did on other days. Constantine thought
Christians should have one day a week for the worship of God--a “holy
day,” or holiday, as we call it--so he made Sunday the Christian day of
rest, a “holy day” such as Saturday was for the Jews.
But although Constantine was head of the Roman Empire, there was
another man whom all Christians throughout the world looked to as their
spiritual head. This man was the Bishop of Rome. In Latin he was called
“papa,” which means the same thing in Latin that it does in English,
“father.” So the bishop of Rome was called “papa,” and this became
“pope.” St Peter was supposed to have been the first Bishop of Rome.
For many centuries the pope was the spiritual ruler of all Christians
everywhere, no matter in what country they lived.
As now you know what the name of this story means I’m putting it here:
In Hoc Signo Vinces
39
Our Tough Ancestors
But Rome with the Roman Empire had had her day. She had risen as high
as she could. It was her turn to fall. She had become as large as she
ever was to be. It was her turn to be conquered. But you cannot guess
what people were to do the conquering and to be next in power.
When I was a boy there was a gang of toughs who lived down by the
gas-house and railroad tracks. They were ragged, unwashed, unschooled,
but terrible fighters. Their leader was known to us as Mug Mike, and
the very mention of him and his gang struck terror to our souls. Every
now and then they paid our neighborhood a visit. Once we had offered
fight, but with such terrible results that ever after at word of their
approach the alarm would be sounded and we would hide indoors.
For ages there had been such a gang of half-civilized toughs living on
the northern borders of the Roman Empire. Every now and then they tried
to cross over the border into the Roman lands, and the Romans had to
be constantly fighting them to keep them back where they belonged.
Julius Cæsar had fought with them. So had Marcus Aurelius and so had
Constantine. These wild and warlike people were called Teutons and--you
may be shocked to hear it, but--they are the ancestors of most of us!
They had light hair and blue eyes; that is, they were what we call
blonds. The Greeks and Romans and other people who lived around the
Mediterranean Sea had black hair and dark eyes. They were what we call
brunettes. If you have light or brown hair, you are probably a Teuton.
If you have black hair, you are probably not.
The Teutons were white people, and they were Aryans, but they were
uneducated toughs and could neither read nor write.
They wore skins of animals instead of clothes made of cloth. They lived
in huts made of wood, sometimes of branches woven together--like a
large basket. The women raised vegetables and took care of the cows
and horses. The men did the hunting and fighting and blacksmithing.
Blacksmithing was very important, for the blacksmith made the swords
and spears with which they fought and the tools with which they worked.
That is why the name “Smith” was so honored among them.
When the men went to battle they wore the heads of animals they had
killed, an ox’s head, horns and all, or the head of a wolf or bear or
fox. This was to make themselves look fierce and to frighten the enemy.
_Bravery_ was the chief thing the Teuton thought good. A man might lie,
he might steal, he might even commit murder, but if he was a brave
warrior, he was called a “good” man.
The Teutons did not have a king. They elected their chiefs, and of
course they always chose the man who was the bravest and strongest.
But he could not make his son ruler after him. So he was more like a
president than a king.
[Illustration: Teuton warrior.]