educated infidels who read them. Zeus in a Tragedy Part is one of the
most effective. The situation which Lucian imagined here would be
paralleled if a modern writer were blasphemously to represent the
Persons of the Trinity with some eminent angels and saints discussing in
a celestial smoke-room the alarming growth of unbelief in England and
then by means of a telephonic apparatus overhearing a dispute between a
freethinker and a parson on a public platform in London. The absurdities
of anthropomorphism have never been the subject of more brilliant
jesting than in Lucian’s satires.

The general rule of Roman policy was to tolerate throughout the Empire
all religions and all opinions. Blasphemy was not punished. The
principle was expressed in the maxim of the Emperor Tiberius: “If the
gods are insulted, let them see to it themselves.” An exception to the
rule of tolerance

[41] was made in the case of the Christian sect, and the treatment of
this Oriental religion may be said to have inaugurated religious
persecution in Europe. It is a matter of interest to understand why
Emperors who were able, humane, and not in the least fanatical, adopted
this exceptional policy.

For a long time the Christians were only known to those Romans who
happened to hear of them, as a sect of the Jews. The Jewish was the one
religion which, on account of its exclusiveness and intolerance, was
regarded by the tolerant pagans with disfavour and suspicion. But though
it sometimes came into collision with the Roman authorities and some
ill-advised attacks upon it were made, it was the constant policy of the
Emperors to let it alone and to protect the Jews against the hatred
which their own fanaticism aroused. But while the Jewish religion was