individual or class. Nor is the professional moralist himself immune
from jaundice or from the disease of exaggeration.

The endeavour here will be to realise more veraciously what life in
the Roman world was like. For those who are familiar with the
political history and the escapades of Nero there may be some filling
in of gaps and adjusting of perspective. For those who are familiar
with the journeyings and experiences of St. Paul there may be some
correction of errors and misconceptions. For those who have any
thought of visiting the ruins of Rome and Pompeii, it may prove
helpful to have secured some comprehension of this period. Pompeii was
destroyed only fifteen years after our date, and all those houses,
large and small, were occupied in the year 64 by their unsuspecting
inhabitants. Meanwhile mansions, temples, and halls stood in splendour
above those platforms and foundations over which we tread amid the
broken columns in the Roman Forum or on the Palatine Hill.




CHAPTER I

EXTENT AND SECURITY OF THE EMPIRE


The best means of realising the extent of the Roman Empire in or about
the year 64 is to glance at the map. It will be found to reach from
the Atlantic Ocean to the Euphrates, from the middle of
England--approximately the river Trent--to the south of Egypt, from
the Rhine and the Danube to the Desert of Sahara. The Mediterranean