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 WOMEN
IN HISTORY
Cy
MIRANDA TWISS
NG
es
 ‘Power tends to corrupt and
absolute power corrupts
absolutely.”
Evil is a fact of life. We can see it, not only
in the reigns of Stalin and Hitler, but also in
everyday crimes like murder, rape and
assault — quite apart from the millions of
lives brutalized by political or religious
oppression, poverty, disease and .
starvation.

One factor unites the sixteen men and

women featured in this book and the evil
acts they committed — they all had
unlimited power over the people whose
lives they controlled. Their reigns of terror
cover a time-span of nearly two thousand ~
years, from the rule of Caligula over the
Roman Empire starting in 37Ap, tothe
fof=Yalejed|o{= We)mye] 0(or-](-1o lmOr-Jaalelelelt-lal-mulale(-1e
Pol Pot during the 1980s. Motivated by
power, religion, political belief, or by
sadism and lust, and sometimes by
insanity, they have become bywords for.
terror throughout the world.

As this book shows, however, there are

degrees of evil. Hitler and Stalin between
them murdered tens of millions of people;
Elizabeth Bathory, the so-called ‘Countess
Dracula’, probably fewer than the hundreds
named by her accusers. Even so, the red
threads of cruelty, torture and terror that
run through these sixteen lives makes this
fascinating, if uncomfortable, book a
terrifying record of cold-hearted brutality,
_an infamous roll of Talal
elnatLani me) aie= ecver=](<1
almost incomprehensible in its lack of
tolerance and mercy.

£15.99
iin ——
THE MOST

MEN AND
WOMEN
IN HISTORY
 MEN AND
WOMEN
IN HISTORY
Miranda Twiss
are ae OB
First published in Great Britain in 2002 by
Michael O’Mara Books Limited
9 Lion Yard
Tremadoc Road
London SW4 7NQ

Copyright © Michael O’Mara Books Ltd 2002

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 1-85479-488-4

315 7 910 8 674

Designed and typeset by Design 23

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Butler & ‘Tanner Ltd, Frome
 - CONTENTS
Introduction

CALIGULA THE SCHIZOPHRENIC EMPEROR

NERO FIFTH EMPEROR OF ROME 21
ATTILA THE HUN THE ‘STORM FROM THE EAST’ 31
KING JOHN a CALLOUS, COLD-HEARTED MONARCH 4}
TORQUEMADA THE SPANISH INQUISITOR 92
PRINCE VLAD DRACULA ‘THE IMPALER’ 63
FRANCISCO PIZARRO conaquEROR OF THE INCAS 74
‘BLOODY’ MARY | ‘A CATHOLIC QUEEN IN A PROTESTANT COUNTRY’ 85
IVAN IV, ‘THE TERRIBLE’ TSAR OF ALL THE RUSSIAS 98
ELIZABETH, COUNTESS BATHORY ‘counTESS DRACULA’ 109
RASPUTIN THE “MAD MONK’ WHO BROUGHT DOWN A DYNASTY 119
JOSEF STALIN A TWENTIETH-CENTURY TYRANT 132
ADOLF HITLER FATHER OF THE FINAL SOLUTION 143
ILSE KOCH THE ‘BITCH OF BUCHENWALD’ 156
POL POT ARCHITECT OF GENOCIDE 166
IDI AMIN THE BUTCHER OF EAST AFRICA 177

Bibliography 190
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 INTRODUCTION
Eutl. 1. Morally wrong or bad; wicked: an evil ruler. 2. Causing harm or
uyury; harmful: an evil plan. 3. Marked or accompanied by misfortune;
unlucky: an evil fate. 4. (Of temper, disposition, etc.) characterized by
anger or spite. 5. Not in high esteem; infamous: an evil reputation. 6.
Offensive or unpleasant: an evil smell. 7. The quality or an instance of
being morally wrong; wickedness: the evil of war. 8. A force or power that
brings about wickedness or harm: evil is strong in the world.
OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

JOHN DAHLBERG, FIRST BARON ACTON,
letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 3 April 1877

he only unifying factor between the sixteen men and women who appear
| in these pages and the evil acts they committed is that they all wielded
unlimited power over other people’s lives. As a group their own lives span
nearly 2,000 years — from the birth of Caligula in the Roman Empire of 12aD to
the genocide of the Cambodian people during the 1980s. Motivated by power,
religion, lust and political belief, these men and women have all become bywords
for terror throughout the world.
Evil is a fact of life. We can see it, not only in the reigns of Stalin and Hitler,
but also in everyday crimes such as murder, rape and battery; not to mention the
millions of lives brutalized by poverty, disease and starvation.
John Stuart Mill said that ‘the dictum that truth always triumphs over
persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another
till they pass into commonplaces, but which experience refutes. History teems with
instances of truth and goodness put down by persecution’. How many times have
you heard someone say, “What goes around comes around’? In the grand scheme
of things we often choose to believe that human goodness will prevail, and that the
evil-doers will get what’s coming to them. But justice for the sixteen men and
women in this book is only occasionally meted out — the good may suffer but the
wicked may also flourish. Ivan the Terrible, Stalin, Pol Pot, Torquemada and
Pizarro all died in old age and, of the sixteen, only six died as a result of their
actions. Various dictators, like Amin, live out their lives in comfort, continuing to
wield power, whilst good causes supported by good people continually lose out.
Sadly, the most obvious lesson to be learnt from comparing the sixteen’s heinous
crimes is that they all show us just how very little we have learnt from our mistakes.
The ability of people to ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ was just as prevalent during Idi
Amin’s reign of terror as it had been in Hitler’s and even further back to Nero. All
8 INTRODUCTION

in
three were giving a large section of the population exactly what they wanted and,
exchange for this, the people chose to ignore the cruelties perpetuated on their fellow
citizens.
Power draws people towards the centre from which it emanates. None of the
people in this book have committed their acts of atrocity by themselves — all have had
very willing and able accomplices. Elizabeth Bathory may only have had a few like-
minded sadists to help her along the way, but whole sections of Cambodian, German,
Russian and Ugandan society mobilized behind Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin and Amin in
conducting mass killings. When Ivan the Terrible created his army of henchmen, the
Oprichniki, he had no shortage of volunteers. Attila’s.bloodthirsty army drew people
from throughout the civilized world and, for many Ugandans, Amin’s promise of
wealth and unlimited power over life and death led hundreds to join his State
Research Bureau. Men and women followed these evil leaders because they knew that
complicity was the path to influence, money and power. Despite having to deal with
the unpredictability of their leaders, people followed their baser instincts.
In mitigation it should be pointed out that many ‘evil’ people’s reigns of horror
were mercifully short. Pol Pot, Bloody Mary and Caligula only attained supreme
power for four years, Amin for eight. However, this was not always the case. Stalin
remained in power for over thirty years and, when he died, there were mass
outpourings of grief at the passing of ‘Uncle Joe’ and, despite the fact that he had
been directly responsible for the destruction of millions of people’s lives, his image was
kept intact for some years after his death. Indeed, most of the evil people within these
pages still have their apologists who choose to ignore the reports of these people’s
atrocities as propaganda. ET
Of course, the portrayal of people as evil has its benefits. If your enemy is seen in
a bad light, then any means to stop them becomes acceptable and your own evil acts
can be justified. When Vlad the Impaler was captured by the King of Hungary, a
series of forged letters were produced showing how Vlad’s evil had corrupted him
from God’s true path, and extensive use was made of the sensationalist German
horror stories in blackening his name. The political reality was that Vlad was just too
successful and uncontrollable for Hungary’s liking. Rasputin provided the perfect
scapegoat with which to undermine the Russian Tsar and ‘Tsarina. It was his power
over them that was seen at the time as a malevolent force. He was corrupting the
Tsarina by his licentious ways, and corrupting the Tsar by isolating him from his
advisers. Rasputin was a vehicle through which to attack the worst excesses of the
royal family, and hasten the end of the Romanov dynasty and, thereby, the monarchy
in Russia. Many of the stories attributed to the likes of Caligula, Nero and Attila
portray them as the Antichrist — conjuring up the Devil in various forms to assist them
in their malevolent acts. Cannibalism regularly emerges in popular myth as one of the
foul deeds perpetrated by many of the sixteen. That is not to say that some did not
partake of human flesh, but the image was used with monotonous regularity, probably
to illustrate how far from the path of righteous behaviour they had strayed.
 INTRODUCTION 9

Is evil ever justified? With two of the sixteen there is a point to be made in their
favour. It is extremely goubtful whether Attila the Hun would have forged such a large
empire if not for his infamy. Town after town fell to him without a fight, sumply
because the tales of his evil had preceded him. And Stalin took Russia from the
wooden plough to a superpower in thirty years. He may have lost sight of the fact that
human dignity and well-being lay at the heart of all progress, but I do not believe that
a nation so used to the absolute power of the Tsarist state would have responded so
quickly to a kindly leader. The very fact that Russia was used to an autocratic style of
leadership made it possible for Stalin to implement his monstrous reforms without any
regard for human life. Even the relatively benevolent Lenin appreciated the need for
force and intimidation when it came to forging a new nation.
We do not really understand evil — often taking it as an absolute rather than as a
comparative word. Our concept of evil in the twenty-first century is dramatically
different from previous centuries. Can you imagine going to the Albert Hall today to
watch Muslims being eaten by lions, or attending a burning of heretics outside
Westminster Abbey? It may seem a ridiculous concept, but the fact is that thousands of
people in their time actively participated in and enjoyed these gruesome ceremonies.
In many cases, religion seems to have provided the sixteen with either a reason for
inflicting their barbarity, or a tool for receiving forgiveness for their evil acts. If they
felt that God was on their side, their enemies were not only against them but also
against their God and therefore any acts committed could be justified. After each
killing spree, Ivan the Terrible would spend weeks purging himself before the altar;
‘Torquemada dressed in his monk’s habit, and ordered the torture and executions of
the supposed ‘heretics’; and Elizabeth Bathory and Vlad the Impaler both regularly
attended church services. Francisco Pizarro conquered and ravaged the Inca Empire
in the name of Christ, and Bloody Mary had hundreds of Protestants burnt in the
name of the Catholic Church. God may represent love and forgiveness, but the history
books are full of terrible deeds committed in the name of religion.
Of the people included, only three are women. Elizabeth Bathory reputedly killed
over 600 girls in her castles, and Ilse Koch turned Buchenwald into her own private
amusement park, but they did not have access to the troops or the political power that
is required if you are to employ large numbers of people to do your dirty work for you.
On the other hand, Mary I was the first English queen in her own right, but her reign
was short and the number of people killed as a result of her policies pales into
insignificance when compared to the number killed under the reign of her father,
King Henry VII. Maybe the very fact that she was a woman made her more
vulnerable to accusations of evil-doing. You only have to look at the vast numbers of
women accused of witchcraft and burnt at the stake during this time to see how
conveniently women could be used as scapegoats.
Human vice is often at the root of most evil-doing: envy, pride, vanity, greed — they
are all evident in the lives of the people discussed. But where does evil begin? I find it
impossible to believe that a child is born evil and yet there can be little doubt from the
10 INTRODUCTION

evidence provided that Ivan the Terrible was a malicious child and that Caligula’s
boyhood experiences fed the dark side of his nature, rather than drawing out the best.
We try to ascribe reasons for evil. With some of the people in this book, it is easier
to see clear delineations — before they were evil and after they became so — as a result
of childhood experiences, or the death of a spouse or of a mother or father. King
John was bought up amid a court rife with treachery and double-dealing, so it is hardly
surprising he was chronically insecure and weak. But sometimes it is just not possible
to draw such simplistic conclusions. In addition, evil acts are not comparable because
the circumstances in which the acts are committed vary according to each situation.
Without the right circumstances, none of the sixteen would have been able to gain the
power needed to accomplish their deeds. If the Americans had not withdrawn all
funding to Cambodia, Pol Pot would not have risen to the heights he attained; if the
Tsar and ‘Tsarina had been less removed from reality and the needs of their people,
Rasputin would never have gained such a strong foothold; and if Ilse Koch had been
married to someone else and not gone to Buchenwald concentration camp, she may
well have lived out her life as a provincial German hausfrau, indulging her passion for
pain in private.
What makes evil so fascinating? Glancing through the pages of history, it is
difficult to find any subject that has puzzled the intelligence of mankind more than the
subject of evil. A book outlining the history of man’s inhumanity to man is somehow
more gripping than one detailing people’s good deeds. Evil destroys the integrity, the
happiness and the welfare of a ‘normal’ society, yet we are absorbed by it, maybe in
the hope that we will learn from our mistakes, but more likely from a perverse desire
to hear of others’ misfortunes whilst we comfort ourselves with the thought that it
could never happen to us.
MIRANDA TWISS
January 2002
 CALIGULA
THE SCHIZOPHRENIC EMPEROR

There was never a better slave or a worse master,

‘TIBERIUS, EMPEROR OF ROME

here was relief and rejoicing throughout the Roman Empire when the
Emperor Tiberius died in 37AD. Tiberius, who had spent years of self-
imposed exile on the island of Capri, had become feared and despised
because of the cruel executions of his critics in the Roman army.
His young successor appeared to promise a new Golden Age. The people were
dazzled by Gaius Caesar and his family connections, and the Senate handed him
unprecedented powers. For the next four years, the schizophrenic Emperor would use
these powers to terrorize, rape and murder, with sadistic delight. Two thousand years
on, his sex life is still a watchword for depravity. He revelled in torture, demanding
slow and painful executions to be carried out as he dined. Men, women and even the
Empire were treated as his personal toys, as he embarked on a series of ever more
bizarre schemes to boost his ego. Finally, Caligula would declare himself a God.
Gaius Julius Caesar was born in 12AD
into the most powerful family in the
Roman Empire. His father, Germanicus,
was a war hero, posted on the Empire’s
northern frontier. His mother, Agrippina,
was the granddaughter of Emperor
Augustus and was ambitious and
outspoken. His father had often taken the
infant Gaius on Roman army campaigns,
and the legionnaires had doted on the
child, adopting him as a lucky mascot. He

Gaius Fulius Caesar — ‘Caligula’ — ‘tall and

spindly, with sunken eyes and thinning hatr’. Cruel
beyond barbarity, capricious and perverse, and not a
little mad, his bnef reign as Emperor was marked
by tyranny and mass slaughter. (STAPLETON
COLLECTION/ CORBIS)
12 THE MOST EVIL MEN AND WOMEN IN HISTORY

was dressed in a tiny uniform, complete with hand-crafted boots, called caligae from
which he earned his nickname, Caligula, a name he grew to despise.
His father Germanicus was more charming than talented, in contrast to the
increasingly austere Tiberius. Minor military victories in Germany had won Tiberius
huge popular support. But Germanicus’s glittering reputation made him a threat to
the Emperor. In May 17AD Germanicus was recalled from the front. It was a glorious
return to Rome complete with captives and the spoils of war. Germanicus led a
triumphant procession and, riding alongside him in his chariot, four-year-old Caligula
lapped up the adulation being showered upon his father. The family had little time to
enjoy their glory, because two years later Germanicus died. His painful and lingering
death displayed all the symptoms of poisoning — and Germanicus believed that the
Emperor Tiberius was responsible. Agrippina believed this too and, encouraged by
the massive display of public grief, accused Tiberius of her husband’s murder,
claiming that her whole family had been marked out for extermination. She was not
far off the mark, but the arrogant and outspoken personality of Agrippina brought
about her own downfall.
Agrippina and her two eldest sons, Nero and Drusus, were arrested and charged
with being enemies of the state. Nero was forced to slit his own throat, while Drusus
and Agrippina were left to starve to death. In childhood, Caligula saw an entire
catalogue of murders, exiles and bestial humiliations inflicted on those around him.
However, for the youngest son, there was a reprieve. Caligula was sent to live with
his grandmother Antonia. Antonia’s years at the heart of the imperial court had
taught her diplomacy and cunning, in contrast to the volatile Agrippina. The
impressionable teenager, however, was initiating an incestuous relationship with his
two sisters, although it was the youngest, Drusilla, who became the primary focus of
his sexual obsession. In 31AD, Caligula’s life took a dramatic turn. At the age of
nineteen, he received an imperial summons to join the ageing Tiberius on the island
of Capri. Tiberius had retired to Capri in 26AD and during his time there, the island
had become notorious for cruelty and debauchery, with people being thrown off the
cliffs to their deaths when he tired of them.
Caligula was to live as a house guest for six years with the man responsible for the
eradication of his family, and yet he displayed no evidence of any malice. Caligula was
playing the survival game and, besides, he found plenty with which to entertain
himself. Caligula had a wild streak of youthful extravagance and an appetite for sexual
adventuring, and if his elders thought he would eschew such behavior as he adopted
the mature responsibilities of Emperor, they were sadly mistaken. His youthful
excesses merely masked a depraved insanity that only surfaced when he began to revel
in the full power of his new office. His biographer, Suetonius, noted that: ‘He was not
able to control his savage and reprehensible nature. Indeed, he showed the keenest
interest in witnessing the sufferings and torments of those condemned being tortured.
At night he was in the habit of going out, disguised in a wig and along cloak, to
indulge in gluttony and adultery.’
 CALIGULA 13

Nevertheless, Caligula was also using his time in Capri to form strong political
links. He created a powerful strategic alliance with the head of the Praetorian Guard,
Macro. Macro was a veteran of the politics of violence. As Tiberius’s right-hand man,
he had overseen the notorious trials and executions of his reign. Now he saw a kindred
spirit in Caligula. The alliance was cemented by an agreement between the two men
that Caligula could sleep with Macro’s wife, Ennia.
Tiberius had no doubts about the character of his long-term guest. He predicted
bloodshed. In 35AD Caligula was named thejoint successor with Gemellus, Tiberius’s
grandson. Embracing the child, Tiberius said to Caligula, ‘You will kill him and
another will kill you.’
But the Emperor’s hands were tied. As Germanicus’s son, Caligula was hugely
popular and, with Macro behind him, he also had the support of the imperial forces.
Tiberius had no choice but to promote him. Germanicus’s untimely end had
concentrated resentment against Tiberius and created a legend of Germanicus’s
superhuman qualities, which was now transferred to his only surviving son, Caligula.
Tiberius died, unmourned, on 16 March 37AD. Guided by Macro, the Senate
threw out the Emperor’s will on the grounds that he had been of unsound mind. The
Empire was handed over to Caligula, who then underlined Gemellus’s youth by
adopting him. Gemellus was to have no share in the Empire, and within a year he was
murdered.
To the delight of Rome, the son of Germanicus now had sole control of the entire
Roman Empire. It is said that, in the first three months of his rule, more than 160,000
people were sacrificed in his honour throughout the Empire. The City of Rome was
celebrating the end of a reign that had been hated by the upper classes for its taxation
and by the lower classes for its dullness.
The new Emperor was tall and spindly, with sunken eyes and thinning hair. It was
forbidden for anyone to look down from any height as Caligula passed by, and men
with thicker hair were often made to shave it off. He had a liberal covering of body
hair, however, and the very mention of goats in his presence became a crime
punishable by death.
But Caligula’s tyrannical megalomania had yet to show itself fully. For now, the
Senate was as charmed as the people. Within hours of arriving in Rome, the young
Emperor was awarded ‘power and authority in all things.’ In fact Caligula’s powers
were so wide that only the great Augustus had amassed as much authority.
The first six months of Caligula’s reign were a spectacular ‘honeymoon’ period for
the citizens of Rome. Caligula quickly won their affection by giving away most of
Tiberius’s treasury in generous tax rebates and cash bonuses for the soldiers of the
garrison in Rome. He paid small fortunes to the soldiers he trusted most, namely the
broad-shouldered German mercenaries who made up his personal bodyguard.
With reckless disregard for the worried senators who warned him he would
bankrupt himself and the office of Emperor, Caligula also began to lavish unheard-of
expense on the bloodletting rituals of the circuses in the Roman amphitheatres. From
A nineteenth-century representation of Caligula buying a gladiator. He bankrupted himself in presenting
circuses, the bloodletting rituals that pitched men against men or wild animals. When he was booed for
staging a feeble spectacle in an attempt to save money, he had the chief jeerers mutilated and sent into the
arena to face the half-starved animals, and delightedly applauded their gruesome deaths. (Corsis)

all parts of the Empire, a sinister menagerie of lions, panthers, elephants and bears
was captured in the forests and deserts, to be brought to Rome and butchered in
staged ‘hunts’ in the arenas, to the delight of the spectators.
Prize money for gladiators and charioteers was doubled and trebled to encourage
them to fight each other to the death. The shows were breathtaking extravaganzas,
wildly acclaimed by their audiences, and they made Caligula an Emperor to be
admired and applauded.
Furthermore, the Roman elite was also reassured that Tiberius’s treason trials
would stop and, in an apparently heroic gesture, Caligula tore up Tiberius’s records.
To the Senate’s relief; Caligula also declared that he would not punish those involved
in the deaths of his mother and brothers and declared an amnesty for all Romans
imprisoned or exiled under Tiberius. A skilled orator, he outlined a programme of co-
operation with the Senate that was received with rapturous applause.
But Caligula’s family was not forgotten entirely, and honours were heaped on both
his dead parents. In addition, his grandmother and three sisters were all made Vestal
Virgins (particularly ironic considering that he used to indulge in incest with his sisters
on a regular basis) and, in an unprecedented move, he had coinage minted with their
images. It was an early warning sign of Caligula’s ego — one that went unheeded by
an enraptured Rome.
In less than a year, Caligula ran through the two-and-a-half billion sesterces left
by ‘Tiberius’s years of careful economy. But the golden period had ‘taken an even
greater toll on his mental health. The strains of power and adulation had stretched
 CALIGULA 15

Caligula to breaking point and, before the summer was over, he suffered a physical
and mental breakdowy. For a month, he hovered between life and death. Caligula’s
condition sent shockwaves through Rome, and sympathetic Romans gathered in their
thousands day and night, outside the palace. All traffic of chariots and handcarts and
the noise of music and trade in the street were banned within half-a-mile of the
palace, while the citizens prayed for his recovery. High-ranking Romans offered to
fight as gladiators, or even to sacrifice their own lives, if the Emperor could be spared.
Finally, Caligula regained full consciousness — weakened, but growing stronger each
day. Calling his friends and family around him, he confided: ‘I wasn’t really ill, I was
just being reborn a God.’ From now on, Caligula’s reign began to take a very different
course. He became increasingly tyrannical and erratic, as he realized just what he could
get away with, and, for the first time, Caligula became frightened of assassination, and
his fear bred cruelty. For the rest of his life, the Emperor would suffer from nightmares
and insomnia, often wandering through his palace until daylight.
Upon his recovery, Caligula sought out the men who had offered to sacrifice
themselves for him. The man who had promised he would fight as a gladiator was
obliged to fulfil his vow. Caligula looked on as he struggled in combat and did not give
him a reprieve until he had won his fight and pleaded repeatedly for delivery. Another
man was handed to his slaves who were to drive him, wearing sacred wreaths, through
the streets, demanding fulfilment, and then, finally, hurl him from the ramparts.
Caligula also ordered a series of games to celebrate his recovery. Roman trade and
commerce almost ground to a halt as day after day was declared a public holiday, but
the constant bloody carnival finally took its toll on Caligula’s purse. Prize money fell,
and when one circus featured mangy, underfed lions and middle-aged gladiators,
Caligula was booed by the audience.
The mad Caligula reacted swiftly. Those who had led the jeering were seized by
his guards and dragged away to the cellars under the arena. Their tongues were cut
out, and, choking on their own blood, they were forced into the arena to do battle with
the wild animals. The Roman people were stunned, but Caligula enjoyed the scene
immensely, clapping until the last of the hecklers was eaten. The spirit of goodwill had
come to an end and, as he regained his strength, Caligula now began striking out at
close relatives and former friends. Gemellus was accused of making plans in
anticipation of Caligula’s death. The eighteen-year-old was handed a sword and
shown how to commit suicide. Next, Caligula turned on his father-in-law, Silanus. The
old man was accused of treason, after he refused to accompany Caligula on a boat
trip. Silanus was forced to cut his own throat with a razor. And even Caligula’s
henchmen fell foul of his new mood. Macro’s advice had been increasingly resented
by his protégé. Now Macro was charged with prostituting his wife, Ennia, the woman
who had been Caligula’s mistress. Both were ordered to commit suicide.
With Macro gone, no one remained to influence Caligula’s behaviour. The
Roman elite may have believed they could mould the young Emperor to their wishes,
but it was fast becoming clear that Caligula had his own agenda. The deaths of
16 THE MOST EVIL MEN AND WOMEN IN HISTORY

Gemellus, Silanus and Macro were followed by a wave of executions amongst Macro’s
supporters. People suspected of any type of disloyalty were put to death immediately.
A supervisor of games and beast fights was flogged with chains in Caligula’s presence
for days on end, and was only executed when Caligula became offended by the smell
of gangrene.
Under Caligula, the law became an instrument of torture. When one man
claimed he was innocent, Caligula had the execution halted and ordered his tongue
to be cut out before he was put to death. Caligula demanded that the victim’s families
watch the killings and when one father excused himself on the grounds of ill health,
Caligula sent a litter to his house to collect him. Ayother father was ordered to dine
with Caligula, hours after watching his own son’s death.
But the Emperor also ordered executions for financial motives — his most effective
money-making schemes involved the use of fear. He issued a series of trumped-up
charges against some of the wealthiest citizens of Rome, and their vast estates and
fortunes were seized as punishment. The paid informers who gave perjured evidence
were rewarded with a few gold coins.
Caligula drank pearls dissolved in vinegar and loved to roll on piles of gold. His
self-indulgent and depraved lifestyle was funded by new taxes on food, lawsuits and
prostitution. Visitors were lent money with interest, and he would force people to
amend their wills in his favour, and then murder them. He also declared wills null and
void if they weren’t made out in his name, on the grounds of ingratitude. Once, when
a supposedly rich man had finally died, but turned out to be penniless, Caligula
commented, ‘Oh dear, he died in vain.’ Suetonius records how Caligula slept with
prisoners, senators and members of his own family. “He habitually indulged in
incestuous relations with all his sisters and at a crowded banquet he would make them
take turns in lying beneath him, while his wife lay above.’
Caligula’s ‘sense of humour’ showed just how obsessed he was with the dark
potential of his power. When kissing the neck of his wife or mistress, he would
comment that he could have it cut whenever he wanted. When asked why he was
laughing out loud during a meeting of the consuls, Caligula replied that with a single
nod from him they would be killed on the spot. He also insisted that his favourite
horse, Incitatus, be made a consul and gave the animal jewelled necklaces, a marble
stable with furniture and made him a priest of his temple.
The limitless extent of his power had left him and his office open to ridicule, but
inJune 38AD, shaken by the death of his youngest sister, Drusilla, Caligula embarked
on an even more bizarre campaign, that of turning his sister into.a goddess. Whilst it
was common practice to worship an Emperor when he was dead, Drusilla was a
woman of no importance to anyone but Caligula. During the enforced period of
public mourning, it was an offence throughout the Empire to laugh, wash or dine with
one’s family. Caligula ordered a golden statue of Drusilla to be set up in the Senate
itself and a special priesthood, of both sexes, was appointed to preside over her cult.
Within days, the bereaved brother threw himself into his third marriage. Caligula
 CALIGULA 17

was irresistibly attracted to women he could not possess. Caligula’s first wife had died
in childbirth, but his second, Livia Orestilla, stolen from her groom at her own
wedding, had been quickly divorced. Now he had chosen again.
Lollia Paulina was an extremely wealthy woman, and already pric Caligula
forced her husband to give her away. Once agairi, he was soon tired of her, divorcing
her within weeks, and ordering that she remain celibate for the rest of her life.
Only in his fourth wife, Caesonia, whom he married in 39aD, did Caligula find a
soulmate. She was promiscuous, with a reputation for extravagance, and Caligula’s
delight with her was so intense that he paraded her naked in front of his friends. She
was to bear him his only child, Drusilla, named after his dead sister, although it is
doubtful that Caligula was actually her father.
Less than two years after becoming Emperor, Caligula’s autocratic behaviour was
causing alarm in the Senate. As hopes for a peaceful and stable reign vanished, there
were early stirrings of resistance to the Emperor’s rule. His brother-in-law, Lepidus,
schemed with Agrippina, the mother of the future Emperor Nero, and a commander
of the imperial forces. But their plans came to nothing. Rumours abounded of a series
of plots hatched in the Senate. Caligula’s response was ruthless. In early 39aD, he
marched into the chamber and delivered a dramatic and savage denunciation of its
members.
Labelling his senators hypocrites, he revealed that he had lied about destroying the
evidence surrounding the deaths of his mother and brothers. All those present were
accused of being informers. He had realized that they could betray him, just as they
had Tiberius. Now he promised that if there was nothing to be gained in trying to
please them, he might as well rule by fear. Knowing that Caligula was highly strung,
the terrified Senate was forced to agree to a resumption of the treason trials instigated
by Tiberius. From now on, the threat of accusation and summary execution would
hang over them all.
Caligula’s humiliation of his senators would become a pattern for the remainder
of his reign. Some who had held the highest offices now had to run for many miles in
their togas alongside his military chariot. Others were invited to dine with the
Emperor, only to be made to wait as Caligula took the wife of one of his guests to an
adjoining room. On his return, he would comment on her sexual prowess to the rest
of his guests.
Caligula’s behaviour in the Senate had left no doubt about who was in power. But,
later in the year, he embarked on a grandiose scheme designed to impress the rest of
Italy.
As a boy, Caligula had been told by a soothsayer that he had as much chance of
becoming Emperor as crossing the Bay of Naples and keeping dry. Now he decided
to prove the soothsayer wrong. Five kilometres of water separated Puteoli and Baiae,
over the Bay of Naples, and Caligula built a temporary floating bridge across it. For
two days, Caligula, dressed in the breastplate of Alexander the Great, and a cloak of
gold studded with jewels, rode backwards and forwards, followed by a retinue of
18 THE MOST EVIL MEN AND WOMEN IN HISTORY

soldiers and prisoners. The calm seas convinced him that even the god Neptune held
him in awe.
On the second day, Caligula climbed onto a platform on the middle of the bridge
to boast of his achievement. Celebrations continued into the night and a number of
revellers drowned. By this time, the Treasury was almost bankrupt, and Caligula
threw all caution to the wind in his lust for gold. His guards rounded up ordinary
citizens off the street and forced them to contribute every coin in their purses to the
Emperor. Holding back a single coin could mean instant death. Then Caligula
announced he was to open a brothel in the palace. Eminent senators were ordered to
turn up at the enforced sex orgies and pay an entrance fee of 1,000 gold pieces, and
to bring their wives and daughters, so they could be put to work as prostitutes.
In the first three years of his reign, Caligula’s impact was only felt in Rome, but
by late 39aD, he had widened his net. The Emperor started to believe that he could
eclipse his father’s military successes. He decided that he would extend the boundaries
of his Empire in Germany and into Britain. For the first time in over fifty years, an
Emperor would leave Italy — he planned to return covered in glory.
In reality, his plans more closely resembled farce. Caligula’s journey into battle was
made in considerable comfort. With a vast retinue, each town he passed through was
cleaned, and invitations to dine with the Emperor were sold to local dignitaries. ‘There
were reports that some were subsequently killed, and their property confiscated.
A chronicler reports that once Caligula was playing dice and, upon finding that he
had no money, called for the census lists of Gaul to be brought to him. He then
proceeded to order the wealthiest of his citizens to be put to death. Turning to his
fellow players, he remarked: ‘While you have been playing for a few denaru, I have
taken in a good 150 million’. cal
Caligula arrived on the German border early in 40AD. But, despite the presence
of the enemy nearby, he made no move into German territory. In one small skirmish,
his legions captured about 1,000 prisoners. Caligula picked out 300 men to be sent
back to Rome and ordered for the remainder to be lined up against a cliff, with a bald
man at each end. Satisfied that he had enough prisoners for a swaggering triumphant
entrance back into Rome, he ordered his legions to ‘...kill every man from bald head
to bald head.’ Meanwhile, back in Rome, the Senate received reports that Caligula
was ‘...0n campaign and exposed to great dangers’.
From Germany, Caligula moved onto Britain, and the most extraordinary episode
of his reign.
Camping outside the port of Boulogne, he ordered his dispirited and nervous
army to line up on the beaches. Roman archers formed ranks at the water’s edge.
Huge catapults and slings were dragged onto the sand dunes, massed troops of cavalry
waited on the flanks. All eyes were set to the horizon, watching for the appearance of
some distant enemy.
Then Caligula rose with imperial majesty and rode into the shallow water. With
blood-curdling oaths, he unsheathed his sword and swore revenge on the sea god,
The forum at Pompeit, with the arch of Caligula that still stands today. Th é pleasure-loving city exactly
reflected the Emperor's perverse tastes, and paid, as many saw tt, a heavy price in divine retribution; badly
damaged by an earthquake during the reign of Nero, it was overwhelmed sixteen years later by the great
eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD. (BETTMANN/ CORBIS)

Neptune. The soldiers watched as Caligula began to slash the foam with his sword, the
infantry charged and the shallow waters were pierced with spears as the cavalry rode
in and out of the surf.
‘Now for the plunder,’ shouted Caligula, and each man had to begin looting the
sea — gathering piles of seashells in their helmets, which were taken back to Rome as
spoils of his heroic victory. The mighty Roman Legions had been reduced to clowning
for their insane Emperor.
Caligula’s dreams of conquest had been frustrated and he was furious. He had
inflicted greater havoc on his subjects and soldiers than on the enemy. Caligula
returned to Rome, bringing the straggling German prisoners and a handful of Britons
he had captured from a trading boat in Boulogne, together with tons of seashells.
Upon his arrival, in May 40AD, he was met by a delegation sent by the Senate, led by
his uncle, Claudius. They had come to offer congratulations, but Caligula was in no
mood to listen. Slapping his dagger, he replied, ‘?m on my way, and so is this.’
Now he offered his own proclamation to the shocked delegation — he was only
returning to those who wanted him — the people — but not the Senate. Caligula was
looking for scapegoats and the senators were the obvious choice. Testing their loyalty
to the utmost, he demanded their recognition, not just as Supreme Leader, but also as
a God. However, the plots against Caligula were growing apace.
From the onset of his illness, Caligula had taken great delight in the wearing of
elaborate costumes. A frequent cross-dresser, he would also appear as demigods like
Hercules, Apollo, Bacchus, Castor and Pollux. But as his madness progressed,
Caligula moved onto the major gods: Hermes, Apollo and Mars. He was often to be
20 THE MOST EVIL MEN AND WOMEN IN HISTORY

seen with a gilded beard, holding a thunderbolt, a trident and sometimes even dressed
in the regalia of the goddesses Venus, Juno and Diana.
By the middle of 40AD, Caligula’s delusions of divinity were uncontrollable. As a
sun god, he courted the moon and claimed fellowship with the gods. He would have
conversations with Jupiter, calling him his brother. The powerless Senate could only
watch, as he ordered a temple to be built to himself in the heart of Rome. Wealthy
nobles, including his uncle, Claudius, were forced to pay vast. sums towards the
construction. Caligula then extended part of his palace right into the forum,
incorporating the temple of Castor and Pollux as his own. He drew up plans for all
the heads of statues of gods in Rome to be remade with an image of his own head.
He spent the entire summer of 40AD rigorously preparing himself to be a God.
He sent for the most adept magicians from every corner of the Empire, and they spent
several weeks in a darkened room with the Emperor, revealing every last secret of their
art to him. In a final ceremony, they formed a circle around him, and chanting strange
invocations in many tongues, they infused his naked body with all their arcane powers.
By the end of the year, Caligula’s exploitation of his power was threatening the
security of the Empire. He provoked outrage with a demand that the Temple of
Jerusalem be converted into an imperial shrine containing a huge statue of himself.
He took the refusal as an act of grave disloyalty and ordered the deaths of those who
had opposed him. Only the tact and diplomacy of the local governor prevented major
riots from breaking out. Understanding that the desecration would cause fury, Publis
Petronius stalled the sculptors. It was an action that could have cost him his life, but
by the time he received his death sentence, Caligula was already dead.
On 24January 41D, on the last day of the Palatine Games, Caligula was stabbed
to death while returning from the theatre. Amongst the assassins were members of his
own family and the Praetorian Guard who had been assigned to protect him. The
fatal blow was struck by Casius Chaerea, a man whom Caligula had openly mocked
at court for his effeminacy. It was a brutal and frenzied murder, and the corpse was
left with more than thirty stab wounds.
The conspirators then obliterated all traces of their Emperor. His wife, Caesonia,
was hunted down, and stabbed to death. Drusilla, their two-year-old daughter, was
picked up by a soldier and smashed repeatedly against a wall. When Claudius was
found shaking behind a curtain, he was convinced that he, too, was on the hit list.
Instead he was marched into the Praetorian camp, where he was solemnly proclaimed
Emperor. Once again there was rejoicing in the Senate.
Caligula had reigned for just three years and eleven months. In the great annals
of atrocity, the reign of the Emperor Caligula stands out with brilliance and splendour.
Unlike the acts of almost every other autocrat in the black history of mass slaughter,
Caligula’s tyranny was executed with a supreme deviance and caprice, staged as a vast
performance of bestiality, brutality, sexual excess and perversion.
\
 - NERO
FIFTH EMPEROR OF ROME

‘What an artist dies with me!’

SUETONIUS, LIVES OF THE CAESARS

en Nero became Emperor in 54AD, Rome was at the zenith of its power.
W5=: Imperial legions had carved out an empire which stretched from the
banks of the Rhine to the deserts of the Sahara. Over 60 million people,
a fifth of the world’s population, lived under the banner of the Roman eagle. But
Nero’s tyrannical fourteen-year reign would bring to an end Rome’s Golden Age. He
Was a perverse, cross-dressing exhibitionist who murdered his mother, brother and
wife and anyone else who stood in his way. His cruelty, violence and grotesque appetite
for self-indulgence brought the Roman Empire to the brink of political and financial
ruin. He viciously persecuted the Christians and they would remember him as the
ultimate embodiment of evil: the Antichrist.
Nero was born on 15 December 37AD in Antium. He was named Lucius Domitus
Ahenobarbus. His father, Ignatius, who was from an old Roman aristocratic family,
died when Nero was three years old. He had been a cruel, hard drinking man, who
once deliberately ran over a child in his chariot, and gouged out the eye of a knight in
the Roman forum for offending him.
Nero’s grandmother had become a fanatic, his father was a hopeless debauchee,
his uncles were either licentious or lunatic, or both, and one of his aunts had been
compromised by agreeing to leave her husband to enter an incestuous relationship
with her brother, the Emperor. But it was from his mother, Agrippina, that Nero
learnt about the realities of life in the royal household, and how to get what he
wanted, whatever the cost.
Raped by her brother Caligula when she was twelve, Agrippina was banished two
years after her son’s birth and Nero was sent to his aunt, Domita Lepida, who left him
alone and neglected, in conditions of terrible squalor. However, in 41AD Claudius
became Emperor and one of his first acts was to recall Agrippina from exile.
Agrippina arrived back in Rome, and married the immensely wealthy Passienus
Crispus, who died within a few years, leaving her all his money and estates. Now she
was free to pursue her ultimate goal.
Emperor Claudius was married to Messalina, who was debauched and unfaithful
to Claudius. Messalina eventually took her own life, and then Agrippina moved in and
consolidated her position. She had plotted to replace Messalina as Claudius’s wife, and
Ze THE MOST EVIL MEN AND WOMEN IN HISTORY

all
succeeded. They were married in 49AD. Agrippina was already the Emperor’s wife;
caution
that remained now was to ensure that she became the Emperor’s mother. But
use
was required. Nero was only eleven and, for the time being, Claudius was of more
to Agrippina alive than dead.
Nero received an education fit for a prince. Seneca was recalled from exile and
given the Praetorship. Seneca’s political acumen would prove invaluable to mother
and son in their later plots against Claudius.
In 50AD Agrippina persuaded Claudius to adopt Nero. There were precedents for
this and Claudius only had one son, Britannicus. But Claudius went even further than
Agrippina had hoped, and granted Nero precedence over his own son. Agrippina then
took steps to ensure that Nero would receive a superior education and continue to be
favoured over Britannicus by removing Britannicus’s tutors and replacing them with
her spies.
When Nero was sixteen, his mother engineered his marriage to the Emperor’s
daughter, Octavia, Nero’s stepsister. One by one, the Emperor's allies fell by the
wayside as Agrippina plotted their destruction, and now she could turn her attention
to the ageing Claudius himself. She summoned the expert poisoner, Locusta, who
prepared a dish of poisoned mushrooms. But the poison was slow in working.
Agrippina was wracked with nerves, and called the physician Xenophon who inserted
a feather smeared with a fast-working poison, into Claudius’s throat on the pretext of
inducing vomiting. On 12 October 54AD the Emperor Claudius died. The next day,
the Praetorian Guard declared Nero Emperor.
At the age of seventeen, Nero had become ruler of the biggest empire the world
had ever seen. But while the Romans celebrated in the streets, their new Emperor was
already showing a disturbing tendency towards violence.
Disguised as a slave, Nero trawled the street brothels and taverns with his friends.
They pilfered goods from shops, and assaulted wayfarers. When it became known that
the hoodlum was the Emperor, attacks on distinguished men and women multiplied —
since disorderliness was tolerated, indeed condoned, pseudo-Nero gangs proliferated
and behaved similarly. Rome, by night, became a lawless city.
Despite his delinquent behaviour, the start of Nero’s reign was greeted with great
enthusiasm. The young Emperor was seventeen, and it was believed, perhaps naively,
that he was not yet old enough to have been corrupted. His first official apperance was
at the funeral of the Divine Claudius — he addressed the crowd with a speech written
by his tutor, Seneca. He proposed to restore to the Senate the judicial powers that it had
enjoyed under Augustus; he was not going to make the same mistakes that Claudius had
made of confusing the administration of the Empire with that of his own household. It
was a masterstroke, since it ensured that the Senate left him alone to pursue his own
pleasures. Roman government went on as before and Rome looked forward to enjoying
a long era of gentle and kindly rule. But, as so often in Imperial Rome, political
calmness and moderation were cloaks for domestic upheaval and intrigue.
Desperate to consolidate her position, Agrippina fostered Nero’s paranoia towards
 eee ye
é ees
Nero gives the thumbs-down signal at the circus, so ending the life of some wretched defeated gladiator.
Vicious and merciless — among a huge list of crimes, he had his mother and his wife murdered — he took
has own life when even the people of Rome turned against him. (BerTmMann/Corsis)

his older brother, Britannicus. She reminded Nero that Britannicus was Claudius’s
true son so Nero soon came to believe that it would be much better if Britannicus were
dead. He needed to find a method that would not arouse suspicion, but to achieve this,
he would need help. He chose poison, which he obtained from Locusta, and then
ordered that the substance be brought into the dining room and given to Britannicus.
When Britannicus collapsed, Nero rewarded Locusta with immunity from prosecution
and an ample estate. He even sent her pupils.
With Britannicus now out of the way, Nero and his mother reigned with impunity.
They passed laws and appeared on Roman currency together, with Agrippina acting
as the young Emperor’s self-styled regent. She was determined to maintain absolute
control over her son and would go to any lengths to do so.
His mother had put supreme power into Nero’s hands, but, in so doing, she had
also given Nero the one thing that he had previously lacked — the authority to do what
he liked without consulting her first. Failure to realize this was Agrippina’s one fatal
mistake because when, at the beginning of 55AD, Nero had begun to tire of her, his
supreme power guaranteed that his rejection of her would be absolute throughout the
Empire.
Meanwhile, Nero’s wife, Octavia, who had lived for so long in the shadows, was
also put in danger, for Nero had become infatuated with Poppea, the wife of a Roman
24 THE MOST EVIL MEN AND WOMEN IN HISTORY

soldier, Nero quickly dispatched Poppea’s husband to a far-flung corner of the empire,
and settled down to a life of debauchery. However, Poppea, well aware that Nero
could not divorce Octavia whilst Agrippina was still alive, further fuelled his desire to
rid himself of his demanding mother.
As Nero’s thoughts turned from devotion to murder, he banished Agrippina and
started to hatch a bizarre plan with the Admiral of the Fleet. He ordered the
construction of a booby-trapped boat, designed to fall apart when under sail. When
the boat was completed, he invited Agrippina to join him at the resort town of Buyi,
for a festival. After a pleasant evening together, Nero kissed his mother farewell and
left by land, while she left by sea. Midway across the, bay, the concealed lead weights
crashed through the boat’s roof and it began to sink. But the injured Agrippina
managed to swim to safety.
When Nero heard that his mother had survived, he was terrified of what reprisals
she might take and immediately dispatched assassins to her villa. As the murderers
closed around her, she bared her abdomen, imploring her assailants to strike the
womb that had borne Nero.
It is rumoured that when Agrippina’s corpse was brought before him, Nero and
his gloating circle examined the dead body for its good and bad points, remarking,
between drinks, on the virtues of the legs, hips, arms and vagina, whilst handling the
corpse as if appraising a potential lover.
But his mother was not yet finished with Nero. He was haunted with guilt for
killing her, and she invaded his dreams. Nero complained that he was being pursued
by the Furies, and, unable to free himself from their menacing presence, he employed
Persian occultists to conjure up the ghost and exorcize it. However, the guilt that he
felt over his mother’s death did not diminish Nero’s thirst for blood, and shortly
afterwards he murdered his aunt, Domita, who had sheltered him during his earliest
years. Her estates at Baiae were the inducement. Nero had expensive tastes and they
needed to be paid for. Top of the list was his love of chariot-racing and the staging of
lavish spectacles and games. Nobles from the aristocratic Roman families were forced
to take part in front of the rabble of Rome and the ever-increasing foreign contingent
in the city. In the sideshows surrounding the amphitheatre, every kind of vice was
catered for. The climax of the shows was the appearance of Nero himself. He
recruited a claque of five thousand supporters, called the Augustans, to lead the
applause, which they did with deafening conviction, so that all the audience joined in
and Nero’s delight was unalloyed.
When he was singing, no one was permitted to leave the theatre, even for the most
pressing of reasons. It was alleged that a woman gave birth during one of his shows,
and many people who were tired of listening and applauding, either jumped furtively
off the walls when the entrance gates closed or else pretended to be dead and were
carried out for burial.
It was considered undignified and shocking for a Roman Emperor to show an
interest in the composition of poetry: it was an unthinkable affront for him to proclaim
 NERO 25

it in public and it was the height of profligacy, debauchery and dissipation to act in
drama. But if his antics made Nero an object of hatred to the aristocrats, it is by no
means certain that the general populace saw it in the same way.
In the year 60AD there were the first rumblings of discontent, emanating from the
murder of Agrippina. A comet appeared in the sky, a portent normally held to foretell
a change in dynasty. But, by now, Nero was drunk on his own omnipotence, even
urinating on the statue of Atargatis, a Syrian goddess he had previously worshipped,
as a gesture of his superiority.
Now that Agrippina was out of the way, Nero was planning to take Poppea as his
wife; however, several problems presented themselves, the most obvious of which was
that Octavia was held in very high regard by the Roman people and she also had the
protection of Burrus, commander of the Praetorian Guard. Conveniently, Burrus
died the following year, but while his death opened the way for Poppea to become
Empress, it also had far greater implications for Nero’s tutor, Seneca. Burrus and
Seneca had acted as brakes on Nero’s worst excesses and Seneca now found himself
replaced by others in Nero’s counsels. The stage was clear for a new manager of
Rome’s affairs — he was Ofonius Tigellinus and he would prove to be the very worst
of influences on an already dissipated Emperor.
Tigellinus’s first act was to take complete control of the Praetorian Guard — his
next would be to obtain mastery of Nero. He reckoned that the best way to make
himself indispensable was to find out whom Nero really feared. A conversation with
the Emperor revealed that Sulla and Plautus were two such men. Within six days,
Sulla’s head had been brought before Nero, whose only comment was to note that his
hair had turned grey. Plautus’s took a little longer to arrive, having come all the way
from Asia, and Nero remarked what a very big nose he had. Knowing that he would
be held accountable, Nero wrote to the Senate as though both victims were still alive,
complaining of their ambitious designs and expressing anxiety for the safety of the
state. When their deaths were reported Nero was applauded for his vigilance.
Nero now divorced Octavia, calling her a barren woman and banishing her to
Campania in Southern Italy, after which he married the scheming Poppea. But they
had both underestimated the popularity of Octavia. Public fervour was such that
recently erected statues of Poppea were smashed and replaced with those of Octavia.
Poppea convinced Nero that the mobs would butcher them both and reminded him
that if Octavia were to marry again, her husband could become the people’s
champion against Nero. The threat was obvious, Octavia must be murdered — and
quickly. Octavia was moved to Pandtaria, a barren and dismal island, where she soon
received news that she was to die. Nero concocted a story that she had been unfaithful
with his Admiral of the Fleet (who was rewarded in secret) and her fate was sealed.
Octavia was tightly bound and her veins were opened, but terror made her blood
congeal and flow too slowly. She was killed by being placed in a searingly hot bath.
Her severed head was sent to Rome for Nero and Poppea to gloat over. The Senate,
in all their hypocrisy, ordered a day of thanksgiving.
26 THE MOST EVIL MEN AND WOMEN IN HISTORY

s murder,
But the gods had not forgotten Nero’s deeds. In the same year as Octavia’
mass.
a statue of Nero, cast in bronze, was struck by lightning and reduced to a molten
an earthqu ake and the
Pompeii, the pleasure-loving city, was largely destroyed by
,
volcano Vesuvius was beginning to rumble. Nero and Poppea’s first child, Augusta
died and Nero, from all accounts, was genuinely wracked with grief:
On the night of 18 July 64AD Rome started to burn. It is uncertain whether it was
due to chance or to the treacherous designs of the Emperor. The fire began at the
Circus Maximus and the wind soon ensured that it spread far into the city. The speed
of the fire and the narrowness of the streets made it impossible for people to escape.
No one dared to extinguish the flames, for there were, people throwing oil onto them,
insisting they were acting under orders. Nero was at Anzio, and returned when the fire
started to threaten his own palace. Two sources of the time record that Nero was
reciting his poem ‘The Fall of Troy’ against the backdrop of a burning Rome, but this
has never been proved. A second fire then started on the property of Nero’s favourite,
Tigellinus, and this lent substance to the growing belief that Nero wanted Rome
obliterated, to build a new and more glorious city. The great Roman fire left hundreds

When, in July 644D, a great fire destroyed much of Rome and killed many of ts citrzens, it seemed that
Nero was the only person to have benefited. As a result, he made the Christians the scapegoats, fabricating
charges against them and then condemning them to die —in this case, byfacing the starving, maddened wild
animals at the circus, a depraved public spectacle of which Romans were only too fond. (BETTMANN/ CORBIS)
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 466 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100. Hofltng (Lutheran) : Das
Sacrament der Taufe. Erlangen, 1846 and 1848, 2 vols. Samuel
Miller (Presbyterian) : Infant Baptism Scriptural and Reasonable ;
and Baptism by Sprinkling or Affusion, the most Suitable and
Edifying Mode. Philadelphia, 1840. Alex. Carson (Baptist) : Baptism
in its Mode and Subjects. London, 1844 ; 5th Amer. ed., Philadelphia,
1850. Alex. Campbell (founder of the Church of the Disciples, who
teach that baptism by immersion is regeneration) : Christian
Baptism, with its Antecedents and Consequents. Bethany, 1848, and
Cincinnati, 1876. T. J. Conant (Baptist) : The Meaning and Use of
Baptism Philologically and Historically Investigated for the American
(Baptist) Bible Union. New York, 1861. James "W. Dale
(Presbyterian, d. 1881) : Classic Baptism. An inquiry into the
meaning of the word baptizo. Philadelphia, 1867. Judaic Baptism,
1871. Johannic Baptism, 1872. Christie and Patristic Baptism, 1874.
In all, 4 vols. Against the immersion theory. K. Ingham (Baptist) : A
Handbook on Christian Baptism, in 2 parts. London, 1868. D. B. Ford
(Baptist) : Studies on Baptism. New York, 1879. (Against Dale.) G. D.
Armstrong (Presbyterian minister at Norfolk, Va.) : The Sacraments
of the JVew Testament, as Instituted by CJirist. New York, 1880.
(Popular.) Dean Stanley : Christian Institutions. London and New
York, 1881. Chap. I. On the (post-apostolic) archaeology of baptism
see the archaeological works of Martene {De Antiquis Eccles.
Ritibus), Goar {Eucliologion Grcecorum), Btngham, Attgusti,
Btnterim, Stegel, Marttgny, and Smith and Cheetham (Diet, of Christ.
Ant., I., 155 sqq.). On the baptismal pictures in the catacombs see
the works of De Bossl, Garrucct, and Schaff on the Didache, pp. 36
sqq. 1. The idea of Baptism. It was solemnly instituted by Christ,
shortly before his ascension, to be performed in the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It took the place of circumcision
as a sign and seal of church membership. It is the outward mark of
Christian discipleship, the rite of initiation into the covenant of grace.
It is the sacrament of repentance (conversion), of remission of sins,
and of regeneration by the power of the Holy Spirit.1 In the nature
of the case it is to 1 Mark 1 : 4 (j8
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§ 54. baptism. 467 be received but once. It incorporates

the penitent sinner in the visible church, and entitles him to all the
privileges, and binds him to all the duties of this communion. Where
the condition of repentance and faith is wanting, the blessing (as in
the case of the holy Supper, and the preaching of the Word) is
turned into a curse, and what God designs as a savor of life unto life
becomes, by the unfaithfulness of man, a savor of death unto death.
The necessity of baptism for salvation h& been inferred from John 3
: 5 and Mark 16 : 16 ; but while we are bound to God's ordinances,
God himself is free and can save whomsoever and by whatsoever
means he pleases. The church has always held the principle that the
mere want of the sacrament does not condemn, but only the
contempt. Otherwise all unbaptized infants that die in infancy would
be lost. This horrible doctrine was indeed inferred by St. Augustin
and the Roman church, from the supposed absolute necessity of
baptism, but is in direct conflict with the spirit of the gospel and
Christ's treatment of children, to whom belongs the kingdom of
heaven. The first administration of this sacrament in its full Christian
sense took place on the birthday of the church, after the first
independent preaching of the apostles. The baptism of John was
more of a negative sort, and only preparatory to the baptism with
the Holy Spirit. In theory, Christian baptism is prefrom the baptism
of Christ, as a baptism by the Holy Spirit (irvev^oTt kyiu>) ; Matt.
3:11; Luke 3 : 1G ; John 1 : 33 (6 fknrrl(jm> iv irvev/xari ayim) ;
Acts 2 : 38 (the first instance of Christian baptism, when Peter called
on his hearers : yi (t av oriff o.t e, Kal fiaTrrtffb-firw e/ca(TT05 vfiwv
4v rw bvdfxari 'Iij
 468 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100. ceded by conversion, that
is the human act of turning from sin to God in repentance and faith,
and followed by regeneration, that is the divine act of forgiveness of
sin and inward cleansing and renewal. Yet in practice the outward
sign and inward state and effect do not always coincide ; in Simon
Magus we have an example of the baptism of water without that of
the Spirit, and in Cornelius an example of the communication of the
Spirit before the application of the water. In the case of infants,
conversion, as a conscious act of the will, is impossible and
unnecessary. In adults the solemn ordinance was preceded by the
preaching of the gospel, or a brief instruction in its main facts, and
then followed by more thorough inculcation of the apostolic doctrine.
Later, when great caution became necessary in receiving proselytes,
the period of catechetical instruction and probation was considerably
lengthened. 2. The usual form of baptism was immersion. This is
inferred from the original meaning of the Greek ficnrTi^eiv and
/3a7rTicr/i09 ; ' from the analogy of John's baptism in the Jordan ;
from the apostles' comparison of the sacred rite with the miraculous
passage of the Red Sea, with the escape of the ark from the flood,
with a cleansing and refreshing bath, and with burial and
resurrection ; finally, from the general custom of the ancient church,
which prevails in the East to this day.2 But 1 Comp. the German
taufen, the English dip. Grimm defines PairTifa (the frequentative of
fidirrw) : ' immergo, submergo ; ' Liddell and Scott : 'to dip in cr
xmder the water.'' But in the Sept. and the New Test, it has also a
wider meaning. Hence Robinson defines it : ' to wash, to lave, to
cleanse by washing.' See below. 2 The Oriental and the orthodox
Russian churches require even a threefold immersion, in the name of
the Trinity, and deny the validity of any other. They look down upon
the Pope of Rome as an un baptized heretic, and would not
recognize the single immersion of the Baptists. The Longer Russian
Catechism thus defines baptism : "A sacrament in which a man who
believes, having his body thrice plunged in water in the name of
God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, dies to the carnal life
of sin, and is born again of the Holy Ghost to a life spiritual and
holy." Marriott (in Smith and Cheetham, I., 1G1) says: ''■Triple
immersion, that is thrice dipping the head while standing in the
water, was the all but universal rule of the church in eaxly times,"
and quotes in proof Tertullian, Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom,
Jerome, Leo I., etc. But he admits, on page 168 sq.,
The text on this page is estimated to be only 28.77%
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§ 54. BAPTISM. 469 sprinkling, also, or copious pouring

rather, was practised at an early day with sick and dying persons,
and in all such cases where total or partial immersion was
impracticable. Some writers suppose that this was the case even in
the first baptism of the three thousand on the day of Pentecost ; for
Jerusalem was poorly supplied with water and private baths ; the
Kedron is a small creek and dry in summer ; but there are a number
of pools and cisterns there. Hellenistic usage allows to the relevant
expressions sometimes the wider sense of washing, bathing,
sprinkling, and ceremonial cleansing.1 Unquestionably, immersion
expresses the idea of baptism, as a purification and renovation of
the whole man, more completely than pouring or sprinkling ; but it is
not in keeping with the genius of the gospel to limit the operation of
the Holy Spirit by the quantity or the quality of the water or the
mode of its application. AVater is absolutely necessary to baptism, as
an appropriate symbol of the purifying and regenerating energy of
the Holy Spirit ; but whether the water be in large quantity or small,
cold or warm, fresh or salt, from river, cistern, or spring, is relatively
immaterial, and cannot affect the validity of the ordinance. 3. As to
the subjects of baptism : the apostolic origin of infant baptism is
denied not only by the Baptists, but also by many paedobaptist
divines. The Baptists assert that infant that affusion and aspersion
were exceptionally also used, especially in clinical baptism, the
validity of which Cyprian defended {Ep. 76 or 69 ad Magnum). This
mode is already mentioned in the Didache (ch. 7) as valid ; see my
book on the Did., third ed. , 1889, pp. 29 sqq. 1 2 Kings 5 : 14
(Sept.) ; Luke 11 : 38 ; Mark 7 : 4 (jSoirTKTjuouj norriplwv, etc.) ;
Heb. G : 2 {0cnmLa-i>6pois /3awn(r,uois). Observe also the
remarkable variation of reading in Matt. 7:4: iav /u.^ jBawriVoH'TCj
(except they bathe tlieinseioes), and '^avTicrcavrai (sprinkle
themselres). Westcott and Hort adopt the latter in the text, the
former in the margin. The Revision of 1881 reverses the order. The '
divers baptisms ' in Heb. 9:10 (in the Revision "'washings") probably
include all the ceremonial purifications of the Jews, whether by
bathing (Lev. 11 : 25; 14 : 9 ; Num. 19 : 7), or washing (Num. 19:7;
Mark 7 : 8), or sprinkling (Lev. 14 : 7 ; Num. 19 : 19). In the
figurative phrase &a.irTi(eiv h -rrvtvixan ayiw, to overwhelm,
plentifully to endow with the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:11; Luke 3:16;
Mark 1:8; John 1 : 33 ; Acts 1:5; 11 : 16), the idea of immersion is
scarcely admissible since the Holy Spirit ia poured out. See my Hist,
of the Apost. Ch., p. 569.
 470 FIRST PEEIOD. A.D. 1-100. baptism is contrary to the
idea of the sacrament itself, and, accordingly, an unscriptural
corruption. For baptism, say they, necessarily presupposes the
preaching of the gospel on the part of the church, and repentance
and faith on the part of the candidate for the ordinance ; and as
infants can neither understand preaching, nor repent and believe,
they are not proper subjects for baptism, which is intended only for
adult converts. It is true, the apostolic church was a missionary
church, and had first to establish a mother community, in the bosom
of which alone the grace of baptism can be improved by a Christian
education. So even under the old covenant circumcision was first
performed on the adult Abraham ; and so all Christian missionaries
in heathen lands now begin with preaching, and baptizing adults.
True, the Xew Testament contains no express command to baptize
infants ; such a command would not agree with the free spirit of the
gospel. Xor was there any compulsory or general infant baptism
before the union of church and state ; Constantine, the first
Christian emperor, delayed his baptism till his death-bed (as many
now delay their repentance) ; and even after Constantine there were
examples of eminent teachers, as Gregory Xazianzen, Augustin,
Chrysostom, who were not baptized before their conversion in early
manhood, although they had Christian mothers. But still less does
the Xew Testament forbid infant baptism ; as it might be expected to
do in view of the universal custom of the Jews, to admit their
children by circumcision on the eighth day after birth into the
fellowship of the old covenant. On the contrary, we have
presumptive and positive arguments for the apostolic origin and
character of infant baptism, first, in the fact that circumcision as
truly prefigured baptism, as the passover the holy Supper ; then in
the organic relation between Christian parents and children ; in the
nature of the new covenant, which is even more comprehensive
than the old ; in the universal virtue of Christ, as the Redeemer of all
sexes, classes, and ages, and especially in the import of his own
infancy, which has redeemed and sanctified the infantile age ; in his
ex 
 § 55. THE lord's supper. 471 press invitation to children,
whom he assures of a title to the kingdom of heaven, and whom,
therefore, he certainly would not leave without the sign and seal of
such membership ; in the words of institution, which plainly look to
the Christianizing, not merely of individuals, but of whole nations,
including, of course, the children ; in the express declaration of Peter
at the first administration of the ordinance, that this promise of
forgiveness of sins and of the Holy Spirit was to the Jews " and to
their children ; " in the five instances in the New Testament of the
baptism of whole families, where the presence of children in most of
the cases is far more probable than the absence of children in all ;
and finally, in the universal practice of the early church, against
which the isolated protest of Tertullian proves no more, than his
other eccentricities and Montanistic peculiarities; on the contrary, his
violent protest implies the prevailing practice of infant baptism. He
advised delay of baptism as a measure of prudence, lest the
baptized by sinning again might forever forfeit the benefit of this
ordinance ; but he nowhere denies the apostolic origin or right of
early baptism. "We must add, however, that infant baptism is
unmeaning, and its practice a profanation, except on the condition
of Christian parentage or guardianship, and under the guarantee of
a Christian education. And it needs to be completed by an act of
personal consecration, in which the child, after due instruction in the
gospel, intelligently and freely confesses Christ, devotes himself to
his service, and is thereupon solemnly admitted to the full
communion of the church and to the sacrament of the holy Supper.
The earliest traces of confirmation are supposed to be found in the
apostolic practice of laying on hands, or symbolically imparting the
Holy Spirit, after baptism.1 § 55. The Lord's Swpper. The
commentaries on Matt. 26 : 26 sqq., and the parallel passages in
Mark and Luke ; 1 Cor. 10 : 16, 17 ; 11 : 23 sqq. ; John 6 : 47-58;
63 1 Acts 8 : 15 ; 19 : 6 ; Heb. 6 : 2.
 472 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100. D. Waterland (Episcopal.,
d. 1740) : A Review of the Doctrine of till Eucharist, a new edition,
1868 ( Works, vols. IV. and V.). J. Dolltnger : Die Lehre ton der
Eucliaristie in den drei ersteti Jahrhunderten. Mainz, 1826. (Bom.
Cath.) Ebrard : Das Dogma vom heil. Abendmahl u. seine
Geschichte. Frankf. a. M., 1845, 2 vols., vol. I., pp. 1-231.
(Keformed.) J. W. Neven : The Mystical Presence. A Vindication of
the Reformed or Calvinistic Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist.
Philadelphia, 1846, pp. 199-256. (Beformed.) Kahnis : Die Lehre vom
heil. Abendmahl. Leipz., 1851. (Lutheran.) Robert "Wtlbebforce : The
Doctrine of tJte Holy Eucharist. London, 1853. (Anglican, or rather
Tractarian or Romanizing.) L. Istm. Buckert : Das Abendmahl. Sein
Wesen tend seine Geschichte in dei' alten Kirclte. Leipz., 1856.
(Rationalistic.) E. B. Pusey : The Doctrine of the Real Presence, as
contained in the Fathers, from St. John to the Fourth General
Council. Oxford, 1855. ( Anglo-Catholic. ) Philip Freeman : The
Principles of Divine Service. London, 1855-1862, in two parts.
(Anglican, contains much historical investigation on the subject of
eucharistic worship in the ancient Catholic church.) Thos. S. L. Vogan
: The True Doctrine of the Eucharist. London, 1871. (Anglican.) John
Harrison : An Atiswer to Dr. Pusei/s Cliallenge respecting the
Doctrine of tlie Real Presence. London, 1871, 2 vols. (Anglican, Low
Church. Includes the doctrine of the Scripture and the first eight
centuries.) Dean Stanley : Christian Institutions, London and New
York, 1881, chs. P7., V., and VI. (He adopts the Zwinglian view, and
says of the Marburg Conference of 1529 : " Everything which could
be said on behalf of the dogmatic, coarse, literal interpretation of the
institution was urged with the utmost vigor of word and gesture by
the stubborn Saxon. Everything which could be said on behalf of the
rational, refined, spiritual construction was urged with a union of the
utmost acuteness and gentleness by the sober-minded Swiss. ") L.
Gude (Danish Lutheran) : Den hellige Nadvere. Copenhagen, 1887, 2
vols. Exegetical and historical. Reviewed in Luthardt's " Theol.
Literaturblatt.," 1889, Nos. 14 sqq. The sacrament of the holy
Supper was instituted by Christ under the most solemn
circumstances, when he was about to offer himself a sacrifice for the
salvation of the world. It is the feast of the thankful remembrance
and appropriation of his atoning death, and of the living union of
believers with him, and their communion among themselves. As the
Passover kept in
 § 55. THE lord's supper. 473 lively remembrance the
miraculous deliverance from the land of bondage, and at the same
time pointed forward to the Lamb of God; so the eucharist
represents, seals, and applies the now accomplished redemption
from sin and death until the end of time. Here the deepest mystery
of Christianity is embodied ever anew, and the story of the cross
reproduced before us. Here the miraculous feeding of the five
thousand is spiritually perpetuated. Here Christ, who sits at the right
hand of God, and is yet truly present in his church to the end of the
world, gives his own body and blood, sacrificed for us, that is, his
very self, his life and the virtue of his atoning death, as spiritual
food, as the true bread from heaven, to all who, with due
selfexamination, come hungering and thirsting to the heavenly feast.
The communion has therefore been always regarded as the inmost
sanctuary of Christian worship. In the apostolic period the eucharist
was celebrated daily in connection with a simple meal of brotherly
love (agape), in which the Christians, in communion with their
common Redeemer, forgot all distinctions of rank, wealth, and
culture, and felt themselves to be members of one family of God.
But this childlike exhibition of brotherly unity became more and more
difficult as the church increased, and led to all sorts of abuses, such
as we find rebuked in the Corinthians by Paul. The lovefeasts,
therefore, which indeed were no more enjoined by law than the
rommunity of goods at Jerusalem, were gradually severed from the
eucharist, and in the course of the second and third centuries
gradually disappeared. The apostle requires the Christians ' to
prepare themselves for the Lord's Supper by self-examination, or
earnest inquiry whether they have repentance and faith, without
which they cannot receive the blessing from the sacrament, but
rather provoke judgment from God. This caution gave rise to the
appropriate custom of holding special preparatory exercises for the
holy communion. In the course of time this holy feast of love has
become the 1 1 Cor. 11 : 28.
 474 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100. subject of bitter
controversy, like the sacrament of baptism, and even the Person of
Christ himself. Three conflicting theories— transubstantiation,
consubstantiation, and spiritual pres ence of Christ — have been
deduced from as many interpretations of the simple words of
institution (" This is my body," etc.), which could hardly have been
misunderstood by the apostles in the personal presence of their
Lord, and in remembrance of his warning against carnal
misconception of his discourse on the eating of his flesh.1 The
eucharistic controversies in the middle ages and during the sixteenth
century are among the most unedifying and barren in the history of
Christianity. And yet they cannot have been in vain. The different
theories represent elements of truth which have become obscured or
perverted by scholastic subtleties, but may be purified and
combined. The Lord's Supper is : (1) a commemorative ordinance, a
memorial of Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross ; (2) a feast of
living union of believers with the Saviour, whereby they truly, that is
spiritually and by faith, receive Christ, with all his benefits, and are
nourished with his life unto life eternal ; (3) a communion of
believers with one another as members of the same mystical body of
Christ ; (4) a eucharist or thankoffering of our persons and services
to Christ, who died for us that we might live for him. Fortunately, the
blessing of the holy communion does not depend upon the scholastic
interpretation and understanding of the words of institution, but
upon the promise of the Lord and upon childlike faith in him. And
therefore, even now, Christians of different denominations and
holding different opinions can unite around the table of their
common Lord and Saviour, and feel one with him and in him. 1 John
6 : 63 : " It is the spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing ;
the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life." This
passage furnishes the key for the understanding of the previous
discourse, whether it refers to the Lord's Supper, directly or
indirectly, or not at all. That the iffri in the words of institution may
indicate a figurative or symbolical (as well as a real) relation, is now
admitted by all critical exegetes ; that it must bs so understood in
that connection is admitted by those who are not under the control
of a doctrinal bias. See my annotation? to Lange's Com. on Mattlieio.
26 : 26, pp. 470 sqq.
 § 5Q. SACRED PLACES. 475 § 56. Sacred Places. Although,
as the omnipresent Spirit, God may be worshipped in all places of
the universe, which is his temple,1 yet our finite, sensuous nature,
and the need of united devotion, require special localities or
sanctuaries consecrated to his worship. The first Christians, after the
example of the Lord, frequented the temple at Jerusalem and the
synagogues, so long as their relation to the Mosaic economy
allowed. But besides this, they assembled also from the first in
private houses, especially for the communion and the love feast. The
church itself was founded, on the day of Pentecost, in the upper
room of an humble dwelling. The prominent members and first
converts, as Mary, the mother of John Mark in Jerusalem, Cornelius
in Csesarea, Lydia in Philippi, Jason in Thessalonica, Justus in
Corinth, Priscilla in Ephesus, Philemon in Colosse, gladly opened
their houses for social worship. In larger cities, as in Rome, the
Christian community divided itself into several such assemblies at
private houses,5 which, however, are always addressed in the
epistles as a unit. That the Christians in the apostolic age erected
special houses of worship is out of the question, even on account of
their persecution by Jews and Gentiles, to say nothing of their
general poverty ; and the transition of a whole synagogue to the
new faith was no doubt very rare. As the Saviour of the world was
born in a stable, and ascended to heaven from a mountain, so his
apostles and their successors down to the third century, preached in
the streets, the markets, on mountains, in ships, sepulchres, caves,
and deserts, and in the homes of their converts. But how many
thousands of costly churches and chapels have since been built and
are constantly being built in all parts of the world to the honor of the
crucified Redeemer, who in the days of his humiliation had no place
of his own to rest his head ! 3 1 Comp. John 4 : 24. s fKK\r)
 476 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100. § 57. Sacred Times — The
Lord's Day. Literature. George Holden : The Cliristian Sabbath.
London, 1825. (See eh. V.) "W. Hengstenbebg : The Lord's Day.
Transl. from the German by James Mart hi, London, 1853. (Purely
exegetical ; defends the continental view, but advocates a better
practical observance.) John T. Baylee : History of the Sabbath.
London, 1857. (See chs. X.XIII.) James Aug. Hessey : Sunday: Its
Origin, History, and Present Obligation. Bampton Lectures, preached
before the University of Oxford, London, 1860. (Defends the
Dominican and moderate Anglican, as distinct both from the
Continental latitudinarian, and from the Puritanic Sabbatarian, view
of Sunday, with proofs from the church fathers.) James Gilfillan : The
Sabbath viewed in the Light of Reason, Revelation, and History, with
Sketches of its Literature. Edinb. 1861, republished and widely
circulated by the Am. Tract Society and the "New York Sabbath
Committee," New York, 1862. (The fullest and ablest defence of the
Puritan and Scotch Presbyterian theory of the Christian Sabbath,
especially in its practical aspects.) Bobeet Cox (F. S. A.) : Sabbath
Laws and Sabbath Duties. Edinb. 1853. By the same : The Literature
of tJie Sabbath Question. Edinb. 1865, 2 vols. (Historical, literary,
and liberal.) Th. Zahn : Geschichte des Sonntags in der alien Kirche.
Hannover, 1878. There is a very large Sabbath literature in the
English language, of a popular and practical character. For the Anglo-
American theory and history of the Christian Sabbath, compare the
author's essay, The Anglo-American Sabbath, New York, 1863 (in
English and German), the publications of the New York Sabbath
Committee from 1857-1886, the Sabbath Essays, ed. by Will. 0.
Wood, Boston (Congreg. Publ. Soc), 1879 ; and A. E. Waffle : TTte
Lord's Day, Philad. 1886. As every place, so is every clay and hour
alike sacred to God, who fills all space and all time, and can be
worshipped everywhere and always. But, from the necessary
limitations of our earthly life, as well as from the nature of social and
public worship, springs the use of sacred seasons. The apostolic
church followed in general the Jewish usage, but purged it from
superstition and filled it with the spirit of faith and freedom. 1.
Accordingly, the Jewish hours of dally prayer, particularly
 § 57. SACRED TIMES — THE LORD'S DAY. 477 in the
morning and evening, were observed as a matter of habit, besides
the strictly private devotions which are bonnd to no time. 2. The
Lord's Day took the place of the Jewish Sabbath as the weekly day
of public worship. The substance remained, the form was changed.
The institution of a periodical weekly day of rest for the body and
the soul is rooted in our physical and moral nature, and is as old as
man, dating, like marriage, from paradise.1 This is implied in the
profound saying of our Lord : " The Sabbath is made for man." It is
incorporated in the Decalogue, the moral law, which Christ did not
come to destroy, but to fulfil, and which cannot be robbed of one
commandment without injury to all the rest. At the same time the
Jewish Sabbath was hedged around by many national and
ceremonial restrictions, which were not in- ' tended to be
permanent, but were gradually made so prominent as to
overshadow its great moral aim, and to make man subservient to
the sabbath instead of the sabbath to man. After the exile and in the
hands of the Pharisees it became a legal bondage rather than a
privilege and benediction. Christ as the Lord of the Sabbath opposed
this mechanical ceremonialism and restored the true spirit and
benevolent aim of the institu1 Gen. 2 : 3. TLis passage is sometimes
explained in a proleptic sense ; but religious rest-days, dies feriati,
are found among most ancient nations, aud recent Assyrian and
Babylonian discoveries confirm the pre-Mosaic origin of the weekly
Sabbath. See Sayce's revision of George Smith's Chaldean Account
of Genesis, Lond. and N. York, 1881, p. 89 : ''If references to the Fall
are few and obscure, there can be no doubt that the Sabbath was
an Accadian [primitive Chaldaean] institution, intimately connected
with the worship of the seven planets. The astronomical tablets have
shown that the seven-day week was of Accadian origin, each day of
it being dedicated to the 6un, moon, and five planets, and the word
Sabbath itself, under the form of Sabattu, was known to the
Assyrians, and explained by them as ' a day of rest for the heart.' A
calendar of Saints' days for the mo.th of the intercalary Elul makes
the 7th, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days of the lunar months,
Sabbaths on which no work was allowed to be done. The Accadian
words by which the idea of Sabbath is denoted, literally mean : ' a
day on which work is unlawful,' and are interpreted in the bilingual
tablets as signifying • a day of peace or completion of labors.' "
Smith then gives the rigid injunctions
 478 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100. tion.1 When the slavish,
superstitious, and self-righteous Sabbatarianism of the Pharisees
crept into the Galatian churches and was made a condition of
justification, Paul rebuked it as a relapse into Judaism.2 The day was
transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week, not on the
ground of a particular command, but by the free spirit of the gospel
and by the power of certain great facts which lie at the foundation of
the Christian church. It was on that day that Christ rose from the
dead ; that he appeared to Mary, the disciples of Emmaus, and the
assembled apostles ; that he poured out his Spirit and founded the
church ; 3 and that he revealed to his beloved disciple the mysteries
of the future. Hence, the first day was already in the apostolic age
honorably designated as " the Lord's Day." On that day Paul met
with the disciples at Troas and preached till midnight. On that day he
ordered the Galatian and Corinthian Christians to make, no doubt in
connection with divine service, their weekly contributions to
charitable objects according to their ability. It appears, therefore,
from the Xew Testament itself, that Sunday was observed as a day
of worship, and in special commemoration of the Resurrection,
whereby the work of redemption was finished.4 The universal and
uncontradicted Sunday observance in the 1 Matt. 12 : 1 sqq., 10
sqq., and the parallel passages in Mark and Luke ; also John 5 : 8
sqq. ; 6 : 23 ; 9 : 14, 16. 2 Gal. 4 : 10 ; comp. Roin. 14 : 5 ; Col. 2 :
16. The spirit of the pharisaical Sabbatarianism with which Christ
and St. Paul had to deal may be inferred from the fact that even
Gamaliel. Paul's teacher, and one of the wisest and most liberal
Rabbis, let his ass die on the sabbath because he thought it a sin to
unload him ; and this was praised as an act of piety. Other Rabbis
prohibited the saving of an ass from a ditch on tbe sabbath, but
allowed a plank to be laid so as to give the beast a chance to save
himself. One great controversy between the schools of Shammai and
Hillel turned around the mighty question whether it was lawful to eat
an egg which was laid on the sabbath day, and the wise Hillel denied
it ! Then it would be still more sinful to eat a chicken that had the
misfortune to be born, or to be killed, on a sabbath. 3 The day of
Pentecost (whether Saturday or Sunday) is disputed, but the church
always celebrated it on a Sunday. See § 24, p. 241. 4 John 20 : 19,
28 ; Acts 20 : 7 ; 1 Cor. 16 : 2 ; Rev. 1 : 10.
 § 57. SACRED TIMES — THE LORD'S DAY. 479 second
century can only be explained by the fact that it had its roots in
apostolic practice. Such observance is the more to be appreciated as
it had no support in civil legislation before the age of Constantine,
and must have been connected with many inconveniences,
considering the lowly social condition of the majority of Christians
and their dependence upon their heathen masters and employers.
Sunday thus became, by an easy and natural transformation, the
Christian Sabbath or weekly day of rest, at once answering the
typical import of the Jewish Sabbath, and itself forming in turn a
type of the eternal rest of the people of God in the heavenly
Canaan.1 In the gospel dispensation the Sabbath is not a
degradation, but an elevation, of the week days to a higher plane,
looking to the consecration of all time and all work. It is not a legal
ceremonial bondage, but rather a precious gift of grace, a privilege,
a holy rest in God in the midst of the unrest of the world, a day of
spiritual refreshing in communion with God and in the fellowship of
the saints, a foretaste and pledge of the never-ending Sabbath in
heaven. The due observance of it, in which the churches of England,
Scotland, and America, to their incalculable advantage, excel the
churches of the European continent, is a wholesome school of
discipline, a means of grace for the people, a safeguard of public
morality and religion, a bulwark against infidelity, and a source of
immeasurable blessing to the church, the state, and the family. Xext
to the Church and the Bible, the Lord's Day is the chief pillar of
Christian society. Besides the Christian Sunday, the Jewish Christians
observed their ancient Sabbath also, till Jerusalem was destroyed.
After that event, the Jewish habit continued only among the
Ebionites and Xazarenes. As Sunday was devoted to the
commemoration of the Saviour's resurrection, and observed as a day
of thanksgiving and joy, so, at least as early as the second century, if
not sooner, 1 Comp. Heb. 4 : 1-11 j Rev. 4 : 13.
 480 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100. Friday came to be
observed as a day of repentance, with prayer and fasting, in
commemoration of the sufferings and death of Christ. 3. Atvnttat.
festivals. There is no injunction for their observance, direct or
indirect, in the apostolic writings, as there is no basis for them in the
Decalogue. But Christ observed them, and two of the festivals, the
Passover and Pentecost, admitted of an easy transformation similar
to that of the Jewish into the Christian Sabbath. From some hints in
the Epistles,1 viewed in the light of the universal and uncontradicted
practice of the church in the second century, it may be inferred that
the annual celebration of the death and the resurrection of Christ,
and of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, originated in the apostolic
age. In truth, Christ crucified, risen, and living in the church, was the
one absorbing thought of the early Christians ; and as this thought
expressed itself in the weekly observance of Sunday, so it would also
very naturally transform the two great typical feasts of the Old
Testament into the Christian Easterand Whit-Sunday. The Paschal
controversies of the second century related not to the fact, but to
the time of the Easter festival, and Polycarp of Smyrna and Anicet of
Rome traced their customs to an unimportant difference in the
practice of the apostles themselves. Of other annual festivals, the
New Testament contains not the faintest trace. Christmas came in
during the fourth century by a natural development of the idea of a
church year, as a sort of chronological creed of the people The
festivals of Mary, the Apostles, Saints, and Martyrs, followed
gradually, as the worship of saints spread in the Xicene and post-
Xicene age, until almost every day was turned first into a holy day
and then into a holiday. As the saints overshadowed the Lord, the
eaints' days overshadowed the Lord's Day. 1 1 Cor. 5 : 7, 8 ; 16:8;
Acts 18 : 21 ; 20 : 6, 16.
 § 58. LITERATURE. 481 CHAPTER X. ORGANIZATION OF
THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH. § 58. Literature. I. Soubces. The Acts
represent the first, the Pastoral Epistles the second stage of the
apostolic church polity. Bauk (Die sogenannten Pastoralbriefe des Ap.
Paulus, 1835), Holtzmann (Die Pastoralbriefe, 1880, pp. 190 sqq.),
and others, who deny the Pauline authorship of the Epistles to
Timothy and Titus, date the organization laid down there from the
post-apostolic age, but it belongs to the period from a.d. 60-70. The
Epistles to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 12 : 28) and to the Ephesians (4 :
11), and the Apocalyptic Epistles (Rev. chs. 2 and 3) contain
important hints on the church offices. Comp. the Didache, and the
Epp. of Clement and Ignatius. II. General Works. Comp. in part the
works quoted in ch. IX. (especially Vitringa), and the respective
sections in the " Histories of the Apostolic Age " by Neander,
Thiersch (pp. 73, 150, 281), Lechler, Lange, and Schaff (Amer. ed.,
pp. 495-545). HI. Separate Works. Episcopal and Presbyterian
writers during the seventeenth century, and more recently, have paid
most attention to this chapter, generally with a view of defending
their theory of church polity. Richard Hooker (called "the Judicious,"
moderate Anglican, d. 1600) : Ecclesiastical Polity, 1594, and often
since, best edition by Keble, 1836, in 4 vols. A standard work for
Episcopal churchmen. Jos. Bingham (Anglican, d. 1668) : Origines
Ecclesiastica> ; or, Tlie Antiquities of the Christian Church, first
published 1710-22, in 10 vols. 8vo, and often since, Books II.-TV.
Still an important work. Thomas Cartwright (the father of English
Presbyterianism, d. 1603) : Director)/ of Church Government
anciently contended for, written in 1583, published by authority of
the Long Parliament in 1644. 31
 482 FIRST PERIOD. A.D. 1-100. In the controversy during
the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly, Bishop Hall and
Archbishop Ussher were the most learned champions of episcopacy ;
-while the five Smectymnians (so called from their famous tract
Smectymnuus, 1641, in reply to Hallj, i.e., -Stephen JLfarshall,
isdmund Calamy, Thomas Tbung, J/atthew JVewcomen, and William
.Spurstow, were the most prominent Presbyterians trying to "
demonstrate the parity of bishops and presbyters in Scripture, and
the antiquity of ruling elders." See also A Vindication of the
Presbyterian Government and Ministry, London, . 1650, and Jus
Divinum Ministerii Etangelici, or the Divine Right of the Gospel
Ministry, London, 1654, both published by the Provincial Assembly of
London. These books have only historical interest. Samuel Miller
(Presbyterian d. 1850) : Letters concerning the Constitution and
Order of the Christian Ministry, 2d ed., Philadelphia, 1830. James P.
Wilson (Presbyterian) : The Primitive Government of Christian
Churches. Philadelphia, 1833 (a learned and able work). Joh. Adam
Mohler (Rom. Cath., d. 1848) : Die Einheit der Kirche, oder das
Princip des Katholicismus, dargestellt im Geiste der Kirchenvater der
drei ersten Jahrhunderte: Tubingen, 1825 (new ed. 1844). More
important for the post-apostolic age. Rich. Rothe (d. 1866) : Die
Anfange der christlichen Kirche u. ihrer Yerfassung, vol. I. Wittenb.,
1837, pp. 141 sqq. A Protestant counterpart of Mohler's treatise,
exceedingly able, learned, and acute, but wrong on the question of
church and state, and partly also on the origin of the episcopate,
which he traces back to the apostolic age. F. Che. Baur : TJeber den
Ursprung des Episcopates in der christl. Kirche. Tubingen, 1838.
Against Rothe. William Palmer (Anglo-Catholic) : A Treatise on the
Church of Christ. London, 1838, 2 vols., 3d ed., 1841. Amer. ed.,
with notes, by Bishop Whittingha7n, New York, 1841. W. Lohe
(Luth.) : Die jV. T. lichen Aemter u. ihr Verhaltniss zur Gemeinde.
Niirnb. 1848. Also : Drei Biicher von der Kirche, 1845. Fe. Delttzsch
(Luth.) : Tier Bucher von der Kirche. Leipz., 1847. J. Kostlin (Luth.) :
Das Wesen der Kirche nach Lehre und Geschichte des JV. T, Gotha,
1854 ; 2d ed. 1872. Samuel Davidson (Independent) : The
Ecclesiastical Polity of the Neve Testament. London, 1848 ; 2d ed.
1854. Ralph Wabdlaw (Independent) : Congregational
Independency, in contradistinction to Episcopacy and
Presbyterianism, the Church Polity of the Yew Testament. London,
1848. Albert Barnes (Presbyterian, d. 1870) : Organization and
Government of the Apostolic Church. Philadelphia, 1855. Charles
Hodge (Presbyterian, d. 1878) and others : Essays r?u the Primitive
Church Offices, reprinted from the "Princeton Review," N. York,
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