CHRISTIAN WRITERS 



LVII. LACTANTIUS. 



When we turn to the Christian writers, whom it is convenient to 

 take by themselves, we pass into a different atmosphere. Of rhetoric 

 there is plenty, for most of them had been subjected to the same literary 

 influences as their Pagan contemporaries. But there is a marked differ- 

 ence of spirit, more especially in one respect very important from the 

 point of view of the present inquiry. Christianity might counsel sub- 

 mission to the powers that be: it might recognize slavery as an insti- 

 tution: it might enjoin on the slave to render something beyond eye- 

 service to his legal master. But it could never shake off the fundamental 

 doctrine of the equal position of all men before their Almighty Ruler, 

 and the prospect of coming life in another world, in which the standards 

 and privileges dominating the present one would go for nothing. There- 

 fore a Christian writer differed from the Pagan in his attitude towards 

 the poor and oppressed. He could sympathize with them, not as a 

 kindly though condescending patron, but as one conscious of no abiding 

 superiority in himself. The warmth with which the Christian witnesses 

 speak is genuine enough. The picture may be somewhat overdrawn 

 or too highly coloured, and we must allow for some exaggeration, but 

 in general it is surely true to fact. 



First comes Lactantius, who has already 1 been once quoted. 

 Writing under Constantine, he speaks of the Diocletian or Galerian 

 persecution as a contemporary. The passage 2 to be cited here describes 

 the appalling cruelty of the fiscal exactions ordered by Galerius to 

 meet the pressing need of the government for more money. It was 

 after the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian in 305. The troubles 

 that ensued had no doubt helped to render financial necessities extreme. 

 The remark, that he now practised against all men the lessons of cruelty 

 learnt in tormenting the Christians, must refer to Galerius. The account 

 of the census 3 , presumably that of 307, is as follows. ' What brought 

 disaster on the people and mourning on all alike, was the sudden letting 

 loose of the census on the provinces and cities. Census-officers, sparing 

 nothing, spread all over the land, and the scenes were such as when 



1 Above, p 393. 2 de mortibus persecutors m 22-3. 



3 For the census under the new system, first in 297 and then every fifth year, see Seeck 

 II pp 263 foil. It was only concerned with the land and taxation units liable to the levy of 

 annona. De Coulanges pp 75-85 urges that the system already described by Ulpian in 

 Dig L 15 3, 4, is much the same, and points out that monastic records shew it still sur- 

 viving in the early Middle Age. But practice, rather than principle, is here in question. 



