NERO THE LION. 229 B.C. 484) mentions writing on skins as common in his time; and Ctesias (B.C. 398) describes the ancient Persian records as written on leather The word Pergamena is supposed by some to prove its invention at Pergamos, where, probably, it was improved and largely manufactured; but the word itself was not in use until many years after Eumenes, its supposed inventor, died. According to Mabillon, it first occurs in the writings of Satto, a monk of the fourth century, before whose time the usual word was membrana, the word we find in the Greek Testament.Bible Lore. 1198.-NERO THE LION. 2 Tim. iv. 17.-" And I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. Illustrative. It is not necessary to suppose that St. Paul was actually exposed to wild beasts in the circus, or even in peril of such an exposure. Probably his rights as a Roman citizen would preserve him from that indignity. And he evidently uses the term "lion" as a figure for the terrible ruler who then occupied the throne. It is difficult to give an adequate account of the horrors of his reign. Conybeare and Howson say of him :-"The reverential awe which his position naturally suggested, was changed into contempt and loathing by the character of the sovereign who now presided over the supreme tribunal of Rome. For Nero was a man whom even the awful attribute of 'power equal to the gods,' could not render august, except in title. The fear and horror excited by his omnipotence and his cruelty, was blended with contempt for his ignoble lust of praise, and his shameless licentiousness. He had not as yet plunged into that extravagance of tyranny which, at a later period, exhausted the patience of his subjects, and brought him to destruction. Hitherto his public measures had been guided by sage advisers, and his cruelty had injured his own family rather than the State. But already, at the age of twenty-five, he had murdered his innocent wife and his adopted brother, and had dyed his hands in the blood of his mother. Yet even these enormities seem to have disgusted the Romans less than his prostitution of the Imperial purple, by publicly performing as a musician on the stage, and a charioteer in the circus. His degrading want of dignity and insatiable appetite for vulgar applause, drew tears from the councillors and servants of his house, who could see him slaughter his nearest relatives without remonstrance.” CANON FARRAR gives a vivid picture of him in a contrast with his prisoner. "Nero, not yet thirty years of age, was stained through and through with every possible crime, and steeped to the very lips in every nameless degradation. Of all the black and damning iniquities against which, as St. Paul had often to remind his heathen converts, the wrath of God for ever burns, there was scarcely one of which Nero had not been guilty. A wholesale robber, a pitiless despot, an intriguer, a poisoner, a murderer, a matricide, a liar, a coward, a drunkard, a glutton, incestuous, unutterably depraved, his evil and debased nature-of which even Pagans had spoken as 'a mixture of blood and mud'-had sought abnormal outlets to weary, if it could not sate, its insatiable proclivity to crime. He was that last worst specimen of human wickedness—a man who, not content with every exisiting form of vice and sin in which the taint of human nature had found a vent, had become 'an inventor of evil things.' He had usurped a throne; he had poisoned, under guise of affection, the noble boy who was its legitimate heir; he had married the sister of that boy, only to break her heart by his brutality, and finally to order her assassination; he had first planned the murder, then ordered the execution of his own mother, who, however deep her guilt, had yet committed her many crimes for love of him; he had treacherously sacrificed the one great general whose victories gave any lustre to his reign; among other murders too numerous to count, he had ordered the deaths of the brave soldier and the brilliant philosopher who had striven to guide his wayward and intolerable heart; he had disgraced imperial authority with every form of sickening and monstrous folly; he had dragged the charm of youth, and the natural dignity of manhood through the lowest mire; he had killed by a kick the worthless but beautiful woman whom he had torn from her own husband to be his second wife; he had reduced his own capital to ashes, and buffooned and fiddled and sung with his cracked voice in public theatres, regardless of the misery and starvation of thousands of its ruined citizens; he had charged his incendiarism upon the innocent Christians, and tortured them to death by hundreds in hideous martyrdoms; he had done his best to render infamous his rank, his country, his ancestors, the name of Roman-nay, even the very name of man." 1199.-CLAUDIA. 2 Tim. iv. 21.-"Eubulus greeteth thee, and Pudens, and Linus, and Claudia, and all the brethren." Illustrative. It is not improbable that Claudia was the daughter of a British king, and perhaps a native of Chichester. In A.D. 42, Aulus Plautius was sent by Claudius to conquer Britain. One of the British chiefs, Cogidunus, was made king of the Regni, i.e., the inhabitants of Sussex and Surrey (Tacit. Agree., 14). Assuming the name of his patron, he became Tiberius Claudius Cogidunus, and it is conjectured that he had a daughter whom, in honour of Claudius, he called Claudia. About CLAUDIA. 231 this time there appeared in Rome a British lady of great beauty by the name of Claudia, and it was common for the children of subject princes to be educated at the Imperial court as hostages. Now, Pomponia Græcina, the wife of Aulus Plautius, had become a Christian (Tacit. Ann xiii. 32), and Claudia would be under her protection, and adopt her religion. Martial (Epig. iv. 13) states that Pudens married Claudia, a foreigner; and in another epigram (xi. 53) he says she was a Britain. In 1723, during some excavations at Chichester (the Roman capital of Sussex) the following inscription was found :--"This temple to Neptune and Minerva, the company of Smiths, and those in office amongst them, by the authority of Tiberius Claudius Cogidunus, Legate of Augustus in Britain, have dedicated, at their own cost, for the weal of the Imperial house, Pudens, the son of Pudentius granting the site." Here we have Pudens, the husband of Claudia, holding possessions among the Regni, which is readily accounted for, if Claudia was the daughter of Cogidunus. -LEWIN'S Life of Paul. EPISTLE TO TITUS. TITUS I. 1200.-RECORDS OF TITUS. Titus i. 4.-"To Titus, mine own son after the common faith." Descriptive.-Attempts have been made to identify Titus with one or other of the characters prominent in the Acts-with Luke himself, for instance, or Silvanus (Silas). The only possible identification, however, is with the "Justus" of Acts xviii. 7, to which name, in some of the older authorities, the name "Titus" is prefixed. The circumstances, as far as we know them, connected with Justus, would fit in with this identification. This Justus was, like Titus, closely connected with Corinth; and, like Titus, too, was an uncircumcised Gentile, attending the Jewish services as a proselyte of the gate. That these two were identical is possible, but nothing more. Titus was of Gentile parentage, and probably a native of Antiochthe great centre of that early Gentile Christianity of which St. Paul was the first teacher, and, under the Holy Ghost, the founder. Some time before A.D. 50-51 the master and scholar had come together. In that year Titus accompanied Barnabas and Paul to the council of apostles and elders, which was convened at Jerusalem, to consider the question of the general obligations of the Mosaic law. The result was the drawing up of the charter of Gentile freedom from all the restraints of the Jewish law (see Acts xv.; Gal. ii. 1-3). From that time the glad tidings that Christ was indeed a Light to the Gentiles spread through Asia, North Africa, and Europe, with a strange and marvellous rapidity. There is no doubt, from the scattered notices in the Epistles of St Paul, that Titus was one of the most active agents in the promulgation of the Gospel-story among the peoples that had hitherto sat in darkness and in the shadow of death. Titus, as we have seen, was a Gentile-was the one chosen by the great Apostle in very early days as the example of Christian freedom RECORDS OF TITUS. 233 from Jewish rites and customs. At first the pupil, then the friend of St. Paul, we find him, in the brief notices in the Epistles, evidently occupying a position quite independent of, and in no wise subject to, his old master. He is St. Paul's "brother," "companion," "fellow-labourer " (2 Cor. viii. 22, 23); St. Paul's trusted and honoured friend. His missions of investigation and love, his arrangements for the famous collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem, were apparently undertaken spontaneously, rather than by the direction of a superior and elder officer of the church (see 2 Cor. viii. 6, 16, 17). Later on the appointment of the brilliant and successful Gentile organiser to the chief superintendence of the churches of Crete was one of singular fitness. "There was," as it has been well said, “a strange blending of races and religions," in the island which boasted the possession of the birthplace of Zeus (Jupiter), and rejoiced in the vile mysterie practised in the worship of Dionysus (Bacchus). There were many Jews we know at Crete, but the Gentile population, of course, far outnumbered them. The congregations seem to have been numerous and full of life, but disorganised, and troubled with disorder, misrule, and even dishonoured with many an excess utterly at variance with their Christian profession. Who so fitted to restore order and to enforce a sterner rule in such communities as the friend of St. Paul, who had worked already so great a work among the turbulent and licentious Christians of Corinth, and had persuaded by his marvellous skill so many Gentile congregations to unite in helping with a generous liberality the pressing needs of their proud and haughty Jewish brethren who disdained them? We know After the year A.D. 65-66 the story of Titus is uncertain. he rejoined the Apostle at Rome, and left him again for Dalmatia (2 Tim. iv. 10). Then traditionary recollections, which lingered in Crete tell us how he returned from Dalmatia to the island, where he worked long and presided over the churches, and died at an advanced age. The Church of Megalo Castron, in the north of the island, was dedicated to him. In the Middle Ages his name was still revered, and his memory honoured. The name of Titus was the watchword of the Cretans when they fought against the Venetians, who came under the standard of St. Mark. The Venetians themselves, when here, seem to have transferred to him part of that respect which elsewhere would probably have been manifested for St. Mark alone. During the celebras tion of several great festivals of the Church, the response of the Latin clergy of Crete, after the prayer for the Doge of Venice, was, Sancte Marce tu nos adjuva; but after that, for the Duke of Candia, Sancte Tite tu nos adjuva.-CANON SPENCE. |