Attitude Towards Christians
Although, before becoming emperor, Marcus Aurelius followed the lenient line of the emperors Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, he is listed among the persecutors of Christians along with Nero, Domitian and Decius. Henry Wace attributes his severity as emperor to rivalry between the rising teachers of Christianity and the professors of the school of Stoicism to which the emperor belonged, to a personal bitterness to which he gave expression in his Meditations, and to the occurrence of natural calamities that the populace attributed to the anger of the gods against those who denied them and that the Christians saw as signs of the end of the world.
Read more about this topic: Marcus Aurelius
Famous quotes containing the words attitude and/or christians:
“Einstein is not ... merely an artist in his moments of leisure and play, as a great statesman may play golf or a great soldier grow orchids. He retains the same attitude in the whole of his work. He traces science to its roots in emotion, which is exactly where art is also rooted.”
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939)
“There are only two sorts of people in life you can trust—good Christians and good Communists.”
—Joe Slovo (b. 1926)