The separating of the circumcised from the rest roused the suspicion that the followers of Jacob, the supporters of Jerusalem, had had some- thing to do with the matter. These people had always kept themselves apart from the Christians, following their own Jewish customs and looking on themselves as more devout than others. Violent disputes also broke out between the supporters of Cephas and those of Paul. The result was that the remaining prisoners were encouraged to denounce Christians of other kinds as much as possible. Even those who kept calm were drawn into this envy and vengefulness, and they too denounced others. There were also some who reasoned sensibly and considered it would be best to denounce as many people as possible, and highly placed people as well.
The more we are, they thought, the more impossible it will be to hold a trial. Paul was released. Tigellinus will soon come to his senses when he sees how many and how influential we are.
During the night, whole families and relatives had been arrested in this way all over Rome, so swiftly that the Praetorians could only just keep up.
Tigellinus received a gloomy awakening in the morning after his night of wine and boys. His eyes were met by the sight of the Praetorians’ huge parade ground filled with well-dressed people humbly sitting in families on the ground. Long lists of people who had been denounced were shown to him and he was asked whether house searches and arrests were also to be made of people with the rank of senator and Consul.
At first he did not believe all these reports, but said that the Christian criminals had out of sheer ill-will accused honorable citizens. So he walked threateningly around the parade ground with his whip in his hand, asking here and there: “Are you really Christians?” All of them admitted gladly and trustfully that they believed in Christ.
They were such respectable and innocent people that he did not have the nerve to give them as much as a flick of his whip, but decided that some kind of fearful mistake had been made. He and his colleagues calculated with the help of their lists that there were about twenty thousand people from all walks of life still waiting to be arrested. To punish that number seemed insane.
Rumors about the mass arrests of Christians had of course spread all over Rome. Tigellinus was soon besieged by hordes of envious and malicious people who all wished to tell him that with their own eyes they had seen the Christians gathering on the hillsides during the fire, singing songs of praise and predicting the fire which was about to fall on the city from the sky.
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In the Praetorium, complete chaos reigned. The people who had been billeted in emergency housing on Mars field took the opportunity to break into homes they knew were Christian, mistreat others and plunder their shops, without differentiating between Christian and Jew.
Unhindered by the police, excited crowds arrived at the Praetorium dragging bloodstained and ill-treated Christians and Jews with them to have them charged, now they had heard that the fire-raisers had been exposed. Tigellinus still had sufficient wits left to speak firmly to these people, forbidding them to take the law into their own hands regardless of their understandable rage, and he assured them the Emperor would punish the guilty in a way that their terrible crimes deserved.
Then he sent the Praetorians out to restore order in the city. During these violent hours of the morning, the Christians were more secure within the walls of the Praetorium than they would have been in their own homes.
Since early in the morning, frightened refugees had been gathering in my house and garden on Avendne, in the hope that my rank and position would give them some security. The neighbors behaved threateningly by shouting epithets and hurling stones over the garden walls. I dared not arm my slaves, or the Christians would have been accused of armed resistance as well, so I ordered the entrance to be guarded as closely as possible. I had been put in an unpleasant position. The only fortunate thing was that Claudia had finally agreed to go with the servants to my country property in Caere, to give birth to our child there.
My anxiety over her made me sensitive and not willing to be too hard on her beloved Christians, in case I brought misfortune on her delivery. After thinking over the various possibilities, I spoke to them seriously and advised them to leave the city at once, for it was evident that some stern indictment of the Christians was coming.
But the Christians protested that no one could prove that they had done anything wrong; on the contrary, they had tried to avoid all vices and sins and lead a quiet life. They had in their human weakness perhaps sinned against Christ, but the Emperor or the State they had not injured in any way. So they wished to appoint lawyers who would defend their imprisoned brothers and sisters, and they themselves wished to take food and drink to them in their distress. At that time it was still not clear what an enormous number of people had been arrested during the night.
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