It may be that in certain places those Jews who accepted the evangel almost at once formed congregations of their own, synagogues or ecclesiae (the terms are practically synonymous),[341] different from the synagogues of those who rejected it. But there were from the beginning differences of degree in its acceptance, and even in the existing recension of the Acts there is good evidence that its acceptance or rejection did not immediately and everywhere produce a schism.
In the city of Rome a persecution of Christians, as distinct from Jews, took place under Nero. That fact is attested by both Suetonius and Tacitus and by the earliest of the Christian writers. Tertullian quotes the _commentarii_, the official records, for it.
The record as it appears in Suetonius is characteristically different from that in Tacitus. In Suetonius we have a brief statement (Nero, 16): _Afflicti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae ac maleficae_, “Punishment was inflicted upon the Christians, a class of men that maintained a new and harmful form of superstition.” This statement is made as one item, apparently of minor importance, in the list of Nero’s creditable actions, as Suetonius tells us later (_ibid._ 19): _Haec partim nulla reprehensione, partim etiam non mediocri laude digna, in unum contuli_, “These acts, some of which are wholly blameless, while others deserve even considerable approbation, I have gathered together.” Whether the punishment of the Christians is in the former or the latter class does not appear.
In Tacitus, on the other hand, we have the famous account that Nero sought to divert from himself the suspicion of having set Rome on fire, by fastening it upon those “whom the people hated for their wickedness, the so-called Christians” (Ann. xv. 44). These were torn by dogs, or crucified, or tied to stakes and burned in a coat of pitch to serve as lanterns to the bestially cruel emperor. The truth of these stories depends upon the reliability of Tacitus in general. They have been received with justifiable doubt, ever since the quite conscienceless methods of Tacitus’ rhetorical style have been made evident. The last form of punishment, the _tunica molesta_, has made a particular impression on the ancient and modern world. It is referred to by Seneca, Juvenal, and Martial, but by none of them associated with the Christians. From the passage in Seneca (Epist. ad Lucil. xiv. 4) it is simply a standard form of cruelty, such as the rack, thumbscrew, and maiden of later times. The very fact that the courtier Seneca dares to mention it as a form of _saevitia_ would indicate that it was not used by Seneca’s master, Nero. But what is particularly striking is that Tertullian[342] in his Apology does not mention any cruelties, in the sense of savage tortures, inflicted upon the Christians. The context (Apologeticus, § 5) indicates that the punishment was banishment to some penal colony, _relegatio_, a punishment considered capital at law, but still different from the _tunica molesta_.