Poppæa is said by Josephus to have been a Jewish proselyte, and to have used her influence with Nero in favour of the Jews; and Tacitus[161] records her to have been surrounded with fortune-tellers, which would include Jewish diviners of the future; and the combination of these statements has led to the conclusion by some that Nero was moved by her to those acts which resulted, not only in the sacrifice of that "vast multitude" recorded by Tacitus as suffering in the persecution raised against them for the burning of Rome imputed to them, but in removing for ever from the Christian religion the protection of being "licit," as a part of an allowed religion. If this be so, all the subsequent persecutions were contained as in germ in the decision of Nero. The special cruelties of the punishments inflicted by Nero might cease upon his deposition, but the decision that the Christian faith was not a part of the Jewish, and therefore not "licit," would remain as a principle of imperial legislation,[162] as appears, in fact, in the conduct of Trajan when Pliny appealed to him for guidance. For it should not be forgotten that Pliny had already treated the profession of Christianity as in itself a capital crime, inasmuch as he ordered those who were guilty of it to be executed before he applied to Trajan for directions as to how he should treat them in future, on account of the difficulty which arose from their number. This evidence is complete so far as to show that it was not Trajan's answer to Pliny which made the Christian religion illicit, but that it was already of itself a capital crime.
When St. Peter and St. Paul had crowned the Roman Church with their joint martyrdom under the authority of Nero, that Jewish revolt had already begun the issue of which was the accomplishment of the divine prediction that their "house should be left to them desolate." But the stroke of Nero's sword, wielded by his deputies,[163] was but the final act of Jewish enmity to St. Paul; what his life had been at their hands we have vividly described in his own words: "Of the Jews five times did I receive forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was stoned; thrice I suffered shipwreck; a night and a day I was in the depth of the sea."[164] And as to St. Peter, they for whom Herod Agrippa, seeing that the slaughter of St. James pleased the Jews, proceeded to imprison Peter, intending after the Pasch to bring him forth to the people for public execution, would pursue him with their enmity all the rest of his life. And what happened to the chiefs, St. Peter and St. Paul, happened in their measure to the other first teachers of the new faith: they gained their crown of martyrdom through the perpetual enmity of the unbelieving Jews stirring up the Roman power against them.