"St. Paul tells us (in the Epistle to the Philippians) that throughout the Prætorian quarter he was well known as a prisoner for the cause of Christ, and he sends special salutations to the Philippian Church from the Christians of the imperial household. These notices bring before us very vividly the moral contrasts by which the Apostle was surrounded. The soldier to whom he was chained to-day might have been in Nero's body-guard yesterday; his comrade who next relieved guard might have been one of the executioners of Octavia, and might have carried her head to Poppæa a few weeks before.
"History has few stronger contrasts than when it shows us Paul preaching Christ under the walls of Nero's palace. Thenceforward there were but two religions in the Roman world; the worship of the emperor, and the worship of the Saviour. The old superstitions had long been worn out; they had lost all hold on educated minds.... Over against the altars of Nero and Poppæa, the voice of a prisoner was daily heard, and daily woke in grovelling souls the consciousness of their divine destiny. Men listened, and knew that self-sacrifice was better than ease, humiliation more exalted than pride, to suffer nobler than to reign. They felt that the only religion which satisfied the needs of man was the religion of sorrow, the religion of self-devotion, the religion of the cross."--_Conybeare and Howson._
Hence, we may ascend through some gardens beneath the Villa Mills, to the terrace which surmounts the grand ruins at the end of the Palace of the Cæsars, supposed to be remains of the _Palace of Nero_, but as no inscriptions have been discovered, no part of it can be identified.[149] These are by far the most picturesque portions of the ruins, and few compositions can be finer than those formed by the huge masses of stately brick arches, laden with a wealth of laurustinus, cytizus, and other flowering shrubs, standing out against the soft hues and delicate blue and pink shadows of the distant Campagna. Beneath the terrace is a fine range of lofty chambers, with a broken statue at the end, through which there is a striking view. One of these ruined halls has been converted into a kind of museum of architectural fragments found in this part of the palace, many of them of great beauty. This was the portion of the palace which longest remained entire, and which was inhabited by Heraclius in the seventh century. Some consider that these ruins were incorporated into the