different stations of the Crucifixion!  In the centre is an immense Cross, which whoever kisses is entitled to one hundred days indulgence.  To what reflections the sight of this vast edifice leads!  What combats of gladiators and wild beasts!  What blood has been spilled!  Was it not here that the tyrannical and cowardly Domitian ordered Ulpius Glabrio, of consular dignity, to descend into the arena and fight with a lion?  The Christian writers mention that many of their sect suffered martyrdom here by being compelled to fight with wild beasts; but even this was not half so bad as the conduct of the Christians, when they obtained possession of political power and dominion, in burning alive poor Jews, Moors and heretics some centuries afterwards.  Indeed the cruelty of the Pagans was much exaggerated by the above writers and were it even true to its full extent, their severity was far more excusable than that of the Christians in later times, for the efforts of the Christian sect in the times of Paganism were unceasingly directed towards the destruction of the whole fabric of polytheism, on which was based the entire, social and political order of the Empire; and they thus brought on themselves perhaps merited persecution, by their own intolerance; whereas, when they got the upper hand, they showed no mercy to those of a different religion, and Orthodoxy has wallowed successively in the blood of Arians, Jews, Moors and Protestants.

How many a poor Jew or Moor in Spain and Portugal has been burned alive for no other reason than

  Pour n’avoir point quitte la foi de leurs ancetres.

No, no; no sect or religion was ever so persecuting as the Catholic Christians!  The Polytheists of all times, both ancient and modern, were tolerant to all religions and so far from striving to make proselytes, often adopted the ceremonies of other worships in addition to their own; witness the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans of old, and the Hindoos and Chinese of the present day.  The Jews, ferocious and prejudiced as they were, never persecuted other nations on the ground of religion, and if they held these nations in abhorrence as idolaters, and considered themselves alone as the holy people, the people of God (Yahoudi), they never dreamed of making converts.  The Mussulmans tho’ they hold it as a sacred precept of their religion to endeavour to make converts to Islam, do not use violent means and only compel those of a different faith to pay a higher tribute.  At any rate, they never have or do put people to death merely for the difference of religious opinions.  Such were the reflections I made on walking about the Arena of this colossal edifice so worthy of the popolo Re.