that the Greeks of that city, crushed beneath two centuries of foreign rule, had lost any remains of courage or of pride that could make them feared by their Roman master, he relaxed part of the strict policy of Augustus.  He gave them a senate and a municipal form of government, a privilege that had hitherto been refused in distrust to that great city, though freely granted in other provinces where rebellion was less dreaded.  He also ornamented the city with a temple to Rhea, and with a public bath, which was named after himself the Bath of Severus.

Severus made a law, says the pagan historian, forbidding anybody, under a severe punishment, from becoming Jew or Christian.  But he who gives the blow is likely to speak of it more lightly than he who smarts under it; and we learn from the historian of the Church that, in the tenth year of this reign, the Christians suffered persecution from their governors and their fellow-citizens.  Among others who then lost their lives for their religion was Leonides, the father of Origen.  He left seven orphan children, of whom the eldest, that justly celebrated writer, was only sixteen years old, but was already deeply read in the Scriptures, and in the great writers of Greece.  As the property of Leonides was forfeited, his children were left in poverty; but the young Origen was adopted by a wealthy lady, zealous for the new religion, by whose help he was enabled to continue his studies under Clemens.  In order to read the Old Testament in the original, he made himself master of Hebrew, which was a study then very unusual among the Greeks, whether Jews or Christians.

In this persecution of the Church all public worship was forbidden to the Christians; and Tertullian of Carthage eloquently complains that, while the emperor allowed the Egyptians to worship cows, goats, or crocodiles, or indeed any animal they chose, he only punished those that bowed down before the Creator and Governor of the world.  Of course, at this time of trouble the catechetical school was broken up and scattered, so that there was no public teaching of Christianity in Alexandria.  But Origen ventured to do that privately which was forbidden to be done openly; and, when the storm had blown over, Demetrius, the bishop, appointed him to that office at the head of the school which he had already so bravely taken upon himself in the hour of danger.  Origen could boast of several pupils who added their names to the noble list of martyrs who lost their lives for Christianity, among whom the best known was Plutarch, the brother of Heraclas.  Origen afterwards removed for a time to Palestine, and fell under the displeasure of his own bishop for being there ordained a presbyter.