The sort of intimidation that zealous Christians indulged in was not, another writer protested, the way that crime and punishment should work in the Roman Empire. “Nobody draws his sword against the murderer and puts it to his throat, employing force in place of the forms of law,” said the orator Libanius. Instead, in a civilized society, “the place of swords is taken by impeachments and processes, civil and criminal.” The Christians, he wrote with disdain, seemed to have no time for that: “these people here were the only ones ever to judge the cases of those whom they accuse and, having
...more
