Our best secular source about Jesus is the reliable Roman historian and senator Tacitus (c. AD 55–c. AD 117), who mentions Jesus and the persecutions of Christians under the orders of Roman emperor Nero in Annals, Book XV: Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.
