Quote:Dio Cassius mightn't have thought that Christians from the lower classes were worth mentioning.
But can the same be said of xtian writers who fail to mention it, too?
Quote:Why didn't Seutonius mention Nero's spectacular execution of Christians?
My guess is that he didn't mention it because it didn't happen. Occam's razor, you know.
Seneca was not a fan of the "games." He regarded them as common butchery fit for the masses but his upper class tastes required a bit more.
Quote:Tacitus's approach to history was more like writing a novel.
Also true of Livy and Josephus. In fact, ancient "historians" were basically storytellers since they had no way to verify what they were writing. I recall in Livy's Early History of Rome that he was equating what must have been rock and stick throwing riots between mud hut villages to the "wars" of his day. Then again, Reagan did that in Grenada and Bush I did that in Panama. So perhaps things never really change?
Quote:I'm not doing your job again. You're the one insisting that Tacitus's bit of gossip is a fake so you can look for your own evidence from now on. Big Grin
It's good practice for you. Still it is necessary to address Carrington's point that neither xtian nor pagan writers seem to know anything about Nero slaughtering xtians because of the fire. Now that is odd.
Quote:There's a very long argument about how Tacitus was just repeating gossip and his couple of lines doesn't prove that Jesus really existed.
Again, it is useful to note that Suetonius and Pliny do not mention any "jesus." Neither does Tacitus regardless of whether or not the passage in question is authentic. The next Greco-Roman writer to mention xtians is Lucian of Samosata c 160 and HE does not mention "jesus" although he does refer to a crucified man in Palestine which indicates that the story was beginning to be fleshed out around then. It is not until Celsus, writing c 180 that we hear of "Jesus."
