This letter is
preserved at the end of the _Apology_ of Justin Martyr, and it adds
that, not only are no Christians to be injured or persecuted, but that
any one who informed against them is to be burned alive! We see at once
that this letter is one of those impudent and transparent forgeries in
which the literature of the first five centuries unhappily abounds. What
was the real relation of Marcus to the Christians we shall consider
hereafter.
To the gentle heart of Marcus, all war, even when accompanied with
victories, was eminently distasteful; and in such painful and ungenial
occupations no small part of his life was passed. What he thought of war
and of its successes is graphically set forth in the following remark:--
"A spider is proud when it has caught a fly, and another when he has
caught a poor hare, and another when he has taken a little fish in a
net, and another when he has taken wild boars or bears, _and another
when he has taken Sarmatians._ Are not these robbers, when thou
examinest their principles?" He here condemns his own involuntary
actions; but it was his unhappy destiny not to have trodden out the
embers of this war before he was burdened with another far more painful
and formidable.
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