The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire · ¶25

The total disregard of truth and probability in the representation of these primitive martyrdoms was occasioned by a very natural mistake. The ecclesiastical writers of the fourth or fifth centuries ascribed to the magistrates of Rome the same degree of implacable and unrelenting zeal which filled their own breasts against the heretics or the idolaters of their own times.

Edward Gibbon · Project Gutenberg #732 (Milman edition) — public domain
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