Suetonius wrote to Pliny the
Younger, begging him to transfer his case to another day on account of
a dream which he had had. Pliny the Younger believed in ghosts.
Among peoples ready to admit everything, different religions, instead
of going to pieces, fused into a common religion. This religion, at
once Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Asiatic, dominated the world at the
second century of our era; and so the Christians called it the
religion of the nations; down to the fourth century they gave the
pagans the name of "gentiles" (men of the nations); at the same time
the common law was called the Law of Nations.
FOOTNOTES:
[145] Inscriptions have been found where the name of Domitian has thus
been cut away.
[146] Suetonius ("Lives of the Twelve Caesars," Nero, ch. lvii.) relates,
that the king of the Parthians, when he sent ambassadors to the Senate
to renew his alliance with the Roman people, earnestly requested that
due honor should be paid to the memory of Nero. The historian continues,
"When, twenty years afterwards, at which time I was a young man, some
person of obscure birth gave himself out for Nero, that name secured him
so favorable a reception from the Parthians that he was very zealously
supported, and it was with much difficulty that they were persuaded to
give him up.
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