The human sacrifices and abhorrent practices of the Druidical faith were abandoned, and Jupiter and Minerva and the gods of Parnassus supplanted the grim deities of a more ancient mythology.

But while Rome was a powerful teacher, she was a cruel mistress--and shackles were galling to these free barbarians.

In the midst of universal misery there came tidings of something better than the gods of Parnassus, when in A.D.160 Irenaeus came to Lyons and there established the first Church of Christ; and here it was that Marcus Aurelius ordered the persecution which was intended to stamp out the new and fanatical heresy..