Domitian, the younger brother of Titus, ascended the throne in A.D. 81. But he was of a temper totally different from his father and brother. They tolerated the Christians, he persecuted them. His character was cowardly, suspicious, and cruel. He raised a persecution against the Christians, because of some vague and superstitious fear that he entertained of the appearance of a person born in Judea of the family of David, who was to obtain the empire of the world. But neither did he spare Romans of the most illustrious birth and station who had embraced Christianity. Some were martyred on the spot, others were banished to be martyred in their exile. His own niece, Domitilla, and his cousin, Flavius Clemens, to whom she had been given in marriage, were the victims of his cruelty for having embraced the gospel of Christ. Thus we see that Christianity, by the power of God, in spite of armies and emperors, fire and sword, was spreading, not only amongst the middle and lower, but also amongst the higher classes.
"Domitian," says Eusebius, the father of ecclesiastical history, "having exercised his cruelty against many, and unjustly slain no small number of noble and illustrious men at Rome, and having, without cause, punished vast numbers of honorable men with exile and the confiscation of their property, at length established himself as the successor of Nero in his hatred and hostility to God." He also followed Nero in deifying himself. He commanded his own statue to be worshipped as a god, revived the law of treason, and put in fearful force its terrible provisions: under these circumstances, surrounded as he was with spies and informers, what must this second persecution of the Christians have been!*
But the end of this weak, vain, and despicable tyrant drew near. He was in the habit of writing on a roll the names of those persons whom he designed to put to death, keeping it carefully in his own possession. And in order to throw such off their guard, he treated them with the most flattering attention. But this fatal roll was one day taken from under a cushion on which he was reclining asleep, by a child who was playing in the apartment, and who carried it to the Empress. She was struck with astonishment and alarm at finding her own name on the dark list, together with the names of others apparently high in his favor. To such the Empress communicated the knowledge of their danger, and notwithstanding all the precaution that cowardice and cunning could suggest, he was dispatched by two officers of his own household.