Readers of Wiseman’s Fabiola will remember how when Corvinus tries to provoke Pancratius to a quarrel he calls the Christian boy “a cowardly worshipper of an ass’s head.” The author explains in a footnote that this was one of the many calumnies against the Christians that were current in pagan Rome. Now, most lies have some slight foundation in truth. Even the deliberate inventor of a calumny looks round for some reality that can be distorted into a seeming confirmation of his story. And it will sometimes happen that when there is enough ill-will to make men keenly watchful for something that can be made the basis of an accusation, they more or less honestly make mistakes and unconsciously misrepresent and misapply real facts.

There is some reason for believing that the pagans of the early centuries who circulated this story of the worship of an ass’s head by the Christians were thus maliciously blundering. Strange to say, the cultus of an Egyptian god seems to supply the key to an answer for the puzzling question as to how it was that this calumny ever gained credence, not merely among the ignorant crowd, but also amongst the educated men of the time.