This book's subject is an old one. Its author, John Granger Cook, discusses the relevant and much dissected texts in a straightforwardly historical manner, adopting an approach equivalent to that of a commentator. We begin with a chapter on Claudius and the Christians, and end with one on Justin's reference to a supposed rescript of Hadrian concerning the Christians. In between there are detailed chapters on the Neronic persecution, evidence for persecution under Domitian, and the correspondence of Pliny with Trajan. Cook's tone throughout is sober and he rarely seeks to squeeze anything too unconventional or surprising from the small clutch of texts relevant to his subject. The reference in Suetonius' Life of Claudius 25.4 where the author mentions an expulsion of the Jews impulsore Chresto is to an expulsion caused by a dispute about Christ, rather than one instigated by an otherwise unknown Jewish agitator called ‘Chrestus’. A reference to an expulsion of the Jews under Claudius in the epitomated Cassius Dio 60.66.6 may be to the same event, though this is by no means certain. Nero's persecution of the Christians as arsonists may have exploited already existing prejudices against them. Cook is clear that Tacitus, while sceptical of the specific charge of arson, shared these common prejudices, one of which, ‘hatred of the human race’, probably refers to a hatred of Rome itself, seen in Christian contempt for Roman religious practice. Cook rejects any idea that Tertullian's institutum Neronianum refers to a new-found policy against the Christians originating with Nero (the reference is probably to the persecution itself), but is clear that the types of punishments recorded by Tacitus in his account of the persecution may well be reflected quite specifically in the Gospel of Mark and more generally in Revelation. Cook goes on to reject the view that there was any concerted effort to persecute Christians in the reign of Domitian, arguing, amongst other things, that the evidence adduced in favour of such a thing is restricted to a Eusebian reference to an otherwise unknown author, Bruttius, and that the failure of Dio to associate any of Domitian's persecutions of certain important individuals for atheism with Christianity, not least Flavius Clemens and Flavia Domitilla, is difficult to explain if the subject of Domitian's persecution was the Christians given Dio's knowledge of Judaism. In a detailed analysis of the Pliny-Trajan correspondence, Cook is clear that ‘the primary opposition was between worship of Christ as a god and reverence for the Roman gods’ (p. 250), a point with which Trajan agreed in his response to Pliny in which he makes a sharp contrast between Christians and those who are willing to ‘supplicate our gods’. Supplication, Cook notes, was a rite originally designed to restore the pax deorum, and Christians, with their contempt for the pagan gods, and their lack of antiquity, in contrast to the Jews, made themselves appear a threat. As with his discussion of the Neronian persecution, Cook sees elements of the correspondence as elucidating the background of the New Testament, in particular 1 Peter and Revelation. Cook's final substantive chapter is taken up with a discussion of the so-called Hadrianic rescript, recorded in Justin, 1 Apol. 68.3–10, in which specific procedures for the prosecution of Christians are laid down, and, amongst other things, it is advised that evidence submitted by anonymous accusers be rejected. Following T. D. Barnes, Cook sees this rescript as essentially endorsing the legal position as defined by Trajan. ‘Hadrian's insistence on strict procedure, however, probably saved many Christian lives’, Cook notes, and suggests that the relative paucity of evidence that Hadrian's magistrates put Christians to death supports this contention. Cook ends his book with a brief concluding chapter in which Christian treatment of pagans and Jews in the post-Constantinian era is analysed, and some general comments about the motive forces behind pagan persecution of Christians are made. While disagreeing with Mommsen that Christians were convicted of a charge of maiestas, he is sympathetic to his view that they were found guilty of apostasy from the Roman national religion. For Cook, this early period in the history of Roman-Christian relations points forward to events in the future, and the establishment of more concrete policy.

This is a helpful and compendious account of a complicated subject. Cook displays a solid knowledge of the issues, whether legal, religious or textual, and his footnotes are full of helpful references to and discussion of primary and secondary sources. Inevitably, there are criticisms. Specifically, one missed any mention of evidence in Eusebius' Church history, quoting Hegesippus, of the denunciation of the grandsons of Jude, the Lord's brother, whom, we are told, the emperor released (Eusebius, HE 3.20.1–7). Relevant also to the subject of Domitian and the Christians is the former's vigorous attempts to collect the Jewish tax, the so-called Fiscus Judaicus. Did this have any impact upon Christians, especially those who had not sought to distance themselves from the Jewish community? Or, in spite of protestations to the contrary, were associated with that community. This last observation is relevant to that hoary and more general subject of Christian identity in the period under discussion, particularly as this related to Judaism. Although Cook mentions the Jews quite often in his monograph, sometimes in interesting and novel ways (note here his discussion of the possibility that Pliny called upon Christians to curse Christ from prior knowledge of such a practice amongst non-Christian Jews), he never does so in relation to the question of identity. After all, one of the most interesting aspects of many of the texts that he discusses is precisely that, with the exception of the passage from Suetonius' Life of Claudius, they seem to assume that Christians are not Jews, in spite of the fact that some of the accusations made against them, such as misanthropy, if that is how we should understand the Tacitean phrase odium generis humani, and atheism, were accusations made against Jews as well. So Tacitus, though he knows that Christians come from Judea, seems to assume that they have nothing more to do with the Jews (note the absence of any reference to Christians in his account of the Jews in book v of his Histories); and Nero, whose persecution Tacitus records, was able, apparently, to differentiate between Christians and Jews in Rome as early as 64 AD. Pliny betrays no knowledge that Christians were Jews, and this in spite of the views of S. Benko that the kind of test that Pliny insists apostatising Christian should go through was one that he would have used because he knew that it would have been impossible for the Jews, a thesis not referred to by Cook. This is a subsidiary issue in the general discussion of pagan attitudes to Christians in the roughly one hundred years which is the subject of Cook's book. But given, on Cook's own admission, that Jews and Christians shared a good deal in common, even in terms of the kind of prejudices held against them, but that their treatment by the Roman authorities was different, the question of how and in what circumstances pagans in authority came to differentiate between them is a subject of importance.