liave been Christians as early as a.d. 170.[1] This was then part of the Parthian Empire, made famous in history by the brilliant career of the great Queen Zenobia, which was superseded by the new Persian Empire, known as the Sassanid kingdom, in the year 227. Zenobia had shown Christian sympathies—of a sort. When in possession of Antioch she had petted and protected the gorgeous heretic Paul of Samosata; but then he had been condemned by the Christians of the Roman Empire, through whom perhaps she thought to spite Rome. By protecting and patronising heretical Christians she gained the enthusiastic support of one section of her subjects. It was the very opposite with the Persians when they founded an empire on the ruins of Zenobia's splendid dominion. They were equally inimical to Rome; but by this time Paul and his faction had passed away. Besides, the Persian Empire did not include Syria. The Christians in Persia were in communion with their brethren in the Roman Empire. This fact roused suspicion of disloyalty in the minds of their masters. It was feared that they were disaffected subjects, spies in communication with the terrible enemy in the West, perhaps conspirators plotting for the downfall of the Sassanid throne. The adoption of Christianity by Constantine and the growing combination of Church and State that followed, immensely aggravated this suspicion. In the Roman Empire the Church was now treated as a State department. Therefore, for subjects of Persia to be communicating with the Church at Constantinople would appear to be much the same as for English Roman Catholics in the times of Elizabeth and the Stuarts to be in communication with fellow-Romanists in Spain and France. Whatever may have been their real sentiments before the persecution broke out, there can be no doubt that when it was raging the Persian Christians would look with longing eyes to their brethren safely sheltered within the Roman Empire.
