Quoted By:
When Rome was presented to me from an unfavourable angle - the Sunday-School horror of Nero and the persecution of Christians - I could never quite sympathise in the least with the teachers. I felt that one good Roman pagan was worth any six dozen of the cringing scum riff-raff who took up with a fanatical foreign belief, and was frankly sorry that the Syrian superstition was not stamped out. When it came to the repressive measures of Marcus Aurelius and Diocletianus, I was in complete sympathy with the government and had not a shred of use for the Christian herd. To try to get me to identify myself with that herd seemed in my mind ridiculous. At seven I sported the adopted name of L. Valerius Messala and tortured imaginary Christians in the amphitheatres.
-HP Lovecraft
