PART ONE. The evil Rome as the real and the real false prophet revealed to me by our Lord Jesus Christ

How can people not be in every way impious and atheistic who have apostatized from the customs of our ancestors through which every nation and city is sustained? … What else are they than fighters against God?^[34]

Once distinguished from Judaism, Christianity was no longer seen as simply a bizarre sect of an old and venerable religion; it was a superstitio.^[21]:135 Superstition had for the Romans a much more powerful and dangerous connotation than it does for much of the Western world today: to them, this term meant a set of religious practices that were not only different but corrosive to society, “disturbing a man’s mind in such a way that he is really going insane” and causing him to lose Humanitas (humanity).^[35] The persecution of “superstitious” sects was hardly unheard of in Roman history: an unnamed foreign cult was persecuted during a drought in 428 BC, some initiates of the Bacchic cult were executed when deemed out-of-hand in 186 BC, and measures were taken against the Celtic Druids during the early Principate.^[36]

Even so, the level of persecution experienced by any given community of Christians still depended upon how threatening the local official deemed this new superstitio to be. Christians’ beliefs would not have endeared them to many government officials: they worshipped a convicted criminal, refused to swear by the emperor’s genius, harshly criticized Rome in their holy books, and suspiciously conducted their rites in private. In the early third century, one magistrate told Christians “I cannot bring myself so much as to listen to people who speak ill of the Roman way of religion.”^[37]

History

Saint Blaise on trial before the Roman governor, Louvre

Prior to the reign of Decius (249-251 AD), the only known incident of persecution by the Roman state occurred under Nero in 64 AD. By the mid-2nd century, mobs were willing to throw stones at Christians, perhaps motivated by rival sects. The Persecution in Lyon (177 AD) was preceded by mob violence, including assaults, robberies and stonings.^[38] Lucian tells of an elaborate and successful hoax perpetrated by a “prophet” of Asclepius, using a tame snake, in Pontus and Paphlagonia. When rumour seemed about to expose his fraud, the witty essayist reports in his scathing essay