Religious persecution in the Roman Empire

In the early 3rd century, Cassius Dio outlined the Roman imperial policy towards religious tolerance: You should not only worship the divine everywhere and in every way in accordance with our ancestral traditions, but also force all others to honour it.

Those who attempt to distort our religion with strange rites you should hate and punish, not only for the sake of the gods … but also because such people, by bringing in new divinities, persuade many folks to adopt foreign practices, which lead to conspiracies, revolts, and factions, which are entirely unsuitable for monarch".In 186 BC, the Roman senate issued a decree that severely restricted the Bacchanals, ecstatic rites celebrated in honor of Dionysus.

Livy records that this persecution was due to the fact that "there was nothing wicked, nothing flagitious, that had not been practiced among them" and that a "greater number were executed than thrown into prison; indeed, the multitude of men and women who suffered in both ways, was very considerable".

But the evil is creeping stealthily on, and growing day by day; it is already too great to limit its action to individual citizens; it looks to be supreme in the State.On a bronze tablet found in Tiriolo, Italy in 1640, a Roman decree reads: Let none of them be minded to have a shrine of Bacchus ... Let no man, whether Roman citizen or Latin ally or other ally, be minded to go to a meeting of Bacchantes ... Let no man be a priest.

[10] Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) wrote "It is beyond calculation how great is the debt owed to the Romans, who swept away the monstrous rites, in which to kill a man was the highest religious duty and for him to be eaten a passport to health.

[12] After a series of Jewish–Roman wars (66–135), Hadrian changed the name of Judea province to Syria Palaestina and Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina in an attempt to erase the historical ties of the Jewish people to the region.

[13] In addition, after 70, Jews and Jewish proselytes were only allowed to practice their religion if they paid the Fiscus Judaicus, and after 135 were barred from Aelia Capitolina except for the day of Tisha B'Av.

They have sprung forth very recently like new and unexpected monstrosities among the race of the Persians - a nation still hostile to us - and have made their way into our empire, where they are committing many outrages, disturbing the tranquility of our people and even inflicting grave damage to the civic communities.

We have cause to fear that with the passage of time they will endeavour, as usually happens, to infect the modest and tranquil of an innocent nature with the damnable customs and perverse laws of the Persians as with the poison of a malignant (serpent) ... We order that the authors and leaders of these sects be subjected to severe punishment, and, together with their abominable writings, burnt in the flames.

And if those who have gone over to that hitherto unheard-of, scandalous and wholly infamous creed, or to that of the Persians, are persons who hold public office, or are of any rank or of superior social status, you will see to it that their estates are confiscated and the offenders sent to the (quarry) at Phaeno or the mines at Proconnesus.

[citation needed] Suetonius mentions passingly that "[during Nero's reign p]unishments were also inflicted on the Christians, a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief" in so far as there are no crimes described.

[33][34][35][36] From 361 until 375, paganism received a relative tolerance, until three Emperors, Gratian, Valentinian II and Theodosius I, under bishop of Milan Saint Ambrose's major influence, reprised and escalated the persecution.