Christians: a threat to the roman empire

[OvidiusNasso]

Well I don't think you got the point.

Exception was granted to the Christians most of the time and the evidence show the Pagans knew exactly where the Christians were, who they were, where to go to arrest the Christians. Every Martyrdom story includes the Romans already knowing ahead of time where the community is and which members of it are leaders. Note that Bishops who hid during the reign of Diocletian first had to bribe Centurions, bribing a centurion would not be needed if the Centurion didn't already know who to look for, roughly what he or she looked like and where to go.

The various martyrdoms from Perpetua to Saint George back me up on this.

Also my point is and I will use bold, italics and underline to make sure you get it this time nobody was ever compelled to do anything for the Cult of the Emperor.

Diocletian's persecution involved ordering people to sacrifice to the Olympian Dieties, Decius issued an order for everyone to sacrifice to their own Gods for the good of the Empire with exception granted to the Jews (who at the time no longer posed any type of political threat), Marcus Aurelius set a mob on Christians without any reason stated late into his reign (depriving the Christians of the choice they usually had), Nero killed Christians under the pretense that Christianity was an arsonist movement, and for the most part that does it for the persecuting Emperors unless you want to include the one who died in Persia and was skinned alive (who's son Galienus revoked the persecutions of).

The problem with your theory is Roman Emperors didn't act on it for the most part. Christians were usually tolerated, even the families of persecuting emperors generally abandoned the persecution for example Commodus and Galienus both tolerated Christians despite gaining power from fathers who didn't.

A sacrifice of any type would get a Christian off the hook under every emperor, but that was just because sacrifices proved someone wasn't a Christian.

Just for re-emphasis Saint George was openly a Christian under Aurelian and everyone knew he was a Christian, in the original story his men tried to persuade him to desert to avoid being killed but he refused and died for Christ when Diocletian's police got to him.

Your theory would go much better if persecution was the rule instead of the exception.

Your theory would go much better if persecution was the rule instead of the exception. If it was the rule Christians would not have been easy for any of the forces involved to find, Vigiles and Legionaries were not professional cops and underground activities would have evaded them, especially in light of how little they would have had in support searching and other activities. Also we have papyrus recording provincial governors influencing which bishop was elected and even emperors hearing cases involving Christian Hierarchies and who has right to hold congregations.

Your case would also be much better if you could show the persecution through sacrifice edicts specifically ordered sacrifice to the state Gods or to the Cult of the Emperor. As I already said twice Decius' edict ordered sacrifice to any God, and Diocletians ordered sacrifice to the Olympian Gods so both of the larger examples are the wrong sacrifice type. I could post the text of Decius' edict if you would like, it is very interesting and shows how religion in polythiest societies doesn't have to divide because of how readily it accepts any type of sacrifice. Of course sacrifice was something everyone of every level of Roman society without regard of gender or rank had a right to do, and something they could do easily and was regardless of which God or Goddess recieved the sacrifice roughly the same in one city as it was in another (as in stages, preparation of the meat, the feast on the sacrificed animal, some form of prayers accompany the slaughter etc);