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A. N. Sherwin-White records that serious discussion of the reasons for Roman persecution of Christians began in 1890 when it produced "20 years of controversy" and three main opinions: first, there was the theory held by most French and Belgian scholars that "there was a general enactment, precisely formulated and valid for the whole empire, which forbade the practice of the Christian religion.
The siege and the conquest of Jerusalem were a disaster for the Hasmonean Kingdom. Pompey reinstated Hyrcanus II as the High Priest but stripped him of his royal title. However, Rome later recognised him as an ethnarch in 47 BC. [17] Judea remained autonomous but was obliged to pay tribute and became dependent on the Roman administration in Syria.
Josephus wrote that 1.1 million people, the majority of them Jewish, were killed during the siege – a death toll he attributes to the celebration of Passover. [196] It has also been noted that the revolt had not deterred pilgrims from visiting Jerusalem, and a large number became trapped in the city and perished during the siege. [197]
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 ...
The reign of the emperor Diocletian (284−305) marked the final widespread persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. The most intense period of violence came after Diocletian issued an edict in 303 more strictly enforcing adherence to the traditional religious practices of Rome in conjunction with the Imperial cult .
In 72 AD, the Roman governor of Judaea, Lucius Flavius Silva, led Roman legion X Fretensis, a number of auxiliary units and Jewish prisoners of war, totaling some 15,000 men and women, of whom an estimated 8,000 to 9,000 were fighting men, [15] to lay siege to the 960 people in Masada. The Roman legion surrounded Masada and built a ...
Constitutio Antoniniana was an edict issued by Caracalla declaring that all free men in the Roman Empire were to be given full Roman citizenship and that all free women in the Empire were to be given the same rights as Roman women. 217: 8 April: Caracalla was assassinated by a member of his bodyguard.
In the 250s, under the reigns of Decius and Valerian, Roman subjects including Christians were compelled to sacrifice to Roman gods or face imprisonment and execution, but there is no evidence that these edicts were specifically intended to attack Christianity. [2] After Gallienus's accession in 260, these laws went into abeyance. Diocletian's ...