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Since the time of Augustus, emperor worship had helped hold the motley Roman realm together. But when Domitian donned the purple in A.D. 81 he inherited an empire dotted with churches that obeyed him as ruler but rejected him as god. Indeed, they scorned 'all' the old gods. For this Christians were called atheists, and haters of mankind as well, since they angered gods of grain and wine, love and war, birth, death, and all between (312:2) Nero had already found it convenient to blame the burning of Rome in A.D. 64 on such misanthropes, to light a garden party with burning Christians, perhaps to put Paul to the sword and Peter on a cross, head down. Under Domitian the first systematic persecution began, and John on Patmos wrote of his searing vision of Rome, the harlot "drunken... with the blood of the martyrs." (312:3) No one knows how many thousands died by cross, sword, pyre, lion, and a grisly array of refinements. Others survived torture, afterwards glorying in the empty eye socket, the missing tongue, the limp that earned them honor as hermits. Others paid bribes or token homage and went free
(312:4)
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