It seems like the hardliners during the Diocletian persecutions were actually Galerius and Maxentian, who were pretty famously devout. Diocletian, at least at first, endorsed a pretty lenient policy, and only endorsed the executions after the fire in the Imperial Palace (which was blamed on the Christians).
Concerning this, it occurred to me that I probably overemphasized the political part of the Roman political-religious complex in my posts above.
I really shouldn’t make it sound like the Romans were all about realpolitik, and paganism was all lip service. There’s no reason to think that pagan Romans weren’t genuinely religious (and that goes for everyone from Emperor to man on the street). Religious ritual (as well as superstition of every sort) was absolutely everywhere in the Roman world.
But it was clearly a pragmatic sort of religion. (Or at least the state religion was. There was plenty of more mystical and esoteric stuff going on, too, which you were free to do in private, or at your local snake-worshiping orgy. ;)) It wasn’t about moral or ethics (which belonged to the domain of philosophy, not religion), or heavenly rewards in the next life. It was about not pissing the gods off, lest they become cranky and fuck your shit up in the here and now. And the way to do that was to get your rituals and sacrifices right.
So, then, there would certainly have been a genuine element of religious intolerance to dislike of Christians. Or, rather, a practical kind of metaphysical paranoia. Why is the Empire / the neighborhood / the economy / the whatever going to hell in a handbasket? Maybe the gods are ticked off? Didn’t we do our sacrifices right? Fess up, who screwed up their sacrifices… What, those Christian weirdos didn’t do them at all? Hmm…
So, yeah, there’s some of that going on, too.
You know, for all the attention paid to the persecution of Christianity, Diocletian also persecuted, and almost wiped out, the Manicheans, but that pretty much gets ignored.
Christian martyrdom itself must have seemed pretty weird to Roman officials, when you think about it. The way you hear the stories told sometimes (although spin must be accounted for on all sides), the Romans would sometimes go out of their way to not have to kill Christians. Look, just stop doing this one subversive and metaphysically dangerous thing, sprinkle some incense on this here pagan altar, and you can be on your way.
But, as we know, many would choose torture and gruesome death anyway. (Although it should be noted that many didn’t. The Donatist schism was about what to do with Christians who had repudiated their faith during Diocletian’s persecutions, and later wanted to return to the fold). ThaI does look like religious fanaticism. Only without the suicide bombs, and for what must have seemed to onlookers, at times, as no good reason. Heck, even I might have started suspecting that those guys, going so willingly to their deaths, were up to *something *nefarious, if I hadn’t before.
Jewish martyrs make more sense. Martyrdom in a political context (with the suicide bombs, as it were), against the background of the Roman-Jewish wars - that isn’t so far-fetched.
But in the case of the Christians? That looks weird, even to me. Although torturing and killing someone over being a Christian is equally weird. Strange times all round.
Something I recall reading of the Roman spectacles in general, was that they would starve the lions and other beasts for a few days before the big show, just to be sure that the event came off as planned. Apparently the Romans were not above mistreating animals from time to time.
“Did you throw those Christians to the lions?”
“Throw? No, absolutely not thrown. We marched them in.”
“But they were eaten by lions”
“Well, I don’t know about that, I’m not in charge of the lions. I just march people about”
Or all the time.
Considering that the spectacles often included the mass slaughter of animals, that would be an understatement.
Last to md2000.
Fuck this board’s cretinous editing limits.
Look, remember what happened the last time we fed the lions properly, and petted them, and treated them nicely? They were released into the arena, and instead of eating those prisoners, they plopped themselves down, purred, and demanded belly rubs. Everyone wanted their money back.
(Yeah, there was no ancient PETA, I think. Interestingly, though, the Roman treatment of animals for show could sometimes backfire. There’s a story about Pompey bringing a bunch of elephants to Rome, to be killed in the arena as part of a staged hunt. Apparently, the crowds found them cute, and when they heard them trumpeting in fear and lament, sounding almost human, they sided with the beasts against the hunters. For Pompey, it was something of a PR disaster.)
And they cursed his name.
Pompey always seemed to get the bad end of the stick: “Est-il-heureux ?” — No, no, he is not.
How would they test it? Toss in a couple of denominations plus a couple of other religions as controls?
What about the part of the show where they guarantee the desired result? “here, rub this raw steak all over yourself, and go through that door.”
Step #1: Convert Buster
Step #2: Baptize Buster
Step #3: Put steak vest on Buster
Bah, Pompey was always falling head first into good things. A setback here and there is just karmic payback, for always getting himself into wars towards the end and stealing other people’s glory. 
Of course, at the end of the day, he *really *got the bad end of the stick. That was a bit much, I’ll grant you.
BTW, Pompey always did have bad luck with elephants. For one of his triumphs, he supposedly strapped elephants instead of horses in front of his chariot, in an attempt to look all fancy. Only to discover that they didn’t fit through a narrow city gate.
Presumably, he gave up on them at some point.
just a nitpick but the “entertainment” was free to the public. Which when you think about it wasn’t really unusual as it applied to criminals. Public executions hace been very popular throughout history.
Roman abuse of power -
“Stwike him, centuwion. Vewy wuffly!”
“Throw him to the ground, sir?”
“Oh, yes! Thwow him to the gwound!”
Yeah, good point. Galerius, in particular, seems to be the one taking the initiative in that operation. I should know better than to talk like Diocletian is calling every shot, especially at the end of his career. It’s called a tetrarchy for a reason.
Also, a chance to nitpick myself about the Edict of Milan being the first time Christianity was legalized: Apparently, an edict by Galerius in 311, calling an official end to the persecution, might count.
BTW, by “Maxentian”, are you referring to Maximinus Daia? I know he is known as a hardliner, going at it even after persecutions were supposed to end. Or one of the other Max-somethings? (I’m always getting Maximian/Maxentius/Maximinus mixed up. Those guys need names that are easier to remember. I vote for Tom, Dick and Harry.)
Another couple of things I should probably nitpick myself over:
-I’ve been talking about emperors, but a lot of the time, calls are probably made on a provincial or local level. It’s not like the emperors were micromanaging the provinces. Pliny the Younger sending letters to Trajan from Bithynia every five minutes (including, famously, about the Christians) is probably an exception, not a rule (and even that I’ve seen as an argument against Trajan being a micromanager, rather than for it, as his answers are often along the lines of “figure it out for yourself, you’re the one who knows the locals”).
-I’ve been giving the Third Century Crisis a hard time, but as persecution goes, Decius and his fairly short reign is actually an outlier for the period. His predecessor Philip was famously pro-Christian (some have claimed that Philip was himself a Christian, although that has been debunked). After Decius, emperors like Gallienus and the Illyrian junta seem to basically have had other things on their minds (good call, too, with the Empire going to hell in a handbasket).
Anyway, now I’m just rambling. Although this is a rabbit hole that is probably worth poking one’s head into. Do we have any church historians around? What I would really like to see is an estimate of numbers of Christians killed in total, and a list of famous casualties that I absolutely should know about (I know about some, but I’m pretty shaky on that).
One thing that I am reminded of (although it’s obvious) is that in the long history of the Empire, persecution of Christians is actually, relatively speaking, a fairly contained affair. Ca. 64 AD to around 312 AD, mainly focused on some important big events. (Or, I mean, 250 years is a long time. But the history of the Roman empire is a very long time.)
Not trying to make the whole thing seem less, or more, of a big or small deal than it was, mind. I don’t have a dog in that fight either way.