Tacitus, Annals 15.38-44.
Suetonius, Claudius 25; Nero 16, 38; Domitian 10, 12, 15.
Cassius Dio 62.16-18; 67.14; 68.1.
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.17-20, 33; 4B.8-17, 26; 5.1.5.
The edicts
of Diocletian.
B. W. Jones, The Emperor Domitian (Routledge 1992), pp. 114-119.
F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World, 31 BC-AD 337 (Cornell U. Press, 1977), pp. 551-566.
R.L. Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (Yale U. Press, 1984), pp. 48-67.
Why was there a persecution of Christians under Nero? What lasting effect on Roman practices, if any, did it have? Was there a persecution of Christians under Domitian? For what crime (in legal terms) were Christians being punished by Pliny in Bithynia? What does his letter reveal about how the Romans perceived the Christians? What extralegal reasons might there have been for viewing Christianity as a threat?
What prompted the renewed persecutions in the reign of Marcus Aurelius? What did Decius hope to accomplish? Had the demographics of the membership of the church changed in such a way that the threat appeared greater than it had in the previous century? What light do the various attempts by Roman emperors (e.g., Severus Alexander, Galerius) to ensure the support of the Christian God shed on how they perceived the Christian faith?