of a governor, holding his assize courts in the main cities, to
condemn Christians to death (Bowersock 1995: 41–57).
Of course, there were times when the Roman government
was able to envisage universal, rather than local, persecutions.
Three are usually cited: under Decius (249–51), in the latter years
of the reign of Valerian (257–9), and the ‘great’ persecution begun
by Diocletian in 303–4, which lasted in some parts of the empire
for ten years. More than any other, Diocletian’s persecution seems
to have been envisaged as applying to the whole of the Roman
empire. There can be no denying that episodes in this anti-
Christian purge were savage indeed. Consider, for example, the
following haunting tale of the fate of an unnamed village in Asia
Minor:
At this time soldiers surrounded a small town in Phrygia,
of which the inhabitants were all Christians, every man of
them, and setting fire to it burnt them, along with the young
children and women as they were calling on the God of all.
The reason for this was that all the inhabitants of the town
to a man, including its mayor (logiste ̄s) and magistrates
(strate ̄goi) with all the officials and the whole people,
confessed themselves Christians and refused to obey those
who ordered them to commit idolatry.
(Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History8.11.1:
adapted from Lawlor and Oulton 1927–8)Yet when we consider the evidence for Diocletian’s persecution
as a whole, it is apparent that there was a considerable gap
between imperial ambition and actual implementation. The effi-
cacy of the imperial orders was dependent on the administration’s
resources for carrying them out. In some places, like the Phrygian
village mentioned above, Diocletian and his fellow emperors were
able to send troops to effect the purge. Some governors plainly
enforced the imperial edicts with enthusiasm; others, however,
seem to have done little. In some parts of the empire, such as
Britain, Gaul, and Spain, the persecution seems to have had little
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