members of the social elite, such as aristocratic women – could
be regarded as undermining the traditional values that bound
society together (Brown 1988; Salzman 2002: 167–9).
Christians might protest that such spiritual rigour made
them morally superior to their pagan contemporaries. And yet,
their very profession of Christianity could be deemed to threaten
the total subversion of the moral norms of imperial society. At
Carthage in 203, for example, a young woman of high status
called Perpetua was arrested for her adherence to Christianity.
There survives an account of her trial, some of it penned (it seems)
by Perpetua herself and therefore, as the work of a female author,
the subject of much study (e.g. Salisbury 1998). Although the
text recounts Perpetua’s story from a Christian perspective, it
provides many insights into how pagans regarded Christianity as
threatening. One episode describes how her father, visiting her in
prison, appealed to her to take pity on his old age and ‘give up
[her] pride’ (Passion of Perpetua5.4). Perpetua refused, however,
to her father’s despair. Later, when she was brought before the
governor Hilarianus for trial, her father came before the tribunal,
this time with her infant son for whose sake he begged Perpetua
to offer sacrifice to the gods. Hilarianus too asked Perpetua to
have consideration for her father and son, but to no avail (Passion
of Perpetua6). Not even the bonds of family, the very basis
of the Roman community, were enough to persuade Perpetua
to recant. For her own part, she claimed to have experienced
visions that confirmed to her that her spirit would be victorious:
worldly ties and bodily punishments could not persuade her
otherwise. In the end, together with the slave girl Felicitas,
Perpetua was killed in bloody spectacles staged in the amphithe-
atre to commemorate the birthday of the reigning emperor’s son.
Other accounts of martyrdom indicate the lengths to which
Roman officials would go in an attempt to get Christians to abjure
their faith: even when the prisoner was on the very brink of
execution, sacrifice was demanded (Passion of Pionius21). The
determination of Christians to suffer death for the sake of Christ
probably struck many pagans as sheer madness – the dying
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