Galerius, after all, sought to justify the ‘great’ persecution as
aiming to bring Christians back to soundness of mind (see
p. 196). In such circumstances we can express little surprise at
the response of Arrius Antoninus, governor of the province of
Asia in the mid-180s, when he was confronted by Christians who
demanded that he martyr them. The governor shrugged them off,
however, with the suggestion that if death was what they really
wanted then they could hang themselves or throw themselves off
cliffs (Tertullian, To Scapula5.1).Christian attitudes to the Roman empire
The incidence of persecution and Christian rejection of Graeco-
Roman social and religious institutions might suggest that
Christianity existed in a condition of continual confrontation with
the culture within which it developed. The relationship, however,
was rather more ambiguous, with early Christian attitudes to the
Roman empire encompassing both outright hostility and efforts at
accommodation. This is apparent already in the New Testament.
Revelationgives a particularly bleak picture of the Christian view
of the empire, refracted through the lens of Jewish apocalyptic ide-
ology (Bauckham 1993). Rome appears in various coded guises.
It is ‘a beast’ with ‘seven heads and ten horns’, each horn crowned
with a diadem, and each head marked with ‘blasphemous names’
(Revelation12.3, 13.1, 17.3). It is the whore, ‘with whom the
kings of the earth have committed fornication’, who sits on the
beast (17.1–6). It is allegorized as Israel’s ancient foe Babylon,
‘the dwelling place of demons’, and so on (18.2–24; cf. 17.5). The
attitude of the author towards Rome is implacably hostile, and the
city’s fall (and that of its empire too) is confidently foretold. Yet
this was not the only Christian view of Rome possible. Around
the same time as Revelationwas being written, a more measured
response was formulated by the author of the First Epistle of Peter.
It too refers to Rome as Babylon (1 Peter5.13), but equates
Christian living with obedience to the empire: ‘For the Lord’s sake
accept the authority of every human institution, whether of theEARLY CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE
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