In discussing Christianity in the Roman Empire one is immediately confronted with a problem: all too many people, in-fluenced by Hollywood, have preconceived notions of mass Christian persecutions complete with lions and the roaring crowds. And al-though these have a basis in truth, these persecutions did exist at certain stages of Rome’s relations with Christianity, to view them as characteristic of Roman policy is to greatly misinterpret it. Rather, I suggest that Christianity was an intellectual movement that triumphed with surprisingly little violence. It was initially viewed with the toleration characteristic of Rome’s dealings with other religions; only when it came into conflict with Rome’s political ideas and motives was persecution sanctioned on a wide scale, and even then, these generally did not last for any great length of time.