Momma Angel wrote:Oh yes, another glorious day here at the forum! Sounds more like the forums the Romans had the Christians facing lions in.
I offer an historical point here, because this sort of statement is illustrative of how little the religiously obsessed usually know of history, which means that they routinely make warped statements to support their point of view.
The Forum was the place in the city of Rome in which legally-sanctioned merchants were allowed to set up their stands (hence the motto
Caveat Emptor--Let the Buyer Beware--at the entrance), it was the place where the tribes (the Roman political unit) assembled in order to vote, it was the place where courts were held and trials conducted, it was the place where any Roman citizen was free to speak out for or against the policy of the city (and hence the use of forum in such a context as this web site), it was the place where the tribes mustered their levies for the city legion--one thing it definitely was not was a place where people were executed or otherwise persecuted.
The Flavian Ampitheatre was also known as the Colosseum (later corrupted to the spelling Coliseum). It had been erected on the site of a palace of the Emperor Britannicus, popularly known as Nero. A giant statue of Nero had once stood there, 140 feet tall, and considered to be a "colossus," borrowing a Greek term--hence Colosseum, which became the Coliseum by a Latin corruption in the middle ages. It was in the arena at the Coliseum that Christians were alleged to have been judicially murdered (i.e., they had been condemned in a regular court of law and sentenced to be executed), either by gladiators or by wild beasts, which were from time to time, lions. However, there is little reason to believe this true, and a good deal of reason to believe it was not true.
The scale of persecution of Christians has been much overstated by those with an agenda to promote the religion. It is alleged that Nero had Christians executed after the great fire at Rome, and that statment is based on a passage from Cornelius Tacitus, which is almost surely a later Christian interpolation. The reason for saying that a Christian later willfully altered the text to create an "historical lie" is that not even Saul of Tarsus (the alleged St. Paul) nor the "church fathers" referred to themselves and their followers as Christians. The fire at Rome occured in 64 CE, and if one accepts the contentions of the "new testament," that was only 31 years after the putative Christ was executed in Jerusalem. The word Christian derives from the greek "christos," or savior, and the term did not arise until the contention that the putative Christ was a divine being and messiah was established as a part of Christian orthodoxy, late in the first century or early in the second century. Therefore, the sect would very likely be unknown in Rome at the time of the fire, and even if present, would not have been known as "Christians," and certainly not named as such by Cornelius Tacitus. No mention other than the Tacitus interpolation appears any earlier than in the silly stories of Sulpicious Severus in the 5th century. At the time of the fire in Rome, those whom the moderns call "Christians" were viewed by others, and usually by themselves, as a sect of Judaism, and not as Christians--the word simply did not exist.
Persecutions of Christians were only of a local character in the second century, when political opportunists whipped up the frenzy of mobs to go out and stone those who refused to practice the state religion, which was viewed as unpatriotic and not irreligious. The only good authority for systematic persecution of Christians as official policy of the Empire are references to the policy of Diocletian,
regnit 284-305. Diocletian was of lowly birth, born in Illyria (think: Yugoslavia), and having risen in military and political power, he seized the throne of the Empire. He was actually responsible for reforms which assured the survival of the Empire in the East for more than twelve hundred years. His persecution of Christians was based upon their refusal to go through the motion of observing the state religion. It was considered unpatriotic not to observe the state religion, and among the ignorant and superstitious people branded "pagans" by the Christians, was thought to risk the anger of the Gods, to the detriment of the Empire. Their frenzy to see Christians executed, or to stone them to death themselves, had a politically superstitious motive, and not necessarily a religious one. The most common form of state execution was crucifixtion. So there is, in fact, no evidence from non-Christian sources to suggest that Christians were routinely "thrown to the lions." Christians like to envision martyrdom for the faith, so long as it involves others long ago, and not them personally suffering.
Setanta,
