Are they and welcome to emperors of Rome a podcast looking at the rulers of the ancient Roman Empire.

I'm your host Matt Smith and with me as always

is Dr. R. Rianna Evans, a lecturer in ancient Mediterranean studies at

Latrobe University. This is episode XX, X, I, I, I, I,

Romans versus Christians.

A couple of months ago we put a call out on the podcast for by request topics,

and one of the ones that we heard loud and clear was that you'd like to know about the interactions between Romans and Christians.

Most notably, listener Eric Bloom was the one who first requested religion in Rome and religious tolerance.

So given that it's Easter, here is our Christian episode.

Just a bit of a note beforehand that in this context we'll be using the word cult a lot because to the Romans

the Christians were a cult. We are sticking to the historical evidence and the Roman

text and there's also the very important fact that history has been written by the victors.

With that in mind, he's Rianna Evans.

Our whole dating system is based on when we think Christ was born,

but we've probably got the date slightly wrong. Christ

probably wasn't born at that juncture between BC and AD. If what's in the

Gospel of Luke is correct and there's a census then that was in about

seven or eight C so around that time wherever you, it's the Augustin period, because remember Augustus was in

charge from 27 BCE to 14 CE when he died.

And then if Christ us into the Tiberian period. So we're talking about those

first two emperors, Augustus and the time

the period of his lifetime and the period during which his initial

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