RV listeners, a quick notice before we get started.

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Secondly, there's a new bonus episode which goes perfectly alongside what you're about to hear.

There's a lot of Christian history available around the lives of martyrs during this persecution,

and Kaylin Davenport and I took a look at the life of St. Sebastian.

There will be a clip of this at the end of this episode. If you'd like to hear it in full,

consider giving your support to Emperors of Rome on Patreon. Go to patreon.com forward

slash Rome podcast. Thanks.

Are they? And welcome to Emperors of Rome. I'm your host Matt Smith and with me today is Professor Kalyn Davenport, head of the

Centre for Classical Studies at the Australian National University.

This is episode C-C-L-I-V, the Tetrarchic persecution of Christians.

In the early 4th century, the emperors of the tetrarchy initiated what the Christians

would later call the Great Persecution. Under Diocletian and his colleagues, churches were

demolished, sacred texts were seized, and believers forced to choose between sacrifice to the Roman gods or facing punishment by the state.

Here's Kalyn Davenport.

So far in Diocletian's reign, Diocletian and his fellow tetrarchs have been concerned with dissidents and rebellions in the west and in the south, in Egypt, and even to a certain extent in the east.

How is it that the Christians or religion is deemed as a threat during his reign?

Yeah, so this is a bit of a surprise, actually, because the Roman imperial state has been

relatively tolerant of Christianity over the preceding 40 years.

So listeners may remember that we had the edict of sacrifice of Decius in 250,

251, and then we had the persecutions of Valerian and Gallianus in the late 250s, but that was all

stopped in 260 after Valerian was captured in battle,

...