ABSTRACT
The Great Persecution of 303–312 has been often discussed. † The purpose of the present article is to ask contemporary writers what kind of men, in what parts of the Roman Empire, championed the new religion, or looked kindly upon it, and why the government attacked it, both then and in the previous half-century. This was the period that had witnessed the disasters of barbarian invasions, defeat by the Persians, civil war, and economic collapse. But for the innate soundness of the central and provincial administration the Roman Empire might well have been wholly destroyed there and then. The years of restoration, however, culminating in the twenty years' rule of Diocletian, witnessed profound changes in men's traditional opinions. The old gods had not brought the aid expected of them, and men were turning to the new, Christian faith. By 300, Christian and non-Christian were hardening into fixed, opposing loyalties. But within the Christian camp, contemporaries were already noting the presence of deep rifts (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, VIII. i. 9). And these, in the very hour of the Church's triumph, were to break out in the Donatist and Arian controversies which were to dominate its life for the next century.
