Paul's 500 witnesses.

[Minimalist]

Except that Constantine I did not do that.  It was Theodosius in 380 who finally made the ultimate mistake of accepting that jesus shit as the state religion.  The asshole.


https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=...UIxTBOQ_6g

I certainly don't mind being corrected. Thank you. But why is it then my long term impression stems from seeing others point to Constantine and Christianity?

Most likely because xtians love to mischaracterize the Edict of Milan in 313 as being Constantine "legalizing" xtianity when in fact it granted religious freedom to all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Milan

The Edict is popularly thought to concern only Christianity, and even to make Christianity the official religion of the Empire (which recognition did not actually occur until the Edict of Thessalonica in 380). Indeed, the Edict expressly grants religious liberty not only to Christians, who had been the object of special persecution, but goes even further and grants liberty to all religions:

In the same vein xtians love to claim that the Emperor Decius "persecuted" them by requiring them to take a special loyalty oath c 250 when in fact Decius required EVERYONE to take the oath.  (The mid-3d century was a bad time for the Romans.  The Sassanids kept kicking the shit out of them and returning soldiers brought back a serious plague.)  But in spite of their fucking paranoia, xtians were not the target. 

The main persecution of xtians was by Diocletian in 303 and lasted a couple of years.  From this, the fucks created a cottage industry of martyrs and bullshit stories to justify their own persecutions of pagans later on.