Paul's 500 witnesses.

[Brian37]

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.

Thank you. I like being corrected, and what you pointed out does not shock me in the least. 

I think lots of this false martyrdom on the early Christians part stems from Nero using them as scapegoats when Rome burned. Now again, am I wrong about that too? 

Outside that. Yea, seems the same false persecution all religions like to claim. Humans never like to take into account time place and context. Christians and Muslims and Jews still pull that shit today. And when they say "Look at what they did to me" I say, respond with "who when and where?" 

I am not going to presume any label is always the victim or always the aggressor. Geography matters, and time in in human history matters.