Didn't Nero launch Christianity?

[vulcanlogician]

I may or may not know my history. But is it not true that they were a religious minority at one point? It's a matter of documentation... How we interpret that documentation today is a matter of interpretation.

Not in the context of roman society, no.  We think of things like religious minorities (and all that this entails) through the lens of later monotheistic cultural dominance and persecution.   Pagan rome absorbed and validated the religions it came into contact with to maintain social order and as an effective platform for taxation.  The roman empires faith was a massive collection of "religious minorities", all of which operated under the umbrella of secular authority.  Priesthood was a public office.  A roman temple would contain effigies to faiths from all over their reach.  They even contained statues of "jesus", lol.

Of course. Outside the Abrahamic traditions religious tolerance was pretty common. That's why I've always held that religious tolerance isn't a modern idea, but rather a departure from the influence of Christian/Abrahamic norms. 

Still. At one point in time, Christians were a cultural minority, and "minority status" isn't something peculiar to Abrahamic traditions or paganism. Thus, incorrect as their beliefs might have been, I sympathize with the early Christians as much as any minority in any epoch. If records from Nero's era are to be trusted, the Christians were once scapegoated by the Roman leadership. My original point was that (if doing such a thing is wrong in principle-- which it is) then, those who preach "Do unto others" ought to be ashamed of the way history panned out.