Didn't Nero launch Christianity?

[vulcanlogician]

You're sympathizing on the basis of fiction explicitly created to whitewash a bloody history, lol.  It's like feeling bad for the romans from when rome was a backwater in nowheresville on account of how they swore that the rape of the sabine women was all the fault of those greedy sabine townspeople keeping the pussy to themselves.  

I forgot that you're into some writers from late Rome. You have me at a disadvantage in that regard. Unless your talking Seneca. And speaking of Seneca, Seneca is proof that Nero was at least somewhat of a dick. Even if he didn't persecute the Christians, he ordered a great Roman Stoic to kill himself...

Trust me, I approach the Christians' accounts with skepticism. But I remember reading some accounts (in a university history class-- not Sunday School) by authors from the era recounting cases of abuse of Christians for not honoring the Roman gods. Nero's fire aside, this seems somewhat plausible. After all, it did eventually become the "Holy" Roman empire... and it was certainly pagan from the outset. Ancients being ancients, it seems plausible that most minority religions could have endured some kind of bullshit before the Edict of Milan.

And that's another thing, why would the Edict of Milan be considered an historic event were religious minorities in Rome not being "bruised a bit" by the religious majority?