Feeding Christians to the Lions
John F. Hall III, History

The popular and popularized image of the cruel, vicious, and bloodthirsty Roman, forcing, with sardonic grimace, innocent Christians into arenas to meet their deaths at the point of the gladiator’s sword, or to be gorily ripped apart by merciless beasts, is all too familiar to anyone who has read a historical novel like Quo Vadis or who has viewed any of a host of films from 1950s, from The Robe or Ben Hur to the recent Gladiator.

The crucifixion of Christ is similarly portrayed in fiction and film as another heinous crime at the hands of brutal Romans, in point of fact, the original act beginning a centuries-long process of victimization and persecution. Much of the bad press Rome receives in the present era patently derives from the persecution of Christians. Indeed, the metaphor of “feeding Christians to the lions” may be the first association that comes to mind for many in relation to the Romans. While a popular metaphor, it is nevertheless a metaphor that mixes persecution, propaganda, and politics, and moreover, mixes them up, at least in respect to who is doing what to whom. But Hollywood and “historical” fiction are not real history.

After viewing parts of several of the Hollywood historical fiascos, the course will examine the place of Christians in the Roman system, their recourse to Roman legal processes, what persecutions did occur and when, and how these did or did not affect the spread of Christianity.