I don't think strict beliefs and Rome were really a thing until a certain Eastern religion took over.

Historically false. Christians were persecuted in Rome because they refused to sacrifice to Divine Ceasar.

Rome was very serious about worshiping Ceasar; the rest was optional.

(Rome didn't have a "civil society" or "social contract" in any sense we'd recognize. Their laws were supposed to be divinely ordained, and refusing to acknowledge this was grounds for the death penalty. If you're imagining Rome as some sort of freedom of religion place like America with the First Amendment then you're sorely mistaken; think Soviet communism or China instead.)

How do you reconcile that claim with the polytheistic nature of religion in Rome, and it's practice of folding other religions into it, as it absorbed conquered cultures?

Your parallels to 20th century governments miss the mark as much as the claims you are criticizing.

Christianity wasn't granted legal protection until ~300AD. Prior to that, you could say that it was a strict belief that Christianity was verboten and its members subject to persecution (lions, crosses, etc). It would be another half-century before the empire started to codify what "Christianity" was in a "strict" sense (Nicaean creed, right?).

The time period of Secundio's tomb is around AD 60 or so. As the article at pompeiisites.org says, "During the Roman period at Pompeii, funeral rites usually involved cremation, while only small children were buried." This burial of a 60 year old man stands out for a few reasons, but one of which is that it even exists at all given that it's contrary to custom of the pre-Christian age.

> It would be another half-century before the empire started to codify what "Christianity" was in a "strict" sense (Nicaean creed, right?).

The Roman Empire didn't codify anything. The Nicene Creed was composed by the Church in response to the Arian crisis. That the empire (through Constantine) had an interest in peace does not mean the empire performed the clarification.

That’s not quite true. It’s really hard to draw a line between these two instituons at Nicaea, because that was an explicitly symbiotic process.

First of all, the council was summoned by the emperor, organized by him, paid for by him, facilitated using public infrastructure, and personally attended by him. He might have “deferred” to the decisions of the bishops, but only happens when everyone recognizes his power to just declare things. He also banished some of the losing bishops into exile using his personal power. Whether or not it’s the “empire” or the dictatorial emperor declaring a thing is a fuzzy line, but a lot of state power was involved.

Secondly it wasn’t “the church” who declared anything, because no such singular institution actually existed to speak with one voice. Rather, the council was a self-conscious effort by Constantine to actually create a unified church, since he worried that the existing discord threatened spiritual safety of the church. Remember that Christianity had been legal for only a decade or so and it would take a while before the more underground organization could organize and finish settling old scores. Whether or not the Bishop of Rome was recognized as the leader of the church is still a hotly debated subject; he however did not actually chair the council of Nicaea. At Nicaea we’re still a century or two out from the first papal bull, 400 years or so from the first cardinals, and 700 years from the first recognizably modern papal conclave. In any case, only 300 or so of the 1,800 bishops of the empire attended.

In many ways the church became The Church by taking over the mantle of imperial authority as the Roman Empire receded from Western Europe. This is the process that gives it the power, organization, and bureaucracy to set religious policy and speak in one voice, and none of that is in place by Nicaea.

Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar. We're trying to avoid that hell here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That opinion itself is quite a shockingly revisionist statement, to simply wave a broad brush like that at a rather complex time period and then apply modern political coloring to ancient history.

I see no attempt at nuance here, so taking this at face value, are we then to simply dismiss Pliny the Younger's writings to Trajan about persecution? Should we ignore Hadrian's note of slanderous attacks on Christians? Was Tacitus writing also 'myth' in saying that Nero blamed Christians for the fire in Rome?

  ...To get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Chrestians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

— Tacitus' Annals 15.44

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

This was a complex period in history, I would be wary of anyone making sweeping judgements or applying modern political coloring which acts to cloud issues rather than to illuminate history.

This wikipedia article is based on 20th century sources. Will be very nice when such an article will be based on original sources rather than biased interpretations and extrapolations 2000 years later. As Frank Herbert said: History is written by historians.

I must say, "20th century sources" isn't exactly a phrase that comes to mind when discussing Tacitus. But pray tell, what's your translation of the original Latin? It's not particularly difficult to find the original text here:

https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/tacitus/tac.ann15.shtml

Rome was remarkably flexible; until you say you don't want a statue of Jupiter or the deified Augustus in your Temple...and of course, nobody named Julian the Apostate would ever have an axe to grind against Christians.

If the writings of Porphyry, Emperor Julian, et al are to be believed, early Christianity was indeed the ISIS of the time. They were reported to systematically destroy temples, kill priests and at regular gatherings they would report their exploits to encourage each other in doing so.

If we look at 20th century newspapers we can see that a lot of political enemies are categorised as terrorists.

The joke is on you. Correlation does not imply causation.

On a more serious note, I wonder how people reacted to his decision to forgo cremation at the time, especially since he is a priest himself; and if there were any discussions, even privately among his relatives, on how he can get away with it because of his status (if this was really the case).

It's for moment like these, not the ones immortalized by historians, that I wish there is/was (does it even matter what tense to use) a time machine.