What human rights violations happened to the Christians in the early Roman Empire?

First of all, the

origin of the concept of human rights dates to the late 18th

century. It did not exist in antiquity, the Middle Ages and even

Early Modernity. Acts such as the persecutions of Christians were

not seen as violations of human rights.

We do not

actually know much about what was done to the Christians in the

Early Empire. Some of the information is contradictory, and the

reliability of other information has been questioned. The true

persecutions of Christians started after the Early Empire period.

The persecutions by the emperor Decius (250) and the emperor

Valerian (257-260) occurred during the Crisis of the Third Century.

The worse persecution, the Diocletianic Persecution or Great

Persecution (305-311), occurred in the Later Empire

We are told that

the emperor Nero blamed the Christians for the Great Fire of Rome

of 64 BC and persecuted them, but we are not told what he actually

did. All were have is Tacitus saying Nero accused and punished the

already detested Christians to dispel rumours that he had started

the fire and Suetonius briefly mentioning that Christians were

killed under the reign of Nero. There are modern historians who

doubt that this could actually have happened.

Eusebius, a

Christian writer of the late 3rd century/early 4th century,

suggested that the emperor Domitian carried out excessive and cruel

exiles and executions of Christians. However, he wrote this 200

year after Domitian's reign (81-96) and there is no evidence of

this. Moreover, he suggested that the wife of a consul was exiled

because she was a Christian. However, an earlier Roman historian,

Cassius Dio, wrote that she was guilty of sympathy for Judaism.

A provincial

governor under the reign of Trajan (98-117) executed people who had

been accused of being Christians, confessed this, and did not prove

that they were no longer Christian by honouring the Roman gods.

Eusebius wrote

during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180) some Christians in

Lugdunum (present day Lyons, France) were imprisoned, tortured or

fed to the beasts.

Eusebius wrote

that there were Christian persecutions during the reign of

Septimius Severus (193-211). However another Christian writer,

Tertullian, wrote that Septimius Severus was well disposed towards

the Christians, that his doctor was a Christian and that he

protected high-born Christians.

Eusebius also

wrote that the emperor Maximinus the Thracian (reigned 235-238)

persecuted the heads of the Christian church in 325 and exiled a

pope (Pontian) and a theologian (Hippolytus). With regard to

Hippolytus, however, according to Pope Pius IV he was martyred by

Maximinus the Thracian's predecessor, Alexander Severus (reigned

222-235). Once again we have contradictory versions.