• He came over to your side yesterday and is changing the state over to your ideology. They're still going to do imperialism and slavery and everything, and nothing will fundamentally change, but it'll still be your ideology, totally.

  • They've been feeding you to lions for centuries because of your refusal to acknowledge the state's authority. Now they'll stop, unless you deviate from the state-approved version in any way, in which case they'll burn you at the stake. The state-approved version involves acknowledging the state's authority.

  • He seems oddly keen on having everyone go around flashing a symbol of the cruel and humiliating way the state brutally executed your founder.

  • You don't get a say in what the state-approved version will look like, but he'll preside over ever meeting deciding that. There won't be any more communes.

Your network of communes began as a doomsday cult eagerly waiting for the apocalypse to happen where the empire you live under would be destroyed, but that didn't happen so you've all just been kinda hanging out in secret meetings trying to support each other and survive :doomer:

  • ssjmarx [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Imagine trading a huge and diverse pantheon that's incredibly closely tied up with your state apparatus for Christianity :cringe:

    • Goblinmancer [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I mean imagine being Roman seeing christians getting fed into lions and then suddenly your emperor converts to christianity like wtf?

      • DoubleShot [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Just as a minor point here, but Christians were never fed to lions and the level of official persecution against Christians by the Roman state was far, far less than Christians make it out to be. Nero persecuted Christians within Rome for a little bit. And one of the later emperors - I think it was Diocletian - did try to persecute Christians across the empire but basically no one went along with it. Julian the Apostate hated Christians but likewise didn't really do much. Basically for the first couple centuries Christians were largely mocked and the religion derided as something only for slaves, women, and children, up until you get closer to the time of Constantine and when it was starting to get a bit "trendy".

        Source: Candida Moss' excellent The Myth of Persecution

      • ssjmarx [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        pray to house shrine for luck every morning

        receive bountiful luck from Jupiter in exchange for my piety

        Emperor comes in

        tells me that I can't pray to Jupiter anymore

        tearing down statues

        tearing down shrines

        tearing down temples

        church and state are now two separate institutions (!?)

        emperor wants to ban gladiatorial fights (!?!?)

        at least I'm still getting my free bread.

        • MoreAmphibians [none/use name]
          ·
          2 years ago

          You might want to keep that shrine to Jupiter. We've got Emperor Julian the Apostate coming up and he's going to Make Rome Pagan Again.

          • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            During the Battle of Samarra, Julian was mortally wounded under mysterious circumstances…

            His laws tended to target wealthy and educated Christians, and his aim was not to destroy Christianity but to drive the religion out of "the governing classes of the empire—much as Chinese Buddhism was driven back into the lower classes by a revived Confucian mandarinate in 13th century China."

            He restored pagan temples which had been confiscated since Constantine's time, or simply appropriated by wealthy citizens; he repealed the stipends that Constantine had awarded to Christian bishops, and removed their other privileges, including a right to be consulted on appointments and to act as private courts.

            Mysterious circumstances claims another victim :epstein:

          • Goblinmancer [any]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Imagine if he finished the Third Temple before he get owned by a spear :party-sicko: