Domitian and Early Christianity
After the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD, we don't hear anything definite about the Christians for forty years until the reign of the Roman Emperor Trajan, about 100 AD.
Domitian
But during the reign of the Emperor
Domitian, in the 90's AD, some people
at court were killed for being "atheists", which means not believing
in the gods. Suetonius
does not use the word Christian, but to a Roman maybe the Christians
seemed to not believe in the gods (after all they didn't believe in
the Roman gods). One of the people killed was named Stephen, which
is a Christian name.
The main thing we can gather from this information is that apparently
Christianity itself was not yet illegal at this time.
