Religione pubblica e libertà religiosa nell'impero romano

The Capitoline religion allows a lot of ethnic religions to coexist together, but it also demands the public acknowledgement of an official religion; Christianity, in as much as it was a non-ethnic universal religion, became the most dangerous rival of the Capitoline religion in the third century and was, for this reason persecuted. The conflict was not between polytheism and monotheism, but between Jupiter and Christ: it had to be decided which of the two should be the official God of Rome