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This article contributes to the recent debate on the historicity of the Neronian persecution. Drawing on a recent publication by C. M. Hansen which argues that Tacitus’s account is largely invented by the ancient historian, this article contends against the pro-historicity defences offered by Jones, Cook, and Van der Lans and Bremmer and contends that evidence for the historicity of the Neronian persecution is lacking and cannot conclusively demonstrate that such an event occurred. In fact, the defences of the Neronian persecution offer a window into the lengths that one must go to assert its historicity, including hypothesising non-extant sources behind our Roman writers (Tacitus, Pliny, and Suetonius) in an attempt to reach behind them, among other logical problems. The article briefly contends that the Neronian persecution could easily have developed in Christian thought without any need of a systemic or focused attack upon Christianity. Instead, Christians were primed to consider themselves persecuted from the beginning because of the narratives surrounding Jesus’s death and the imprisonment narratives around Paul. It is not difficult to see how an expectation of persecution could be fulfilled in the generally hated and vilified Nero.

The Number of the Myth: A Defence of the Ahistoricity of the Neronian Persecution