Imperial authorities were remarkably tolerant of religions from those lands overrun by the Roman legions. If the national religions of the conquered countries would add homage to the emperor to their other ceremonies, Rome almost never interfered. In one notable instance, Rome even dropped the requirement of burning incense to the emperor. The Jews, with their fanatical loyalty to their one true God, and their readiness to turn their homeland into a blood-soaked wilderness before they acknowledged any other deity, were the exception. As long as Roman authorities considered Christians as just one more sect of Jews, followers of Jesus enjoyed this same immunity from imperial pressure. But when the Jews made it known in no uncertain terms that they would have nothing to do with the new movement, the situation changed dramatically. Once the Romans discovered what the Christians were up to, they were confronted by the problem of toleration in a more exasperating form than even the Jews had presented. The Jews, after all, were “a sort of closed corporation, a people set apart from others by the mark of circumcision, who lived and worshiped largely by themselves, and did little active proselyting.” The Christians, on the other hand, were always talking about their Jesus. They were out to make Christians of the entire population of the empire, and the rapidity of their spread showed that this was no idle dream. Not only did they, like the Jews, refuse to worship the emperor as a living god, but they were doing their utmost to convince every subject of the emperor to join them in their refusal. From time to time, then, Christians felt the wrath of the empire and its people.