Huck: No exporting democracy

Neither was the situation prior to the Edict of Milan one of "religious freedom" -- everyone in the Roman Empire was free merely to incorporate their own gods into the same broad polytheistic framework. Refusing to participate in the prescribed sacrifices and festivals honoring those gods was criminal. The only notable exemption was for the Jews, an oddball group who were despised by the Romans but excused from generally applicable religious obligations on account of their religion's antiquity.

This disputes what I said how?

Rome knew the surest way of getting rebellion was to mess around with other people's religion. So they pulled all the gods into their system they could, and made exceptions where they couldn't. Everyone happily continued worshiping how they were before.

Yes, people were required to participate in required festivals, but they were required to do so before the Romans showed up. That's why I qualified 'religious freedom'. Societies under Rome had religious freedom, people did not, but they didn't have it before either.

When Rome conquered someone, it looked that their religion, figured out who was in charge, suggested a few minor changes to them to make it fit in with Rome's religion and holy days, and let them keep operating as before if they'd support Rome. As long as the taxes came in.

And, with the Jews, Rome demonstrated that, if the society cared enough about the 'minor changes' Rome wanted, they'd just let them drop and let the religion be totally unchanged. Although the priests supporting Rome, or at least not preaching revolution, was still important, which formed the basis of a few attempts to trick Jesus.

Really? That would have been surprising news to the Gauls, Spaniards, Britons or Carthaginians.

Carthage is an example of exactly what I was talking about. They were adopted Roman gods before they joined Rome, while they were actually at war with Rome!

Not that Carthage was actually really there anymore after Rome 'conquered' it, so I'm unsure as to who you were thinking the Romans were dictating religion to. However, the conquered Carthaginian colonies continued to practice their polytheism mixed with Roman polytheism as far as I am aware. If you know otherwise, please inform.

As for the Celts, they were mostly left along also, except for the Emperor Claudius. The Celtic Gauls were aiming for converts in Rome itself, and that was not approved of by him. (He also almost threw the Jews/Christians out of some city that I've forgotten at the moment, as they kept fighting.)

Claudius is the exception to the rule, during his span, Rome actually started caring about religion for a while as he attempted to 'purify' the Roman religion a little and throw out some of the insanity it has gained over the centuries of importing foreign gods and concepts and holy days.

But a single Roman emperor that was exceptionally hard on other religions influencing Rome's religion does not a policy make, nor does it really contradict what I said anyway because he left those religions alone in their home turf.

In general, Celtic religions continued to function just fine, or, rather, they did as they were slowly eaten piecemeal by Roman religions, or converted en masse to Christianity later.

The druids represented a reservoir of rebellion, or so the Romans saw them, and their elimination had nothing to do with religious practice and much to do with commerce, territorial integrity, and military concerns.

There being so little reliable documentation available, one school of thought refrains from calling it a "Celtic religion", seeing it as more of a spiritual aspect of Celtic culture and society. A support for that was the Celts ability to be selectively assimilative, picking up many foreign concepts and practices over the centuries of their movement across Europe from Asia Minor.

The other point I wish to make is the difficulties the Romans had in selling continued violence and oppression to their citizens. The early Christians were executed for violating civic religious practices (the whole thrown to the lions thing), and Roman propaganda tried to paint them as evil with edicts and announcements concerning their perverted sexual practices, blood orgies, stealing babies and eating them, and the like... much as the later Roman Christians tried to paint pagans.

Just to make sure we don't lose sight of the original topic here, I submit that there is no such thing as religious persecution per se. There was, is and will always be people with the need to take, keep and maintain their power over others, and religion -- its corrupt use -- remains the most efficient way to exercise power over large numbers of people. Sitting in the forest, we (general) can't seem to see it, but the countries out there with our democratic exportation targets painted on their chests, know quite well how it all works.