How many Christians were persecuted by the early Romans?

Lawrence S. Cunningham (A Brief story of Saints) says tradition has it that there were ten periods of persecution, but that may be pious fiction. The third century Church Father, Origen does not give us an exact figure for the number of martyrdoms,but states that up to his time there were not many Christians who had been martyred and they could easily be counted Nevertheless there were those who sought and even provoked martyrdom.In this circumstance, one should wonder whether to feel any sympathy or admiration for these martyrs, and what significance there is in the number who died In his work Ad Scapulam, Tertullian describes how, around 185 CE, all the Christians of a town in Asia presented themselves to the Proconsul Arrius Antoninus and demanded the privilege of martyrdom.

The proconsul told them that if they wished to die, they could hang themselves or throw themselves from the precipices When the early Church Father, Ignatius was taken prisoner by the Roman authorities, he expected and eagerly desired to die as a martyr. S surviving letters refer to a 'lust for death' and enumerate in grusesome detail the tortures he expected to suffer. He apparently asked the Christians in Rome to do nothing to save him The fourth-century Circumcellions eagerly embraced martyrdom.

When they were not attacking their coreligionists, they sought out and attended pagan rites in order to denounce them, hoping to provoke the Romans to make them martyrs So, the number is not as high as is commonly supposed, and could have been even lower if the early Christians did not seek and encourage their own martyrdom.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.