Historically, there is animosity between Christians and the followers of Hellenismos.

In the years following the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, something new happened in the ancient world.  A religion appeared claiming that all Gods were false with the exception of the God of its founder.  Further, unlike ancestral traditions, this religion was decidedly evangelical.  It did not take long before this view aroused great animosity, a view which would of necessity be thought of as not only intolerant but highly impious.  We now live in a world which, at least in the West, is largely Christian.  This Christian world has painted a picture of the pagan civilization previous to it as extremely hostile to itself.

So the issue is the accusation that in antiquity pagans persecuted Christians.  In reality, Christians were persecuted by Rome through the laws of the empire.  This was not the act of pagan priests and rarely the pagan populace. Persecution was not condoned by Hellenic tradition, nor is it now. It was an official act of the Roman state. 

The original reasoning used by the Romans appears to be based not so much on prejudice against the Christian religion, but on fear of insurrection. The crime that the Christians were accused of was sedition. Christians were by no means the only groups targeted. Often the worshipers of Dionysos, one of the most important deities of our tradition, were targets of the very same laws. The idea of this early legislation was to prevent people from secretly gathering, for fear that they would conspire against the government.

Persecution of Christians began to change into a horrific form with an edict of Trajan Decius (b. 201, d. 251; ruled 249-251 CE) which persisted from 250-251 CE, aimed not only at Christian clergy but on the Christian laity as well, requiring all people to sacrifice to the Gods for 'the safety of the empire.'  This persecution ended when the emperor was killed by the Goths in 251 CE.  The emperor Valerian (b. 193?, d. 260; ruled 253-260 CE) issued another similar edict which lasted from 258-260, but he was captured in battle by the Sassanid king of the Persian emperor Shapur I, who used the emperor as a living footstool to mount his horse, ending the edict.  The most notorious was a series of four edicts which comprised the Great Persecution under Diocletion (b. 244, d. 314; ruled 284-305 CE).  

As mentioned above, the edicts against Christians generally concerned allegiance to the state and fear of conspiracy. It was not so much an attack on their beliefs, at least in the beginning.  A major point of contention were laws compelling citizens to honor emperors as Gods. Concerning this, there are several issues that must be kept in mind. First and foremost, the practice of worshiping or honoring the Roman emperor's genius has nothing to do with Hellenismos and is not condoned by it. This is a Roman religious concept.  In reality, this practice was not exactly worshiping the emperor as a God.  After the death of the emperor, the Senate would somehow decide that the emperor's genius had joined the ranks of Gods and that he had become deified, like the Heroes of antiquity. But the edicts required this sacrifice to the emperor's genius while he was yet alive, and this was repugnant to Christians and forced them to challenge it or, they felt, that they had betrayed their religion. Further, the Romans believed that giving cultus to the emperor and to the pantheon of ancestral deities was for the benefit of the state, and, conversely, not giving cultus to the Gods was viewed as to the detriment of the state.  The typical punishment for refusing to do the sacrifice was for the Christian to be given to the entertainments of the arena, where they were publicly fed to wild animals or left almost defenseless against armed gladiators.  

These persecutions were an abomination, enough cannot be said to condemn them, and they were were completely contrary by the true spirit of freedom which is the genuine Hellenismos.  Those who hold the genuine Hellenismos in their heart, now and through all history, fight all such injustice and cruelty.  Period.  Let these historical events stand as a powerful admonition to all people, that those who see injustice and do nothing will reap retribution by mere association alone and must bear some blame.

Persecution of Christians by the Roman empire ended in 313 CE with the Edict of Milan, signed by the convert Constantine I (b.272, d. 337; ruled 306-337) and his co-emperor Licinius I (b. 263, d. 325; ruled 308-324), protecting the right to practice religion for both Christians and pagans.  It is significant to note that Christian numbers until this time are believed to have been quite small.  It took an emperor, actually many emperors, and all the power and money that imperial patronage entailed, to convert the people of the Roman world.  And money and power were poured into the church in abundance.  It is generally thought that the reign of Constantine was tolerant to pagans, but this author has encountered unconfirmed information stating that he had destroyed temples and killed priests and philosophers.  

The emperor Julian II (b. 331?, d. 363; ruled from 361 to 363) was born into a Christian family and he was the son of a half-brother of Constantine.  Julian converted to the pagan religion, was highly inspired by the Neoplatonists, tried to restore ancestral worship and philosophy to the empire, and to rule as a philosopher-king. His administration was tolerant of Christianity, while removing imperial patronage to the churches and bishops, but he did not persecute Christians.  Julian was the last pagan to rule Rome (perhaps with the exception of Anthemius [b. 420, d. 472; ruled 467-472] who did not attempt a pagan revival) and with his premature death from a battle wound in 472, the government immediately fell back to the hands of Christian emperors.

Once the emperors were Christian, it was through Roman laws that now pagans, rather than Christians, were persecuted.  Although Hellenismos itself cannot be blamed for the persecution of Christians, the extent of suffering and injustice imposed upon Christians left a kind of communal guilt hanging on the pagan elite and populace, regardless of whether the actual responsibility was the Roman imperial government or the practicing pagans.  And since the Christian cult was literally banned for over two centuries, it can hardly be surprising that when the Christians gained political power, they exacted the same punishment on their religious predecessors by the edicts against of the ancient cults under Theodosius I (b. 347, d. 395; ruled 379-395 CE) enacted from 389-392. 

"(Cod. Theod. xvi. ro . 4, 6), forbidding all sacrifices on pain of death, and still more by the statutes of Theodosius (Cod . Theod. xvi . 10 . 12) enacted in 392, in which sacrifice and divination were declared treasonable and punish-able with death; the use of lights, incense, garlands and libations was to involve the forfeiture of house and land where they were used; and all who entered heathen temples were to be fined." [1]

Even if one was willing to become a martyr, one's heirs would be ruined because your property and wealth was confiscated, forcing the ancient traditions underground or to be abandoned altogether.

In 392 CE the great sanctuary of Ælefsis (Eleusis; Gr. Ἐλευσίς) was closed, its demise being a powerful symbol of the  Christian era that had begun, and this commenced a new era of persecutions, now against the pagans.  

One significant way in which these persecutions differed from their predecessors is that the Christian Church itself was heavily involved, a fact which can be substantiated. The Church encouraged the empire to persecute, usually at the instigation of the local bishop. It is as though a pent up fury of vengeance was now exacted upon the pagan establishments and populace.  In addition to legislation, these powerful bishops would at times act independent of the state and order local monastics to destroy and sack pagan temples. The sacred artwork was laid to waste, disfigured, and desecrated. Typically, a group of monks and Christian ascetics would enter a temple and publicly ask the Gods to prove their validity.  Many of the ascetics were notorious for their fearsome appearance, some with beards straggling down to their legs, who lived in total poverty, and, having absolutely nothing to lose, would arrive like a torrent in the temples, wild and glaring, so the accounts say.  They would proceed to pull down the cult statues, desecrate them, and hurl the priests into a mighty fire.  Once this had been accomplished, they would declare to the stupefied populace, to great effect, that their Gods must be false since they are unable to defend their own statues or exact revenge on those who laid to waste their sanctuaries.  Let this be a powerful warning to those in our contemporary communities who embrace superstition, who ignore the logic of the philosophers, and who accept the superficial interpretation of myth, that such beliefs rest on a worthless foundation that can be easily overturned by a skillful individual who sees the flaw in such thinking and takes advantage of it.  Superstition has no place in the genuine Hellenismos and superstition places our communities at great risk, as history has proven definitively.

It must be stated that the purpose of this essay is not to condemn the Christian faith, but only to shed light on how Christian power created a world of intolerance in regard to freedom of thought, an intolerance which is consistent with initial impressions of the religion since ancient times.  At the beginning of this discourse, we stated that Christianity was something new in the ancient world, a religion that claimed absolute and sole legitimacy, while denying any legitimacy to any other religions, other than Judaism, a religion to which it bore roots.  Now that they had political power, the Christian church very quickly acted on this conviction with complete impunity, tolerating no other religions, not even Judaism, and forbidding deviations even within the Christian churches themselves, all of which has been well documented. 

After the split between the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Roman Catholic) churches, and then the later Protestant Reformation, Christianity lost control of consistency of doctrine along with a loss of political power.  Reemergence of interest in the classical world began in a serious way with the Renaissance and continued through the Enlightenment into contemporary times.  As the centuries progressed, the situation of tolerance began to gradually improve, a major force being the power of the writings of Voltaire, Victor Hugo, and many others.  Nonetheless, it is only in the 20th century that significant tolerance of non-Christian religions and philosophies began to appear in the West. Although persecution of Hellenismos continues, freedom of religion has been promulgated throughout the world, a major force being the United Nations. To be a charter member of the United Nations, your country must enact legislation that guarantees freedom of religion, whether or not such legislation is entirely effective.  

Without coercion on behalf of religious freedom, the threat of legal persecution against minority religions and beliefs remains a reality, and even in Greece itself, those who hold the old tradition still largely practice in considerable secrecy. [2] Christian leaders throughout the world continue to act with impunity, preaching against non-Christian belief systems and, particularly in the United States, they have, in recent decades, made inroads to political power, inroads which are worrisome to those who are not Christian, regardless of one's religious tradition, because of the history.  There has never been a public admission by Christian churches that a great wrong has been done to Hellenismos (and many other traditions); quite the contrary, many Christian teachers continue to condemn our beliefs and call our Gods false or instruments of evil and try to force their beliefs on others through law.

In conclusion, although this article is vastly too brief and hardly does justice to the complexity of these issues, the author hopes that at least some of the major points have been presented in a manner that would inspire the reader to further study.  

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Recommended Reading: 

A Chronicle of the Last Pagans by Pierre Chuvin

NOTES:

[1] Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, 1910, Vol. 14, Entry entitled: Idolatry, p.288

[2] In Greece during the Lenten season there is the yearly reading of The Syndodicon which includes a condemnation of ancient Greek philosophy and beliefs (largely in response to the teachings of Johannes Italus in the eleventh century CE) which declares the following anathema: those who introduce Greek doctrines of the soul, heaven, and earth into the Church, metempsychosis (reincarnation) and those who believe in the pre-existence of souls, that the forms and matter are eternal as is God (Mystic Materialism), those who believe and teach Greek philosophy including Plato.