And for the average person, and even for some elites, things weren't as good as they had been. In fact, they were getting worse so fast that you might have thought the end of the world was coming. And Roman religion offered no promise of an afterlife and a bunch of squabbling, whiny gods. Sorry if I offended adherents to Roman religion, but seriously, they squabble. So even though early Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire and sometimes fed to the lions and other animals, the religion continued to grow, albeit slowly. But then as the Roman decline continued, Emperor Constantine allowed the worship of Jesus and then eventually converted to Christianity himself. And then the religion really took off.