The earliest Christian martyrs, tortured and killed by Roman officials enforcing worship of the gods, won so much fame among their co-religionists that others wished to imitate them to such an extent that a group presented themselves to the governor of Asia, declaring themselves to be Christians, and calling on him to do his duty and put them to death. He executed a few, but as the rest demanded it as well, he responded, exasperated, "You wretches, if you want to die, you have cliffs to leap from and ropes to hang by." This attitude was sufficiently widespread for Church authorities to begin to distinguish sharply "between solicited martyrdom and the more traditional kind that came as a result of persecution." At a Spanish council held at the turn of the 3rd and 4th centuries, the bishops denied the crown of martyrdom to those who died while attacking pagan temples. According to Ramsey MacMullen, the provocation was just "too blatant". Drake cites this as evidence that Christians resorted to violence, including physical, at times.