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" Romans often found the Christians offensively irritating in court—not without reason, if the acts of the martyrs are to be believed. The Christians spat, metaphorically and literally, in the face of Roman legal process. In one famous trial, a martyr named Sanctus responded to every question with “I am a Christian.” A Christian author records the event with great approbation. “With such determination did he stand up to their onslaughts that he would not tell them his own name, race, and birthplace, or whether he was a slave or free; to every question he replied in Latin, ‘I am a Christian.’ This he proclaimed over and over again, instead of name, birthplace, nationality and everything else, and not another word did the heathen hear from him.”42 The “heathen” were less approving of this behavior and the presiding governor promptly had him tortured some more. What should Pliny do with these odd people? "
― Catherine Nixey , The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World