Book excerpt: Footprints in Parchment Rome Versus Christianity 30-313 AD masterfully tackles the question: How did a group of Christians with no homeland and no standing army defeat the juggernaut of ancient Rome? Using hundreds of first-hand accounts of events, Silver guides the reader through the rise and the reach of Imperial Rome to its eventual ruin and rescue by the infant Christian Church. Over a three hundred year period Rome killed tens of thousands of Christians in an attempt to eradicate this new religion that it correctly intuited would bring Rome to its knees. Tertullian had said in the early 200's, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." Why did Rome kill all those people just because they believed in a Jewish carpenter from an obscure part of her Empire and why did so many Christians willingly die? The martyrs died for the religious freedom to publicly say the words "Christianus sum." "I am a Christian." They won that right. Rome Versus Christianity leads the reader down the road of Rome's decline and Christianity's rise. There are many fascinating sights along the way.