“In a famous episode in Asia Minor around 185, a mob of Christians marched to the home of C. Arrius Antoninus, the governor of Asia, and demanded to be executed. The governor, no doubt irritated by the interruption, sent the Christians away, telling them that if they wanted to die, they had cliffs to leap off and ropes with which to hang themselves. If he had been following the guidelines in the Pliny–Trajan correspondence, he could have had the Christians executed, and yet this particular administrator could not be bothered to arrange trials. Not every Roman administrator was interested in Christians; many just wanted to see them go away.””
The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom