The Christians, who were blamed for the troubles of the past century, were furiously persecuted … (The First Four Seals: 96-300 AD, pg. 28).

Diocletian’s intent in pursuing the persecution of the Christians was to eliminate them entirely, as most non-Christian Romans blamed them for the troubles of the last century. (The Fifth Seal: 303-313 AD, pg. 32.)

“Notwithstanding the efforts of the heathens to exterminate the Christians, and abolish their mode of faith, yet they increased so greatly as to become formidable by their numbers … and particularly excited the hatred of Galerius, the adopted son of Diocletian, who, stimulated by his mother, a bigoted pagan, persuaded the emperor to commence a persecution. It accordingly began on the 23rd of February, A.D. 303, that being the day on which the Terminalia were celebrated, and on which, as the pagans boasted, they hoped to put a termination to Christianity.”

John Foxe, Book of Martyrs, p. 53.

“In A.D. 250 the most violent persecution the church had yet faced was instigated by the emperor Decius (249-251). A general from the Danubian frontier, Decius was determined to have no nonsense from the Christians. In his eyes, they were the enemies of the empire. Their atheism was responsible for the many troubles in the realm.”

Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, pp. 74-75, emphasis added.

“The common people also, with their polytheistic ideas, abhorred the believers in the one God as atheists and enemies of the gods. They readily gave credit to the slanderous rumors of all sorts of abominations … practiced by the Christians at their religious assemblies and love-feasts, and regarded the frequent public calamities of that age as punishments justly inflicted by the angry gods for the disregard of their worship.”

Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 2, p. 43.

See also Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, pp. 37-45, for the full discussion of Rome’s policy toward religions in general and Christianity in particular, and the causes of Christian persecution.

From 303 to 313 AD [was] the time of the tenth, worst, and last official persecution of the Christians by the Roman state (The Fifth Seal, 303-313 AD, pg. 32).

“All former persecutions of the faith were forgotten in the horror with which men looked back upon the last and greatest: the tenth wave … of that great storm obliterated all the traces that had been left by others. The fiendish cruelty of Nero, the jealous fears of Domitian, the unimpassioned dislike of Marcus, the sweeping purpose of Decius, the clever devices of Valerian, fell into obscurity when compared with the concentrated terrors of that final grapple, which resulted in the destruction of the old Roman Empire and the establishment of the Cross as the symbol of the world’s hope.”

Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 2, pp. 66.

Guerber writes that it was “the worst and bloodiest that had yet been known” of the Christian persecutions. (The Fifth Seal, 303-313 AD, pg. 33.)

H. A. Guerber, The Story of the Romans, p. 267.

The traditional interpretation places the fifth seal immediately following the events of the four horsemen, or from 303 to 313 AD, the time of the tenth, worst, and last official persecution of the Christians by the Roman state (pg. 32, The Fifth Seal, 303-313 AD).

“We naturally, however, look for the fulfillment of it [the fifth seal] in some period succeeding those designated by the preceding symbols. … in a period succeeding that represented , under the fourth seal, by Death on a pale horse.”

Albert Barnes, Notes on … Revelation, p. 160.

[The wars with the barbarians affected the population in almost every province, thus death by the sword.] … The entire … reigns of Valerian and his son (AD 254 to 268) … was one uninterrupted series of disorders and disasters. (The First Four Seals, pg. 28).

“Our habits of thinking so fondly connect the order of the universe with the fate of man, that this gloomy period of history has been decorated with inundations, earthquakes, uncommon meteors, preternatural darkness, and a crowd of prodigies fictitious or exaggerated. … But a long and general famine was a calamity of a more serious kind. It was the inevitable consequence of rapine and oppression, which extirpated the produce of the present, and the hope of future harvests. Famine is almost always followed by epidemical diseases, the effect of scanty and unwholesome food. Other causes must, however, have contributed to the furious plague, which, from the year two hundred and fifty to the year two hundred and sixty-five, raged without interruption in every province, every city, and almost every family, of the Roman empire. During some time five thousand persons died daily in Rome; and many towns, that had escaped the hands of the Barbarians, were entirely depopulated.”

Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1, Ch. 10, “Emperors Decius, Gallus, Aemilianus, Valerian And Gallienus.—Part IV.