Denny, some good points.

In Pagan-to-Papal Rome I do indeed see a thread of continuity in essential persecution of / opposition to the true church, and I cannot separate the blasphemous ecclesiastical claims of the former from the latter. They are both essentially Pagan to me, albeit the latter has a veneer of Christianity to it, with its gods and goddesses renamed as "saints". And I think first century Christians could look at Pagan Rome and know that it was its main persecutor as well as a hotbed of false religion.