But Christians were incensed, and not just by the stuff burned at the Roman rituals, and after tensions escalated for a few years, the official oracles demanded the closing of some Christian churches. No executions yet. Most of them were eventually released. Official Christian history records this as a veritable reign of terror. As for the virgins, their state was and is severely overrated anyway.
Chastity is about as much of a virtue as malnutrition.
Still, it was important to the early Church to hammer the point home, and dozens of tales were concocted, each involving some pure Golden Girl who would rather die than give it up to some official Roman reprobate. So maybe this is the wrong approach to common ground after all, and we should continue to pursue the economic models. Saves on the sword bill, and anyway, in terms of bringing cultures together, one McDonald's is worth any number of martyrs.