I'm well aware of that, but I don't seem to recall claiming that the Nero persecutions were empire-wide (though it may have come across that way). While there certainly was no official order, I do believe the political influence led to increasing persecutions outside of Rome.
Nero went after the Christians in Rome, whom he blamed for the Great Fire, but there is no evidence that Christians elsewhere were killed at that time.
According to one of my sources, The Untold Story of the New Testament, the Neronian persecution began to spread beyond Rome before the end of 65 AD. This was a 3-year massacre so while it started out locally we can't assume it was monolithic from beginning to end. This is precisely why Paul was arrested (he wasn't in Rome at the time, but was en route to Ephesus from Corinth). We also do have a rash of Christian leaders being killed during the three-year period from Patras to Alexandria that includes the men I listed (Andrew, Luke, Bartholomew, John Mark, etc.). Intense persecution against the churches in Northwest Asia also caused Gentile Christians to rebel against their local authorities, prompting Peter to write his first epistle (65 AD). Interesting that the man who had cut off a guard's ear trying to save Jesus has to remind fellow believers of the importance of non-violence. I mean, there isn't an official order to do this from Nero per se, but it seems awfully coincidental, and not unbelievable that implied pressure from Rome had caused a crack down on Christians in different corners of the empire.
The Jews were not required to offer incense to the Roman gods because they had an ancient religion.
This is pretty much exactly what I said, so I'm not sure what your point is.
Jewish Christians also enjoyed that exemption, but the Church decided that Gentile converts did not have to undergo circumcision--so in Roman eyes they were not Jews and therefore did not get the benefit of the Jewish exemption.
This is true, and all well and good, but sort of splitting hairs while missing my overall point.
Paul was in Corinth during the governorship of Gallio (the brother of Seneca) in the very early 50s, before Nero was emperor, and Luke's account of Paul's trip from Palestine to Rome (after he appealed to Caesar) does not include visits to Corinth or Ephesus. Even that trip must be earlier than the Great Fire.
The point about the Jews is that the Romans believed in mos maiorum, the ways of the ancestors, so they could respect the Jews for following the ways of their ancestors (even if they had a negative attitude towards Judaism), but Gentile converts to Christianity had abandoned the beliefs of their ancestors.
By the way, there is a church in Patras which claims to have some of the wood from the cross on which St. Andrew was crucified.