I certainly am not in the league of "super-brainy." I'll grudgingly accept the label 'Darwinist,' but only if you will grant that it does not conflict with my Christian profession.
threat number two [feeding dissidents to the lions] did not work in suppressing the Christian faith, and that the pagan religion of those who issued it has been dead for centuries.
Your point here is altogether obscure to me. Your itemised 'Threat 1' (withholding payment of taxes) attracts severe penalties wherever there is a state capable of enforcing them; this is applied to all who are liable to taxation, not any one subset by religious persuasion. In any event, it has no moral equivalence to the capital penalty of Threat 2.
I hope you are not arguing that classical paganism became extinct because it was insufficently zealous in persecuting dissidents? The best estimate I can find (derived from Gibbon) for the total number of early Christians who suffered death at the hands of the Roman state is circa 1,500 (about 150 annually over a decade), a melancholy figure representing a lamentable episode (and as you note, a wholly ineffective measure).
As a Christian, I am haunted by an even more lamentable number, or would be, if I could establish it more accurately. And that number would be the answer to a third question that could be added to your quiz of the day, to wit:
(3) What is the total number of Christians who have been put to death by other Christians over matters of religious doctrinal disputes?