Yeah, ok. So an explicitly parochial prespective. This isn't compelling from a disinterested, objective perspective.

> Warrior god cults, like that of Mithras, didn't have a strong role in the overall state and direction of the empire. They weren't major players and it is actually perfectly fine for terminology and understanding to focus on those.

just like Christianity in 79AD Herculaneum

Do you know for a fact that the library contained no mention of Jesus nor Judaism? If you don't know this, then why do you refer to it as pagan?

The point is: we have a Roman library from the first century AD. We don't know what it contains. To call it "pagan" tacitly assumes that (a) Christianity was not relevant to the collectors of the library, and (b) whether something is Christian or not is of primary interest whenever we discuss an artefact from the past.

We don't know whether (a) is true, and (b) is only true from a particularly dogmatic and insular perspective

Tbh, I'm struggling to understand what your point is apart from you're asserting that you view the world as centered on your own particular dogmatic tradition and you find it hard to understand why other's don't share that perspective

"Foreign religions" weren't really much of a thing either, there were lots of gods and each village and city (and family really) would have their own versions of gods. Sometimes when you'd conquer a city you'd go to the most prominent temple and steal the statue or alter or whatever and bring it back to Rome with the vibe that you were stealing the god of the place you conquered.

That's not what the latin origin of pagan ever meant, it meant peasant or rural usually in the negative connotation common for city folks referring to people who lived outside of cities\. Were there ever any recorded instances of Romans referring to themselves as "pagan" as a group? Maybe one.

>"Rome"

Weird usage of scare quotes, especially in the time frame you are referring to, the name of the empire or the city was never ambiguous.