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Handout #30 |
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Letter from Pliny to the Emperor Trajan (c.111-112 A.D.) |
| Pliny the Younger (61-114 A.D.), nephew and
adopted son of the encyclopaedist, Pliny the Elder, was an advocate,
orator, and politician. Trajan appointed him legate for Bithynia. An
honest and educated man, Pliny published his correspondence; this includes
his letter to Trajan on the subject of Christians and the emperor's reply.
In investigations of Christians I have never taken part; hence I do not know what is the crime usually punished or investigated, or what allowances are made ... whether punishment attaches to the mere name apart from secret crimes, or to the secret crimes connected with the name. Meantime, this is the course I have taken with those who were accused before me as Christians. I asked them whether they were Christians, and if they confessed, I asked them a second and third time with threats of punishment. If they kept to it, I ordered them for execution; for I held no question that whatever it was that they admitted, in any case obstinacy and unbending perversity deserve to be punished. There were others of like insanity: but as these were Roman citizens, I noted them down to be sent to Rome... Several distinct cases arose. As to those who said that they neither were nor ever had been Christians, I thought it right to let them go, since they recited a prayer to the gods at my dictation, made supplication with incense and wine to your statue, which I had ordered to be brought into court for the purpose together with the images of the gods, and moreover cursed Christ--things which (so it is said) those who are really Christians cannot be made to do. Others said that they had ceased to be Christians, some three years ago, some a good many years, and a few even twenty. All these too both worshipped your statue and the images of the gods, and cursed Christ. They maintained, however, that the amount of their fault or error had been this, that it was their habit on a fixed day to assemble before daylight and recite by turns a form of words to Christ as a god, and that they bound themselves with an oath, not for any crime, but not to commit theft or robbery or adultery, nor to break their word, and not to deny a deposit when demanded. After this was done, their custom was to depart, and to meet again to take food, but ordinary and harmless food; and even this (they said) they had given up doing after the issue of my edict, by which in accordance with your commands I had forbidden the existence of clubs. On this I considered it the more necessary to find out from two maidservants who were called deaconesses, and that by torments, how far this was true; but I discovered nothing else than a perverse and extravagant superstition. I therefore adjourned the case and hastened to consult you. The matter seemed to me worth deliberation, especially on account of the number of those in danger; for many of all ages and every rank, and also of both sexes are brought into present or future danger. The contagion of that superstition has penetrated not the cities only, but the villages and the country; yet it seems possible to stop it and set it right. At any rate it is certain enough that the almost deserted temples begin to be resorted to, that long disused ceremonies of religion are restored ...Pliny the Younger, Letters 10, 96. |
