# Letters, Book 10 *A Roman senator goes out to govern a debt-ridden province on the Black Sea and writes home to the emperor about everything: leaking aqueducts, a sinking theatre, a fire nobody fought, convicts drawing public pay, a philosopher who may be an escaped forger, and, in the most-read letter of all, a group of people called Christians whom he has been executing without quite knowing why. Trajan answers in a few crisp lines, usually telling him to use his judgement. It is the nearest thing we have to a Roman governor's in-tray.* > **What I read.** The whole of Book 10 in William Melmoth's translation as revised by F. C. T. Bosanquet, from Project Gutenberg [#2811](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2811) (public domain), checked against the Latin text at [The Latin Library](https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/pliny.ep10.html). I give letters in the **standard numbering** (10.96 and so on), taken from the Latin Library text. Melmoth numbers the letters differently and, in the second half, usually one higher (his XCVII is 10.96, the Christians letter). Quotations are Melmoth/Bosanquet unless marked as my own rendering of the Latin. I did not see the modern translations of Radice, Williams or Walsh, nor Sherwin-White's commentary; what I say about the scholarship comes from the sources linked. Related in this vault: - [[Book Summaries/Holland, Tom/Dominion - Tom Holland|Dominion]], [[Book Summaries/Origen/Contra Celsum - Origen|Contra Celsum]], [[Book Summaries/Thucydides/History of the Peloponnesian War - Thucydides|History of the Peloponnesian War]] and [[Book Summaries/Aristotle/Politics - Aristotle|Politics]], cited in the same Nils Glenn video. Glenn opens and closes the video with this book's letters 10.96 and 10.97. - Seneca's *De Clementia* and *Moral Letters to Lucilius*, also from the Glenn video, are next in the queue. ## 1. Book facts | | | |---|---| | Title | No title from the author. The tenth and last book of Pliny's *Epistulae* (Letters), containing his correspondence with the Emperor Trajan. Wynne Williams's 1990 edition calls it *Correspondence with Trajan from Bithynia (Epistles X)* | | Author | Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, "Pliny the Younger" (61–c. 113). Trajan's replies are part of the book. They were most likely drafted in the imperial secretariat from the emperor's decisions (see the fact-check) | | Written | Letters 10.1–14 date from Trajan's accession (98) to the middle 100s, while Pliny was in Rome. Letters 10.15–121 were written in the province of Bithynia and Pontus (northern Turkey), beginning with his arrival on 17 September (10.17A) of a year that scholars put between 109 and 111 | | Span in the province | The book's own anniversaries fix about sixteen months: his arrival in September; New Year vows on 3 January (10.35); the anniversary of Trajan's accession on 28 January (10.52); Trajan's birthday in September (10.88); the vows of the next January (10.100); the accession day after that (10.102). Then it stops | | Published | Books 1–9, letters to friends, were published by Pliny himself. Book 10 "is generally considered to have been published posthumously" ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger)); some scholars now argue Pliny edited it (see the fact-check) | | Rediscovery | Book 10 survived in a single manuscript found in Paris by Giovanni Giocondo between 1495 and 1500. The first complete edition of the letters was printed by Aldus Manutius in 1508 ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger)) | | Public-domain English | **William Melmoth** (1746), revised by **F. C. T. Bosanquet** (Bohn's Libraries; the text on Gutenberg) and by **W. M. L. Hutchinson** for the Loeb Classical Library (2 vols., Heinemann/Macmillan 1915; Book 10 is in vol. 2) | | Modern English | **Wynne Williams**, *Correspondence with Trajan from Bithynia (Epistles X)*, translation with introduction and commentary, Aris & Phillips 1990, hc ISBN 0-85668-407-4, pb 0-85668-408-2, 159 pp. **Betty Radice**, *The Letters of the Younger Pliny*, Penguin Classics, ISBN 0-14-044127-1, 320 pp. (Open Library record of a 1969 printing). **Betty Radice**, Loeb *Letters, Books 8–10; Panegyricus* (vol. 2), Harvard 1969, ISBN 0-674-99066-8. **P. G. Walsh**, *Complete Letters*, Oxford University Press 2006, ISBN 0-19-280658-0, 432 pp. | | Standard commentary | A. N. Sherwin-White, *The Letters of Pliny: A Historical and Social Commentary* (Oxford 1966); about 280 pages on Book 10 ([JRS review](https://doi.org/10.2307/1086836)) | | Cover | [Open Library cover of the Williams edition](https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/4991537-L.jpg) | **Where it came up.** - Video: Nils Glenn, ["Our Understanding of Jesus Just Changed"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3WGPomiOJs). From [1:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3WGPomiOJs&t=105s) to 4:45 Glenn introduces Pliny as governor of Bithynia around 112, "senator, lawyer, prolific letter-writer (10 books survive)", and walks through 10.96: three questions and then execution, the two tortured slave women "styled deaconesses", the pre-dawn hymn "to Christ as to a god", and the spread to "persons of all ranks and ages and of both sexes". At [30:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3WGPomiOJs&t=1850s) he returns to Trajan's reply (10.97), "a sensible Roman answer", and at [20:58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3WGPomiOJs&t=1258s) notes that the deaconesses were slaves holding church office. Vault note: [[Video Summaries/Nils Glenn/Our Understanding of Jesus Just Changed]]. - Requested by Video Summaries on 2026-11-07, with the scope set as Book 10, not the whole collection. ## 2. Book resources **Reference and catalog pages** - Open Library: Williams edition, work [OL1499149W](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1499149W), edition [OL21553962M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL21553962M); *The Letters of the Younger Pliny* (all editions), work [OL1499229W](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1499229W) (44 editions listed); Radice, Penguin [OL13595304M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL13595304M); Walsh, Oxford [OL22749915M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL22749915M); Radice, Loeb vol. 2 [OL16215045M](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL16215045M), work [OL1499187W](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1499187W); Sherwin-White's commentary, work [OL18530025W](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18530025W). - Google Books: [search](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&q=Pliny+Correspondence+with+Trajan+Epistles+X). - WorldCat: [search](https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3Apliny+correspondence+trajan). - Publisher pages: not checked one by one. Search [Liverpool University Press](https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/) (which now distributes the Aris & Phillips Classical Texts, not verified), [Penguin](https://www.penguin.co.uk/search-results?q=letters%20of%20the%20younger%20pliny), [Oxford World's Classics](https://global.oup.com/academic/) and [Loeb Classical Library](https://www.loebclassics.com/) (subscription). - [Wikipedia, *Pliny the Younger*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger); [Wikipedia, *Pliny the Younger on Christians*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians). **Free (legal; the Latin and the older translations are in the public domain)** - Project Gutenberg: [#2811](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2811), *Letters of Pliny*, Melmoth translation, ed. Bosanquet, all ten books with footnotes. The text used here. - The Latin Library: [Book 10 in Latin](https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/pliny.ep10.html), standard numbering. - Internet Archive, free to read: Loeb 1915, Melmoth rev. Hutchinson, vol. 2 with Book 10 [letterswithengli02plinuoft](https://archive.org/details/letterswithengli02plinuoft); another scan of the 1915 Loeb [letters00hutcgoog](https://archive.org/details/letters00hutcgoog). - Internet Archive / Open Library lending (free account): Radice, Penguin [lettersofyounger00plin](https://archive.org/details/lettersofyounger00plin) and Radice, Loeb vol. 2 [letterspanegyric0002plin](https://archive.org/details/letterspanegyric0002plin). Both are restricted items; whether they can be borrowed or are print-disabled only was not checked. - LibriVox, free audio: [*Letters of Pliny*](https://librivox.org/letters-of-pliny-by-pliny-the-younger/) (10 h 37 min). Sections 17–22 ("Letters T1–27" to "T99–122") are the Trajan correspondence, in Melmoth's numbering. - Libby/OverDrive (checked at Los Angeles Public Library): no edition of Pliny's letters found. The library does have Daisy Dunn's biography *The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny* as [ebook](https://lapl.overdrive.com/media/4608277) and [audiobook](https://lapl.overdrive.com/media/5340139). Availability depends on your library. - Hoopla: not checked; [search Hoopla](https://www.hoopladigital.com/search?q=pliny%20letters). **Paid** - Amazon print: [Williams, *Correspondence with Trajan from Bithynia* (pb)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0856684082); [Radice, Penguin Classics](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0140441271); [Walsh, *Complete Letters*](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0192806580); [Loeb vol. 2 (Radice)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674990668). - Kindle: many cheap or free Melmoth reprints, and Penguin and Oxford editions are usually sold as ebooks; [Kindle search](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=pliny+letters&i=digital-text). Which modern translations are on Kindle was not checked. I found no Kindle edition of Williams's Book 10 volume (not checked exhaustively). - Audible: [*The Complete Letters of Pliny the Younger*](https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Complete-Letters-of-Pliny-the-Younger-Audiobook/B0BB88HTRC), read by Russell Bentley and Ben Onwukwe (Naxos AudioBooks 2022, unabridged, 14 h 25 min; the listing says the final book contains the Trajan exchange); [*The Letters of Pliny the Younger*](https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Letters-of-Pliny-the-Younger-Audiobook/B01N66SR7C), read by Leighton Pugh (Ukemi Audiobooks / W. F. Howes 2016, unabridged, 12 h 40 min; the listing mentions Book X). Neither page names the translation. No audiobook of Book 10 alone was found. ## 3. Author biography Pliny was born around AD 61 at Novum Comum (Como) in northern Italy, as Gaius Caecilius, son of Lucius Caecilius Cilo and Plinia, sister of the naturalist Pliny the Elder. His father died young. His guardian was Lucius Verginius Rufus, the general who had put down a revolt against Nero in 68, and in Rome he studied rhetoric under Quintilian. In August 79 (or October; the date is argued) his uncle died trying to rescue people from the eruption of Vesuvius; his will adopted his nephew, who became Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus. Pliny's two letters to Tacitus about that day (6.16 and 6.20) are why volcanologists speak of "Plinian" eruptions. He was of equestrian birth but entered the Senate by becoming quaestor in his late twenties, and he made his name as an advocate, above all in the centumviral court that heard inheritance cases. He prosecuted or defended several provincial governors for extortion, including two governors of Bithynia and Pontus, Julius Bassus and Varenus Rufus, the province he would later govern. He survived Domitian's reign and rose under Nerva and Trajan. Book 10 shows him as prefect of the treasury of Saturn (10.3A) and asking for a priesthood (10.13); he was suffect consul in 100, when he delivered the *Panegyricus* of Trajan in the Senate, his only surviving speech. He married three times, the third time to the much younger Calpurnia, granddaughter of Calpurnius Fabatus of Comum; the last letter of Book 10 (10.120) is about her hurried journey home after her grandfather's death. In September of a year between 109 and 111 he arrived in Bithynia and Pontus as Trajan's personal legate, sent to put a disordered province right (Trajan says so in 10.32). Nothing in his letters dates from later than about 113, and he is thought to have died in the province or soon after. Of the 369 letters he is said to have written, 247 survive in ten books. Sources: [Wikipedia, *Pliny the Younger*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger); [Wikipedia, *Pliny the Younger on Christians*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians); Daisy Dunn, ["When the Romans met the Christians"](https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/when-romans-met-christians), *History Today* 69.6 (June 2019); Book 10 itself (10.3A, 10.13, 10.17A, 10.32, 10.120). ## 4. Author interviews and talks Pliny left no interviews, but Book 10 is unusually forthcoming about how he worked: 10.96 opens "It is my invariable rule, Sir, to refer to you in all matters where I feel doubtful". Talks about the book and its author: - **[BBC Radio 4, *In Our Time*, "Pliny the Younger"](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03kv0cl)** (12 December 2013, 42 min). Melvyn Bragg with Catharine Edwards (Birkbeck), Roy Gibson (Manchester) and Alice König (St Andrews) on Pliny's career as a lawyer in Rome, his letters to Tacitus and others, the eyewitness account of Vesuvius, "the mundane details of irrigation schemes", and his governorship of Bithynia and requests for Trajan's advice (programme description). The programme page's reading list includes Williams's Book 10 edition. - **Getty Museum podcast, ["The Legacies of Pliny the Elder and Younger"](https://intellicurious.com/2020/09/02/interview-english-author-daisy-dunn-legacies-of-pliny-the-elder-younger/)** (2020). Daisy Dunn, author of *The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny* (2019), with Getty curator Kenneth Lapatin on the two Plinys, the nephew's attempt to make his own mark, and what the letters tell us about Rome. - **Daisy Dunn, ["When the Romans met the Christians"](https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/when-romans-met-christians)**, *History Today*, June 2019. A print essay on 10.96–97: Pliny acted against the Christians before consulting Trajan, and Trajan's reply rebuked his use of anonymous lists. - **[LibriVox reading](https://librivox.org/letters-of-pliny-by-pliny-the-younger/)** of the Melmoth translation. A reading, not commentary. - **The source video.** Nils Glenn uses 10.96 as a Roman outsider's first look at Christians and 10.97 as Rome's measured answer (1:45–4:45, 30:50). ## 5. Summary ### Thesis Book 10 has no thesis in the usual sense; it is a dossier of real correspondence. But it was put together with a point, and it makes one. Pliny's letters show a conscientious governor checking accounts, curbing waste, and referring every doubtful case upward. Trajan's replies show an emperor who wants justice done by the book without stirring up trouble. Again and again he refuses to make a general rule, tells Pliny to decide on the spot, and grounds his answers in the "spirit of our age": "not to create an awe of my person by severe and rigorous measures" (10.82). Philip Stadter calls the result Pliny's picture of the "ideology of empire" under a good emperor ([Stadter 2006](https://oaj.fupress.net/index.php/prometheus/article/download/766/766/)). For most later readers the book's centre is two letters, 10.96 and 10.97, the earliest surviving Roman documents about Christians. Pliny asks whether "the very profession of Christianity, unattended with any criminal act, or only the crimes themselves inherent in the profession are punishable" (10.96). Trajan does not answer the question. He sets a procedure: do not hunt for Christians, ignore anonymous accusations, punish those who are accused and persist, pardon those who sacrifice (10.97). Until Decius' edict of 249 required everyone to sacrifice, persecution stayed, in Timothy Barnes's words, "local, sporadic, almost random", and this exchange shows why ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians)). ### Outline The book falls into two parts, letters from Rome (10.1–14) and letters from the province (10.15–121). Within the province the order is roughly chronological. Each letter of Pliny's is normally followed by Trajan's reply. The groupings below are mine. **Part 1. Letters from Rome, c. 98–106 (10.1–14).** - 10.1: congratulations on Trajan's accession (98). - 10.2: thanks for the "privilege of three children" (*ius trium liberorum*), granted though Pliny had no children. - 10.3A–B, 10.8–9: as prefect of the treasury of Saturn he has given up court work, but the Senate presses him to take the province of Africa's case against its former governor Marius Priscus; Trajan approves his agreeing. He asks leave to visit his estate at Tifernum to build a temple holding the imperial statues he has inherited. - 10.4–7, 10.10–12: favours for friends and dependants: senatorial rank for his schoolfriend Voconius Romanus; Roman and Alexandrian citizenship for his physician Harpocras, from the district of Memphis in Egypt (Trajan reminds him that Alexandrian citizenship is granted sparingly, 10.7); Roman citizenship for relatives of his physician Postumius Marinus (10.11); a praetorship for Accius Sura (10.12). - 10.13–14: he asks for a priesthood, the augurate or the septemvirate, both vacant; congratulations on a "great and glorious victory" (presumably in the Dacian wars; the letter does not name the enemy). **Part 2a. Arrival and first inspections (10.15–32).** - 10.15–16: safe arrival at Ephesus after rounding Cape Malea; Trajan likes to be told how he travels. - 10.17A–18: the journey by road and coasting vessel, fever at Pergamum; he enters the province on 17 September, in time for Trajan's birthday, and starts on the finances of Prusa, finding debts unpaid and public money misapplied. He asks for a surveyor. Trajan: the accounts "are evidently in great disorder"; there are surveyors in every province. - 10.19–20: should prisons be guarded by public slaves or soldiers? Keep the public slaves; as few soldiers as possible should leave their standards. - 10.21–22, 10.27–28: requests for soldiers from the coastal prefect Gavius Bassus and from Trajan's freedman Maximus, sent to buy grain. Trajan gives a little and warns against drawing soldiers off. - 10.23–24: Prusa's dirty old bath may be rebuilt, if it needs no new tax. - 10.25–26: his legate Servilius Pudens arrives at Nicomedia on 24 November; recommendation of Rosianus Geminus. - 10.29–30: two slaves found among army recruits. Trajan: it depends whether they volunteered, were conscripted or were sent as substitutes. - 10.31–32: convicts sentenced to the mines or the arena are working as paid public slaves in Nicomedia and Nicaea. Trajan's reply, the book's mission statement: "You will remember you were sent into Bithynia for the particular purpose of correcting those many abuses". Recent convicts go back to their sentences; those condemned more than ten years ago go to work cleaning baths and sewers and mending roads. **Part 2b. Fire, water and building (10.33–50).** - 10.33–34: a great fire at Nicomedia burned the senate house and the temple of Isis while "the people... stood idle and motionless spectators"; there were no pumps or buckets. Pliny asks for a firemen's guild of 150. Trajan refuses: such associations "will not fail to form themselves into factious assemblies". Buy equipment and let householders fight their own fires. - 10.35–36: the New Year vows for the emperor's safety, fulfilled and renewed. - 10.37–38: Nicomedia has spent 3,318,000 sesterces on an aqueduct it abandoned unfinished, then more on a second that was also given up (the second sum is printed as "CC" in the Latin; Melmoth gives "two millions"). Trajan wants water brought in and someone held to account. - 10.39–40: Nicaea's theatre has swallowed more than ten million sesterces and is cracking from top to bottom; its gymnasium is badly rebuilt; Claudiopolis is sinking a bath into low ground. Pliny asks for an architect from Rome. Trajan: decide yourself, "These paltry Greeks [*Graeculi*] are... immoderately fond of gymnastic diversions", and architects come to Rome from Greece, not the other way round. - 10.41–42: Pliny proposes a canal from the large lake near Nicomedia to the sea, perhaps using an old unfinished cut made by a Bithynian king. Trajan is tempted but worried the lake will drain; he will send an engineer. - 10.43–44: Byzantium pays 12,000 sesterces a year for an envoy to greet the emperor; Trajan approves sending the greeting by letter instead. - 10.45–46: expired travel passes (*diplomata*) are not to be used. - 10.47–48: Apamea, a Roman colony, says no governor has ever inspected its accounts. Trajan lets Pliny inspect them without prejudice to its privileges. - 10.49–50: Nicomedia wants to move a temple of the Great Mother that has no record of consecration. Trajan: go ahead; foreign soil cannot be consecrated under Roman law. **Part 2c. Money, status and law (10.51–87).** - 10.51–53: thanks for transferring Caelius Clemens, a relative of his mother-in-law, to the province; the anniversary of Trajan's accession, celebrated with the troops. - 10.54–55: public money is lying idle because nobody will borrow at 12 per cent. Trajan: lower the interest; forcing loans on people "is by no means consistent with the justice of my government". - 10.56–57: men banished by earlier governors who stayed or came back. Trajan rules case by case. - 10.58–60: Flavius Archippus claims exemption from jury service as a philosopher; opponents produce a sentence condemning him to the mines for forgery. He produces favours from Domitian, Nerva and Trajan. Trajan lets the favours stand. - 10.61–62: more on the canal; Trajan will send an engineer. - 10.63–64, 10.67: envoys from the Bosporus and a courier from the Sarmatian king, sent on to Rome. - 10.65–66: freeborn children who were exposed, picked up and raised as slaves. Pliny lists earlier rulings, some of doubtful authenticity. Trajan: they can claim their freedom and need not repay the cost of their upbringing. - 10.68–69: moving the remains of the dead from decayed or flooded tombs. Trajan: follow earlier governors and decide yourself rather than send people to the pontiffs in Rome. - 10.70–71: a site for Prusa's new bath on the ruins of a mansion that Claudius Polyaenus had bequeathed to the Emperor Claudius. - 10.72–73: claims of free birth (Trajan wants to see the decree of the Senate first). - 10.74: Callidromus, a runaway baker's hand, takes refuge at Trajan's statue and tells a story: captured in Moesia, sent by the Dacian king Decebalus as a gift to Pacorus of Parthia, escaped. Pliny sends him to Rome with a gold nugget from the Parthian mines. - 10.75–76: Julius Largus of Pontus, a stranger to Pliny, leaves him an estate in trust: 50,000 sesterces for himself, the rest for Heraclea and Tium, either a public building in Trajan's honour or five-yearly "Trajan's games". Trajan leaves the choice to him. - 10.77–78: a legionary centurion for Juliopolis, as Byzantium has, to deal with traffic through the town. Trajan refuses: every town would want one. - 10.79–80, 10.112–115 (below): the *lex Pompeia*, the province's charter, on minimum ages for magistrates and admission to the local senates. - 10.81–82: at Prusa, Dio Cocceianus (the orator Dio Chrysostom) is accused of irregular accounts on a public building and of placing Trajan's statue near the tombs of his wife and son. Trajan dismisses the treason angle outright ("construing every slight offence into an act of treason") but wants the accounts checked. - 10.83–84: Nicaea's right, from Augustus, to the property of citizens who die intestate. - 10.85–87: commendations of the freedman Maximus, of Gavius Bassus, prefect of the Pontic shore (10.86A; 10.86B survives only in part), and of Nymphidius Lupus and his son. **Part 2d. The second year: Pontus, the Christians, and loose ends (10.88–121).** - 10.88–89: Trajan's birthday. - 10.90–91: an aqueduct for Sinope, if the ground will bear it. - 10.92–93: a mutual benefit society (*eranos*) at the free city of Amisus. Allowed there because its own laws allow it, but not elsewhere. - 10.94–95: the privilege of three children for Pliny's friend, the biographer Suetonius. Granted, though Trajan says he grants them sparingly. - 10.96–97: the Christians (see below). - 10.98–99: Amastris's open sewer, "a vile common sewer", to be covered. - 10.100–103: the second New Year vows and accession anniversary. - 10.104–107: Roman citizenship for freedmen left in Pliny's charge and for a centurion's daughter. - 10.108–111: cities' rights to recover debts; a gift to one Julius Piso by the city of Amisus twenty years earlier is not to be clawed back. - 10.112–115: fees for joining a local senate; whether cities may enrol citizens of other Bithynian cities. - 10.116–117: mass invitations of a thousand or more with cash handouts at coming-of-age, weddings and dedications. Trajan agrees they look like bribery. - 10.118–119: when do athletic victors' pensions start, from the victory or from their triumphal entry home? From the entry. - 10.120–121: Pliny has issued an official travel pass to his wife, Calpurnia, so she can hurry to her aunt after her grandfather's death, the first time he has used one for anyone not on the emperor's business. Trajan: quite right. The book ends here. **10.96–97 in detail.** Pliny says he has never attended trials of Christians and asks three things: whether age makes a difference, whether recantation earns pardon, and whether the name itself or the crimes attached to it are punished. Meanwhile he has asked the accused three times whether they are Christians, threatening punishment, and had those who persisted led away (*duci iussi*), since "a contumacious and inflexible obstinacy certainly deserved correction". Roman citizens he sent to Rome. An anonymous pamphlet named many people. Those who denied it, invoked the gods, offered wine and incense to Trajan's image and cursed Christ, "whereas there is no forcing... those who are really Christians into any of these compliances", he released, along with those who said they had left the movement three, several, even twenty years before. Their account of their "guilt" was that they met before dawn on a fixed day, sang a hymn "to Christ, as to a divinity" (*carmenque Christo quasi deo dicere*), swore an oath not to commit fraud, theft or adultery, and later met for an ordinary meal, which they stopped after his edict banning associations. To test this he had two slave women "who were said to officiate" (*ancillae quae ministrae dicebantur*) questioned under torture and found "nothing more than depraved and excessive superstition" (*superstitionem pravam et immodicam*, my rendering). He has adjourned the cases because so many "of all ranks and ages, and even of both sexes" are involved, in villages and countryside as well as cities, though temples are filling again and sacrificial meat is selling. Trajan's reply: no general rule is possible; Christians "are not to be sought out" (Melmoth: "Do not go out of your way to look for them"); if accused and convicted they must be punished; anyone who denies it and proves it by worshipping "our gods" is to be pardoned; and anonymous accusations "ought not to be received in any sort of prosecution", being "a very dangerous precedent, and... quite foreign to the spirit of our age". ### Key ideas - **Government by correspondence.** The letters show how much a Roman governor referred upward, and how slowly. Fergus Millar reckoned a letter took six to eight weeks each way, so replies to Pliny's first-year letters cannot have reached him until his second year (as quoted by [Stadter 2006](https://oaj.fupress.net/index.php/prometheus/article/download/766/766/)). - **Discretion, not rules.** Trajan repeatedly declines to legislate for the whole empire (Christians, 10.97; foundlings, 10.66; local senates, 10.113) and pushes the decision back to the man on the spot. - **Fear of associations.** The firemen (10.34), the mutual-aid club at Amisus (10.93) and the Christians (10.96) are all seen through the same lens: any regular gathering might turn political. Pliny says the Christians stopped their common meal after his edict banning clubs. - **Civic money and civic pride.** Most of the book is about Greek cities overspending on aqueducts, theatres, baths and gymnasia, often badly built, and about recovering misapplied funds: the problem Pliny was sent to fix. - **Law as layers.** Pliny is forever reconciling the *lex Pompeia* of 63 BC, edicts of Augustus, letters of Vespasian, Titus and Domitian, local charters and his own instructions (*mandata*). Trajan's answers favour existing custom and the cities' own laws. - **The first Roman look at Christians.** 10.96–97 give an outsider's description of Christian worship around 110, a procedure for trials, and evidence that Christianity had reached the countryside of northern Asia Minor. - **A portrait of both men.** Pliny is anxious, scrupulous and a little self-regarding; Trajan is brisk, sometimes impatient ("These paltry Greeks"), and keen not to rule by fear. ## 6. Fact-check | Claim | Verdict | Evidence | |---|---|---| | Pliny was governor of Bithynia around 112 AD (Glenn, 1:45) | **Supported, date approximate** | Wikipedia variously places the Christians letter "around AD 110" ([on Christians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians)), "around 112" ([Pliny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger)) and the governorship in "110–113" ([Bithynia and Pontus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bithynia_and_Pontus)). Sherwin-White and Syme argued for 109–111 ([Syme, CQ](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/classical-quarterly/article/abs/dating-of-plinys-latest-letters/D3A37D6A51D0EA19032B4B781CFDAECF)); Dunn says "between 109 and 111" | | Ten books of his letters survive (Glenn) | **Supported** | 247 letters in ten books; Book 10 is the Trajan correspondence ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger)) | | He was the nephew of Pliny the Elder, who sailed toward Vesuvius (Glenn) | **Supported** | Pliny's letters 6.16 and 6.20; [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger) | | He asked the accused three times and executed those who persisted, for "contumacy and inflexible obstinacy" (Glenn, 2:06) | **Supported** | 10.96.3: *Confitentes iterum ac tertio interrogavi supplicium minatus; perseverantes duci iussi... pertinaciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem debere puniri* ([Latin Library](https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/pliny.ep10.html)). "Led away" means to execution; Roman citizens were sent to Rome instead | | He tortured two enslaved women "styled deaconesses" (Glenn, 3:08) | **Supported, with a translation nuance** | 10.96.8: *ex duabus ancillis, quae ministrae dicebantur*. *Ancillae* are female slaves; *ministrae* ("servants, attendants") is usually taken as a Latin rendering of the church office of deacon. Glenn's further point that they were slaves holding office follows from that reading | | Christians met before dawn, sang "a hymn to Christ as to a god", swore an oath against fraud, theft and adultery, and shared an ordinary meal (Glenn, 3:51) | **Supported as Pliny's report** | 10.96.7, word for word in Latin and Melmoth. It is what former Christians told him under examination | | "Persons of all ranks and ages and of both sexes"; the "contagious superstition" had reached villages (Glenn, 4:11) | **Supported as Pliny's claim** | 10.96.9 | | Christianity had emptied the temples, and they were now filling again | **Disputed** | Pliny's claim (10.96.10). Sherwin-White thought it exaggerated the effect on the traditional cults ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians)) | | Trajan replied: don't hunt Christians or accept anonymous accusations, but punish those who won't renounce the name (Glenn, 30:50) | **Supported** | 10.97. Dunn reads the reply as a rebuke for using anonymous lists ([History Today](https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/when-romans-met-christians)); Wikipedia summarises Thompson's view that the policy was "double-edged" | | 10.96–97 are the earliest surviving pagan (Roman) documents about Christians | **Supported, with a caveat** | Pliny (c. 110–112) precedes Tacitus' *Annals* (c. 115–116) and Suetonius (c. 122) ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians)). Earlier mentions by the Jewish historian Josephus exist, but he is not a pagan source, and those passages have their own authenticity debates (not checked here) | | Pliny acted against the Christians before consulting Trajan | **Supported** | 10.96 describes executions already carried out before he adjourned the cases "in order to consult you". Dunn makes the same point | | The letter is authentic | **Supported (consensus), with a minority challenge** | "The received scholarly consensus is that this correspondence is authentic"; a stylometric study has argued for interpolation within the letter ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians); the study itself not read here) | | Trajan wrote the replies himself | **Disputed** | The widely accepted view (Peter, Henneman, Sherwin-White) is that Trajan made the important decisions and his secretary *ab epistulis* drafted the replies in a uniform chancery style, with the emperor's own touches visible ([Sherwin-White, JRS 1962](https://doi.org/10.2307/297882)) | | Book 10 was published after Pliny's death by someone else, from archive copies | **Disputed** | The traditional view, with Suetonius sometimes named as editor. Stadter and Gregory Woolf argue the book was carefully edited, probably by Pliny himself: replies paired with letters written months earlier, places and dates removed ([Stadter 2006](https://oaj.fupress.net/index.php/prometheus/article/download/766/766/)) | | Pliny died in office in Bithynia around 113 | **Unverified (inference)** | Inferred because nothing in his letters dates later and the book ends abruptly ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger)). No ancient source records his death | | Trajan refused Nicomedia a firemen's guild for fear of political clubs | **Supported** | 10.34; Wikipedia links this to the ban on *hetaeriae* that ended the Christians' common meal | | Trajan called the Bithynians "paltry Greeks" | **Supported** | 10.40.2: *Gymnasiis indulgent Graeculi*. *Graeculi* is a diminutive, usually contemptuous | ## 7. Citations and references **Documents and figures the book engages** (with letters) - *Lex Pompeia*, Pompey's charter for Bithynia (10.79, 10.112, 10.114), and edicts of Augustus (10.79–80, 10.84). - Letters and edicts of Vespasian, Titus, Domitian and Nerva, quoted in full or in part (10.58–60 on Archippus, 10.65–66 on foundlings). - Dio Cocceianus of Prusa, the orator Dio Chrysostom (10.81–82); [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dio_Chrysostom). - Suetonius Tranquillus, the biographer (10.94–95). - Decebalus of Dacia and Pacorus II of Parthia (10.74). - The Christians of Bithynia–Pontus (10.96–97). Tertullian's *Apology* (197) paraphrases the exchange, and Eusebius and Rufinus pass it on with embellishments ([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians)). **Secondary sources** - A. N. Sherwin-White, *The Letters of Pliny: A Historical and Social Commentary* (Oxford 1966). [Contents on Fulcrum](https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/9z903029n) (appendices on the province, the chronology, the completeness of Book X and the drafting of Trajan's replies); [JRS review](https://doi.org/10.2307/1086836). Not read. - A. N. Sherwin-White, "Trajan's Replies to Pliny: Authorship and Necessity", *Journal of Roman Studies* 52 (1962). [DOI](https://doi.org/10.2307/297882). Abstract only. - Ronald Syme, "The dating of Pliny's latest letters", *Classical Quarterly*. [Cambridge Core](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/classical-quarterly/article/abs/dating-of-plinys-latest-letters/D3A37D6A51D0EA19032B4B781CFDAECF). Abstract only. - Philip A. Stadter, "Pliny and the Ideology of Empire: The Correspondence with Trajan", *Prometheus* 32 (2006), 61–76. [Free PDF](https://oaj.fupress.net/index.php/prometheus/article/download/766/766/). Read in part. Cites Fergus Millar, "Trajan: Government by Correspondence" (2000/2004), and Gregory Woolf on "Pliny's Province". - Wynne Williams, *Pliny: Correspondence with Trajan from Bithynia (Epistles X)* (Aris & Phillips 1990). Not read. - Daisy Dunn, *The Shadow of Vesuvius: A Life of Pliny* (William Collins, 2019), and ["When the Romans met the Christians"](https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/when-romans-met-christians), *History Today* (2019). The article read. **Links used in this note** - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2811 ; https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2811/pg2811.txt - https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/pliny.ep10.html - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bithynia_and_Pontus ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dio_Chrysostom - https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1499149W ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL21553962M ; https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1499229W ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL13595304M ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL22749915M ; https://openlibrary.org/books/OL16215045M ; https://openlibrary.org/works/OL1499187W ; https://openlibrary.org/works/OL18530025W ; https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/4991537-L.jpg - https://archive.org/details/letterswithengli02plinuoft ; https://archive.org/details/letters00hutcgoog ; https://archive.org/details/lettersofyounger00plin ; https://archive.org/details/letterspanegyric0002plin - https://librivox.org/letters-of-pliny-by-pliny-the-younger/ - https://lapl.overdrive.com/media/4608277 ; https://lapl.overdrive.com/media/5340139 - https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Complete-Letters-of-Pliny-the-Younger-Audiobook/B0BB88HTRC ; https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Letters-of-Pliny-the-Younger-Audiobook/B01N66SR7C - https://www.amazon.com/dp/0856684082 ; https://www.amazon.com/dp/0140441271 ; https://www.amazon.com/dp/0192806580 ; https://www.amazon.com/dp/0674990668 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03kv0cl ; https://intellicurious.com/2020/09/02/interview-english-author-daisy-dunn-legacies-of-pliny-the-elder-younger/ ; https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/when-romans-met-christians - https://oaj.fupress.net/index.php/prometheus/article/download/766/766/ ; https://doi.org/10.2307/297882 ; https://doi.org/10.2307/1086836 ; https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/9z903029n ; https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/classical-quarterly/article/abs/dating-of-plinys-latest-letters/D3A37D6A51D0EA19032B4B781CFDAECF - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3WGPomiOJs