CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN PLINY AND TRAJAN
PLINY’S LETTER TO TRAJAN AND THE EMPEROR’S “RESCRIPT”—GENUINENESS OF CORRESPONDENCE
INTRODUCTORY
A flood of light is poured upon the early history of Christianity in the correspondence which passed between the Emperor Trajan and his friend and minister Pliny the Younger, who had been appointed to the governorship[18] of Bithynia and Pontus, the district lying in the north of Asia Minor.
The letter of Pliny, containing his report of the trial and inquiry into the matter of the accused Christians of his province, and asking for direction, was written to the Emperor Trajan in the autumn of A.D. 111; and the reply of Trajan, which contained the famous rescript concerning the Christian sect—an ordinance which regulated the action of the government of Rome towards the disciples of Jesus for many long years—was dispatched a few months later.
The correspondence was quoted and commented upon at some length by the Latin Father Tertullian before the close of the second century. Eusebius again refers to it, translating the quotations of Tertullian from a Greek version of the celebrated Christian Father.[19]
For various reasons, some critics have thrown doubt upon the genuineness of these two famous letters. The main cause of the hesitation in receiving them is the strong evidence contained in the correspondence bearing upon the existence and influence and great numbers of the Christian sect at the beginning of the second century. That a pagan author should supply us with the information—and especially a pagan author of the rank and position which the younger Pliny held—the adversaries of the Faith misliked.
These very doubts, however, as in other cases of doubt respecting the authenticity of some of our Christian and pagan writings bearing on the facts of very early Christianity, have established the genuineness of the pieces in question, the doubts requiring an answer, and the answer involving a careful and thoughtful investigation. It is singular, in their scarcely veiled hostility to the religion of Jesus, how some scholars attempt to discredit all the references to the Christians in early heathen writers.
In this case the investigation has completely proved the genuineness of the correspondence in question. Bishop Lightfoot, in the course of his thorough and scholarly examination, does not hesitate to write that the genuineness of the important Letters “can now only be questioned by a scepticism bordering on insanity.”
Amongst other critics who completely brush away all doubts here, he quotes Aldus Manutius, Mommsen, and the French writer (no friend to Christianity) Renan. The same view is also unhesitatingly taken by Allard and Boissier in France, and Ramsay in England. In any controversy which may arise here obviously the attestation of Tertullian in the last years of the century in which the Letters were written is of the highest value.[20]
THE CHARACTER OF TRAJAN
When Domitian was assassinated, and Nerva was proclaimed Emperor, a new spirit was introduced into the occupants of the imperial dignity. Nerva represented the old conservative and aristocratic spirit of the Roman Senate. He only reigned a short two years, but his great act was the association in the supreme power of one who in all respects would and could carry out the ancient traditions of Roman government, of which Nerva was a true representative.
Nerva died early in 98, and his associate Trajan at once became sole Emperor. In many respects this Trajan was the greatest of the despotic masters who in succession ruled the Roman world. At once a renowned soldier and a far-seeing statesman, his complex personality is admirably and tersely summed up by Allard (Histoire des Persécutions, i. 145), who writes of him: “On eût cru voir le sénat romain lui-même prenant une âme guerrière et montant sur le trône.”
As a rule, writers of sacred history treat the memory of Trajan with great gentleness. The Christian writers in the second half of the second century shrink from seeing in him a persecutor of the Church. They were, of course, biassed in their judgment, being loth to think of a great Emperor like Trajan as a persecutor of their religion. As we have already remarked, the written Acts of Martyrs were very few during the first and second centuries; and the name and memory of the earliest brave confessors of the Name, save in a few very notable instances, quietly and quickly faded away; so the recollections of the second-century Fathers in the matter of the State policy in the past, with regard to Christianity, were somewhat vague and uncertain. Later, in the early and middle years of the fourth century, Eusebius, though in his time the fact of continuous persecution in the past had become generally known, tries to exculpate the memory of Trajan as a persecutor, but with very doubtful success.
This favourable and somewhat generous view of Trajan held its own through the early Middle Ages. A striking and beautiful story illustrative of these estimates is told of Pope Gregory the Great (A.D. 590–604) by both his biographers, Paul the Deacon (close of eighth century) and John the Deacon (close of ninth century). The Bishop of Rome once, walking through the Forum of Trajan, was attracted by a sculptured bas-relief representing the great Emperor showing pity to a poor aged widow whose only son had perished through the violence of the Emperor’s soldiers.
Struck by this proof of the just and loving nature of Trajan, the Pope, kneeling at the tomb of S. Peter, prayed earnestly that mercy might be showed to the great pagan emperor. The prayer, so runs the story, was granted; and it was revealed to Gregory that the soul of Trajan was released from torment in answer to his intercession. The beauty and noble charity which colour the legend are, however, spoiled and marred by the words of the traditional revelation which follow. The generous Pope, while hearing that his prayers were granted, was warned never again to presume to pray for those who had died without holy baptism.
Not a few modern scholars, however, read the famous interposition of Trajan at the time of Pliny’s request for guidance as manifesting a hostile spirit towards Christianity; so, to quote a few of the better-known writers, interpret Gieseler, Overbach, Aubé, Friedlander, Uhlhorn, etc., while Renan (Les Évangiles) perhaps more accurately writes: “Trajan fut le premier persécuteur systématique de Christianisme”; and again, “à partir de Trajan le Christianisme est un crime.”
The truth, however, really lies between these two divergent opinions. The “rescript” of Trajan promulgated no new law on the subject of the treatment of the Christian believers. It evidently presupposed the existence of a law, and that a very stern and very harsh mode of procedure. From it Trajan neither subtracted anything nor added anything; still, as has been very justly said, the humane and upright character of the Emperor and his minister Pliny—Pliny, by his evident, though carefully veiled, advice and suggestions based upon his protracted inquiries into the tenets and customs of the sect; Trajan, by his formal imperial “rescript”—secured some considerable mitigation in its enforcement.
The story of the correspondence between Pliny the Younger and the Emperor Trajan, which was fraught with such momentous consequences to the Christians of Rome and the Empire generally, is as follows:
When Pliny, about the middle of the year 111, came to the scene of his government,—the provinces of Bithynia and Pontus,—apparently somewhat to his surprise he found a very considerable portion of the population members of the Christian community. The religion professed by these people, Pliny was well aware, was unlawful in the eyes of the State, and the sect generally was unpopular; and evil rumours were current respecting its traditional practices.
The new governor knew of the existence of the sect in Rome, but little more. He was clearly aware that these Christians had been the object of many State persecutions and judicial inquiries, “cognitiones” he terms them, and no doubt knew something, too, of the public severity with which these adherents of an unlawful religion had been treated by the State when convicted of the crime of Christianity.
The horrors of the amphitheatre in the case of these condemned ones could not have been unknown to one like Pliny. But the great world in which Pliny lived and moved and worked, cared little for human life or human suffering in the case of a despised and outlawed community.
The Roman teacher and patrician of the days of Trajan held human life very cheaply. The amphitheatre games, to take one phase only of Roman life in the days of the Empire, were an evil education for Rome. The execution, the sufferings of a few score Christian outlaws, however frequently repeated, would attract very little attention in Pliny’s world.
But now in his new government he was brought face to face with grave difficulties occasioned by the practices and teaching of this Christianity. And when he discovered in addition how numerous a body these followers of the forbidden religion were, Pliny set himself in good earnest to investigate the Christian question.
More than fifty years had passed since S. Peter first preached the gospel and laid the foundation stories of the Christian Church in these northern provinces of Asia Minor. The religion of Jesus had rapidly taken root in these districts. This we gather from the First Epistle of Peter, which he wrote to the followers of Jesus in the north of Asia Minor from Rome in the closing years of his ministry; and now Pliny found in his province no novel faith growing up, but a faith which had taken deep root in the hearts of the population, not only in the towns, but also in the more remote villages (neque enim civitates tantum sed vicos etiam atque agros superstitionis istius contagio pervagata est), with the result that the old pagan cult was being gradually abandoned. The temples were being fast deserted (prope jam desolata templa), the sacred rites were being given up, and what evidently excited bitter complaints on the part of the traders who suffered, there was no longer any market for the fodder of the beasts sacrificed (pastum ... victimarum quarum adhuc rarissimus emptor inveniebatur).
From the report of Pliny to the Emperor, it is evident that there had been several judicial inquiries (cognitiones), conducted by him as the responsible governor of Bithynia and Pontus, into the charges brought against the adherents of the unlawful faith.
In the first “cognitio” the more prominent Christians were brought before him. These all at once avowed their religion. Three times they were interrogated by Pliny. As they persisted in the avowal that they were Christians, the provincials were at once condemned to death. Those who claimed Roman citizenship were sent to Rome for their sentences to be confirmed.
The publicity of these first inquiries stimulated further accusations; various degrees of guilt were alleged, and subsequently an anonymous paper was put before the governor implicating a whole crowd of persons.
Of these, some denied that they were, or ever had been, Christians. These, on offering incense before the image of the Emperor and cursing Christ, were at once liberated.
Others confessed, but professed repentance. These he reserved for the decision of the Emperor. It is not explicitly said that of this second and larger group of “accused,” some persisted in their adherence to the “Name.” There is no doubt that such were treated as in the first group, some being put to death; others, as Roman citizens, reserved for the imperial decision.
It was then that Pliny, especially disturbed at the numbers of accused Christians, determined upon a more searching investigation into the manners and customs of these numerous adherents of the unlawful religion. He would learn for himself more of the “detestable” rites and other crimes with which these persons were charged.
Two Christian deaconesses are mentioned as being examined under torture; others were closely questioned, and the result of the inquiries to Pliny was startling.
He satisfied himself that the monstrous charges were absolutely unproven. All their rites were simple, perfectly harmless, and unostentatious. Pliny in the course of his inquiry found that they were in the habit of meeting together, on a day appointed, before sunrise; that they would then sing together a hymn to Christ as God; that they would bind themselves by a solemn vow—sacramentum (Pliny was evidently not aware that the sacramentum in question was the Holy Eucharist; indeed the whole narrative is evidently told by one who very imperfectly grasped the Christian idea, although it is strangely accurate in many of the details). The purport of the vow was that they would commit neither theft nor adultery; that they would never break their word; never betray a trust committed to them.
The just magistrate was evidently deeply impressed with the result of his careful and searching examinations. This strange sect, he was convinced, was absolutely innocent of all those dark offences with which they were commonly charged—like another and more sadly notorious Roman judge sitting in another and more awful judgment-scene, who after hearing the case, from that time sought to release the pale prisoner before him. So at once after hearing the Christian story, Pliny too, convinced of the perfect innocence of the accused, altered his opinion concerning Christians; but for State reasons would not release them, and while acquitting them of all wrong-doing, in the ordinary sense of the word, chose to see an evil and exaggerated superstition colouring all their works and days.[21] Innocent though they were of anything approaching crime in the ordinary sense of the term, the Roman magistrate deemed the inflexible obstinacy of the Christian deserved the severest punishment that could be inflicted, even death; for when the individual Christian in question was examined, he proved to be immovable on questions of vital importance. He refused to swear by the genius of the Emperor. He would not scatter the customary grains of incense on the altar of Rome and Augustus, or of any of the pagan gods. His religious offence was inextricably bound up with the political offence. He stood, as it had been well expressed, self-convicted of “impiety,” of “atheism,” of “high treason.”
Still, after all these points had been taken into consideration, there is no doubt that Pliny was deeply moved by what he learned from his close examination of the Christian cause; and this new, this gentle, this more favourable estimate of his concerning the “outlawed” sect of Christians, was scarcely veiled in his official report of the case when he asked for the Emperor Trajan’s advice and direction.
He was, we learn, especially induced to write to the Emperor when he became aware of the vast numbers of Christians who had been, or were about to be, brought before his tribunal. The numbers of the accused evidently appalled him. How would the Emperor wish him to deal with such a multitude?
Very brief but very clear was the answer of Trajan to his friend and confidant the governor of Bithynia and Pontus. This answer contained the famous imperial “rescript”—which in the matter of the Christians was “to run” not only in Rome itself, but in all the provinces of the wide Empire, and which, as is well known, guided the State persecution of Christians for many a long year.
The “rescript” bore unmistakably the impress of Pliny’s mind on the subject; and severe though it was, it inaugurated a gentler and more favourable interpretation of the stern law in the case of convicted Christians than had prevailed from the days of Nero onward.
The following are the principal points of the “rescript.” In the first place—and this point must be pressed—no fresh law authorizing any special persecution of the Christians was needed or even suggested by Pliny. They had evidently for a long period, apparently from the days of Nero, been classed as outlaws (hostes publici) and enemies to the fundamental principles of law and order, and the mere acknowledgment on the part of the accused of the name Christian was sufficient in itself to warrant an immediate condemnation to death.
Trajan’s reply, which constituted the famous rescript, was studiedly brief, eminently courteous, but imperious and decisive. The friendly bias of Pliny’s report and unmistakably favourable opinion of the Christian sect, lives along every line.
He begins with a few graceful words approving Pliny’s action in the matter. (“Actum quem debuisti mi Secunde ... secutus es.”)
Then follow the stern, unalterable words which attach the penalty of death to any person who persisted in claiming the name of Christian.
But extenuating circumstances, such as youth, may be taken into account, if the magistrate please to do so.
Any approach to repentance, accompanied with compliance with the law of the Empire, in the matter of offering incense on the pagan altars, is to be accepted, and the offender at once is to be pardoned.
The magistrate is by no means to search for Christians; but if a formal accusation be made by an open accuser, then inquiry must follow; and if the accused recognizes the justice of the charge, and declines to recant, then death must follow.
The accusation of an anonymous person, however, must never be received; the Emperor adding his strongest condemnation of all anonymous denunciations. “This kind of thing does not,” writes Trajan, “belong to our age and time.”
Tertullian (closing years of second century) quotes and sharply criticizes Trajan’s “rescript.” He writes somewhat as follows: “What a contradictory pronouncement it is. The Emperor forbids the Christians should be searched for—he therefore looks on them surely as innocent persons; and then he directs that if any are brought before the tribunal, they must be punished with death as though they were guilty ones! In the same breath he spares them and rages against them. He stultifies himself; for if Christians are to be condemned as Christians, why are they not to be searched for? If, on the other hand, they are to be considered as innocent persons and in consequence not to be searched for, why not acquit them at once when they appear before the tribunal?... You condemn an accused Christian, yet you forbid him to be inquired after. So punishment is inflicted, not because he is guilty, but because he has been discovered,—though anything which might bring him to light is forbidden.” (Apology 2.)
The brilliant and eloquent Latin Father, with the acuteness of a trained and skilful lawyer, lays bare the illogical character of the imperial rescript. The truth was that after carefully weighing the facts laid before him by Pliny, the Emperor clearly recognized that such an organization—so far-reaching, so numerous and powerful, was contrary to the established principles of Roman government. The Christian sect must be discouraged, and if possible suppressed; but Trajan saw at the same time that the spirit of the Christians, their teaching and practice, were absolutely innocent, even morally excellent; so he shrank from logically carrying out the severe measures devised by the Roman government in such cases. In other words, his really noble and generous nature prevented him sanctioning the wholesale destruction which a strictly logical interpretation of the Roman law would have brought upon a very numerous body of his subjects.
But in spite of the evident goodwill of the great Emperor and his eminent lieutenant, the sword of persecution was left hanging over the heads of the Christian sect suspended by a very slender cord. How often the slender cord snapped is told in the tragic story of the Christians in the pagan empire during the two hundred years which followed the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan.
The information supplied by these Letters respecting Christianity at the beginning of the second century, emanating as they do from so trusted a statesman, so distinguished a writer, as the younger Pliny, supplemented by a State communication containing an imperial rescript of far-reaching importance from the hands of one of the greatest of the Roman Emperors, is so weighty that it seems to call for a slightly more detailed notice than the particulars which appear in the foregoing pages of this work.
There is no doubt but that “Letters” such as those written by Pliny during the eventful period extending from the days of the Dictatorship of Julius Cæsar to the reign of Honorius—a period roughly of some four hundred and fifty years—occupied in the literature of Rome a singular and important position.
They were in many cases most carefully prepared and designed for a far larger “public” than is commonly supposed. Long after the death of the writer these Letters, gathered together and “published” as far as literary works could be published in those ages when no printing-press existed—were read and re-read, admired and criticized, by very many in the capital and in the provinces.
The first great Letter-writer undoubtedly was Cicero, who flourished as a statesman, an orator, and a most distinguished writer from the days of the first consulship of Pompey and Crassus, in 70 B.C., down to the December of 43 B.C., when he was murdered during the proscription of the Triumvirate.
Of the multifarious works of the great orator, possibly the most generally interesting is the collection of his Letters, a large portion of which have come down to us.
The art of “Letter-writing” suddenly arose in Cicero’s hands in Rome to its full perfection. It has been well and truly said that all the great letter-writers of subsequent ages have more or less consciously or unconsciously followed the model of Cicero.
But it was in the Roman Empire that the fashion was most generally adopted; of course, in common with so much of classical literature, the majority of this interesting and suggestive literature has perished, but some of it—perhaps the best portion of it—has survived. The great name of Seneca is specially connected with this form of literature. L. Annæus Seneca wrote the Epistolæ Morales, probably “publishing” the first three books himself circa A.D. 57. Among these precious reliquiæ the “Letters of Pliny,” including his famous Letter to Trajan and the response, are very highly prized by the historian and annalist.
The younger Pliny was the nephew and adopted son of the elder Pliny. He was a successful lawyer, and was highly trained in all branches of literature. During his brilliant career he filled most of the public offices of State in turn, and in the end became consul. Of the Emperor Trajan he was the trusted and intimate friend. Trajan appointed him, as we have seen, imperial legate of Bithynia and Pontus, and when holding this important post the famous correspondence between the Emperor and his friend took place. Pliny died some time before his imperial master, not many years after the famous letter respecting the Christians in his province was written.
His was a charming character,—kindly, beneficent, charitable,—deeply impressed with the grave responsibilities of his position and fortune. Carefully educated and trained under the auspices of the elder Pliny,—a profound scholar and one of the most weighty writers of the early Empire,—the younger Pliny, as he is generally called, won distinction at a comparatively early age as a forensic orator. He became Prætor at the age of thirty-one. During the reign of Domitian, however, he took no share in public life. Under Nerva he again was employed in the State service. Trajan loved and trusted him, and we read of Pliny being consul in A.D. 100. He subsequently obtained the government of the great provinces of Bithynia and Pontus, and during his tenure of office there must be dated the correspondence between Trajan and Pliny which has come down to us as the tenth Book of the “Letters of Pliny.”
This Pliny has been described as the kindliest of Roman gentlemen, but he was far more than that. He was a noble example of the trained and cultured patrician, an ardent and industrious worker, an honest and honourable statesman of no mean ability,—very learned, ambitious only of political distinction when he felt that high rank and authority gave him ampler scope to serve his country and his fellows. He was, we learn from his own writings, by no means a solitary specimen of the chivalrous and noble men who did so much to build up the great Empire, and to render possible that far-reaching “Pax Romana” which for so many years gave prosperity and a fair amount of happiness to the world known under the immemorial name of Rome.
What we know of Pliny and his friends goes far to modify the painful impressions of Roman society of the first two centuries which we gather from the pages of Juvenal and other writers, who have painted their pictures of Roman life in the first and second centuries of the Christian era in such lurid and gloomy colours.
It is in the “Letters of Pliny” that the real story of his life and work has come down to us. These letters are no ordinary or chance collection. They are a finished work of great deliberation and thought.
About a century and a half earlier, the large collection of Cicero’s correspondence was given to an admiring and regretful world. A renowned statesman, a matchless orator, and even greater, the creator of the Latin language, which became a universal language—the Letters of Cicero set, as it were, a new fashion in literature. They were really the first in this special form of writing which at once became popular.
The younger Pliny was a pupil of Quintilian, who was for a long period—certainly for twenty years—the most celebrated teacher in the capital. Quintilian is known as the earliest of the Ciceronians. The cult of Ciceronianism established by Quintilian, Pliny’s tutor, was the real origin of the wonderful Pliny Letters.
Pliny was one of the ablest scholars of his age. He, like many of his countrymen, was ambitious of posthumous fame—he would not be forgotten. He was proud of his position—of his forensic oratory—of his statesmanship—of his various literary efforts; but he was too far-seeing to dream of any of his efforts in forensic oratory, or in the service of the State, or even in his various literary adventures which amused his leisure hours, winning him that posthumous fame which in common with so many other earnest pagan Romans he longed for.[22]
Pliny was an ardent admirer of Cicero; but Cicero the statesman and the orator, he felt, moved on too high a plane for him to aim at emulating; but as a writer of Latin, as a chronicler of his own day and time, as a word-painter of the society in which he moved, he might possibly reach as high a pitch of excellence as Cicero had reached in his day.
To accomplish this end became the great object of Pliny’s life. To this we owe the inimitable series of Letters by which the friend and minister of Trajan has lived, and will live on.
In some respects the Letters of Pliny are even more valuable than the voluminous and many-coloured correspondence of Cicero. Cicero lived in a momentous age. He was one of the chief actors in a great revolution which materially altered the course of the world’s history. Pliny lived in a comparatively “still” period, when one of the greatest of the Roman sovereigns was at the helm of public affairs; so in his picture we find none of the stress and storm which live along the pages of Cicero’s correspondence.
It is an everyday life which Pliny depicts with such skill and vivid imagery, the life, after all, which “finds” the majority of men and women.
But it was the bright side of ancient society which Pliny loved to describe. Without his Letters we should have had no notion of the warm and tender friendships—of the simple pleasures—of the loving charities—of the lofty ideals of so many of the élite of Roman society in the second century.
It has been well said that Pliny felt that he lacked the power to write a great history, such as that which Tacitus, with whom he was closely associated, or even his younger friend Suetonius in an inferior degree, have given us. So he chose, fortunately for us, to strike out another line altogether, a perfectly new line, and in his ten Books[23] of Letters he gives us simply a domestic picture of everyday life in his time.
They were no ordinary Letters; we can without any great effort of imagination picture to ourselves the famous Letter-writer touching and retouching his correspondence. Some modern critics in judging his style do not hesitate to place his Latinity on a level with that of Cicero. Renan, no mean judge of style, in words we have already quoted, speaks of “la langue précieuse et raffinée de Pline.”
The subjects he loved to dwell on were sometimes literature, at others, the beauties of nature, the quiet charms of country life—“me nihil æque ac naturæ opera delectant,” he wrote once. He eloquently describes the Clitumnus fountain, and the villa overlooking the Tiber valley; very elaborate and graceful are his descriptions of scenery; yet more attractive to us are his pictures of the “busy idleness” of the rich and noble of his day.
Curious and interesting are the allusions to and descriptions of the reading of new works, poems, histories, correspondence, etc., before large gatherings of friends. Some of these “readings,” which evidently formed an important feature in the society of the Empire, must often have been sadly wearisome. Our writer, for insta