Pliny 111 CE | Tetrarchy of Church Forgeries | Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia
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~ Sherlock Holmes
111 CE Pliny "Letter" 111 CE Trajan "Letter" 115 CE Tacitus "Annals" 122 CE Suetonius "Lives"
| Tetrarchy of Church ForgeriesThe term "tetrarchy" (from the Greek τετραρχία "leadership of four [people]") describes any form of government where power is divided among four individuals. The earliest and most prestigeous references to the the persecution of "Early Christians" by Roman Emperors are divided among the manuscripts attrubuted to these four individual authors. This tetrarchy of authors bind together strongly and support each other in their testimony of Christian persecution in the rule of the Roman Emperor Nero. Collectively this "leadership of four" sources represents a tetrarchy of government directly related to authenticity of historical events in Rome in the later 1st century of the common era. One of the core principles for determining reliability using the historical method is that "If a number of independent sources contain the same message, the credibility of the message is strongly increased". As a result the references to the Christians in this tetrarchy of Roman writers is generally accepted as authentic. With only a few exceptions, the consensus of opinion among modern historians is that the persecution of Christians under Nero is an actual historical event. This may be stated in another form: the hypothesis that Nero persecuted the Christians, is generally accepted as being true.However in this article, the exceptions to this consensus are gathered, and the counter-arguments to authenticity are outlined in their basic form. Another of the core principles for determining reliability using the historical method is that "Any given source may be forged or corrupted. Strong indications of the originality of the source increase its reliability." Many of the academics who have argued against the authenticity of some or all of these references have done so on the basis that they suspect them of being forged, or corrupted in some manner. Many of the manuscripts containing these references were "suddenly and unexpectedly discovered" in the manuscript archives of the church, which will here not be treated as a "Divine Institute" but rather as a "Church Organisation" or "Church [Belief] Industry", and associated with political, financial and business agendas. The manuscripts of four individual Roman authors - Pliny, Trajan, Tacitus and Suetonius - have not certainly not been "miraculously and immaculately transmitted from antiquity. It needs to be stated quite clearly that history has demonstrated that the church organisation slash industries (and their CEO's) have perpetuated themselves (business as usual) from antiquity by means of .... atrocities, exiles, tortures, executions, inquisitions, book burning and prohibition of books, censorship, and (one of the most vital instruments of deceit) literary forgery. Accordingly it needs to be stressed that the organisation that was responsible for the "miraculous and immaculate transmission of the these manuscripts from antiquity was itself utterly corrupt, at least from the 4th century when it became a political instrument of the Roman Emperor Constantine. It will be argued that this literary evidence currently attributed to this tetrarchy of Roman authors was probably forged by the church organisation during the Middle Ages, and that, as a result, the hypothesis that Nero persecuted the Christians is probably false. |
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111 - Pliny Trajan "Letter Exchange": Pliny, Letters 10.96; Trajan in Pliny, Letters 10.97
192 - Tertullian of Carthage: "Apology for the Christians", Chapter 2
324 - Eusebius, "Church History", Book 3, Chapter XXXIII — Trajan forbids the Christians to be sought after.
390 - Jerome, "Interpret. Chron. Eus." Ann. 2121
417 - Paulus Orosius, "Historiae Adversus Paganos" 7.12
Middle Age Sources____________________________________
1498 - Father Giovanni Giocondo published (in Italian) Pliny's Epistles in Bologna
1499 - Father Giovanni Giocondo of Verona discovered a minuscule manuscript [P] and made a copy (I) of the ten books of Pliny's Letters.
1508 - Aldus Manutius, the publisher, uses copy (I) for his edition of the Letters.
1508 - No trace of P has ever come to light since the publication of the edition of Aldus. It was "lost".
Modern Sources____________________________________
1955 - The Basis of the Text in Book X of Pliny's Letters; S. E. Stout
1958 - The Origin of the Ten-Book Family of Pliny Manuscripts; S. E. Stout
2005 - Notes on Pliny-Trajan letters, Professor Darrell Doughty
Links - Further references
(1) 111 CE - Pliny Trajan "Letter Exchange": Pliny, Letters 10.96; Trajan in Pliny, Letters 10.97[index]
Ancient Source
It is my practice, my lord, to refer to you all matters concerning which I am in doubt. For who can better give guidance to my hesitation or inform my ignorance? I have never participated in trials of Christians. I therefore do not know what offenses it is the practice to punish or investigate, and to what extent. And I have been not a little hesitant as to whether there should be any distinction on account of age or no difference between the very young and the more mature; whether pardon is to be granted for repentance, or, if a man has once been a Christian, it does him no good to have ceased to be one; whether the name itself, even without offenses, or only the offenses associated with the name are to be punished.
Meanwhile, in the case of those who were denounced to me as Christians, I have observed the following procedure: I interrogated these as to whether they were Christians; those who confessed I interrogated a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; those who persisted I ordered executed. For I had no doubt that, whatever the nature of their creed, stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy surely deserve to be punished. There were others possessed of the same folly; but because they were Roman citizens, I signed an order for them to be transferred to Rome.
Soon accusations spread, as usually happens, because of the proceedings going on, and several incidents occurred. An anonymous document was published containing the names of many persons. Those who denied that they were or had been Christians, when they invoked the gods in words dictated by me, offered prayer with incense and wine to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for this purpose together with statues of the gods, and moreover cursed Christ--none of which those who are really Christians, it is said, can be forced to do--these I thought should be discharged. Others named by the informer declared that they were Christians, but then denied it, asserting that they had been but had ceased to be, some three years before, others many years, some as much as twenty-five years. They all worshipped your image and the statues of the gods, and cursed Christ.
They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.
I therefore postponed the investigation and hastened to consult you. For the matter seemed to me to warrant consulting you, especially because of the number involved. For many persons of every age, every rank, and also of both sexes are and will be endangered. For the contagion of this superstition has spread not only to the cities but also to the villages and farms. But it seems possible to check and cure it. It is certainly quite clear that the temples, which had been almost deserted, have begun to be frequented, that the established religious rites, long neglected, are being resumed, and that from everywhere sacrificial animals are coming, for which until now very few purchasers could be found. Hence it is easy to imagine what a multitude of people can be reformed if an opportunity for repentance is afforded.
Trajan to Pliny
You observed proper procedure, my dear Pliny, in sifting the cases of those who had been denounced to you as Christians. For it is not possible to lay down any general rule to serve as a kind of fixed standard. They are not to be sought out; if they are denounced and proved guilty, they are to be punished, with this reservation, that whoever denies that he is a Christian and really proves it--that is, by worshiping our gods--even though he was under suspicion in the past, shall obtain pardon through repentance. But anonymously posted accusations ought to have no place in any prosecution. For this is both a dangerous kind of precedent and out of keeping with the spirit of our age.
We are denied the rights of ordinary criminals, and the use of torture is most inconsistently employed in our case. The name alone of 'Christian' is made criminal.
EVEN if it is certain that we as a matter of fact are the most guilty of men, why do we fare at your hands otherwise than our fellow-criminals, when surely the same treatment ought to be applied to offences of a similar nature? When others are charged with similar crimes to those we are charged with, they employ both their own right of speech and a hired advocate to maintain their innocence. The opportunity of rejoinder and cross-examination is open to them, since it is illegal for them to be altogether condemned undefended and unheard. But Christians alone are forbidden to say anything either in self-exculpation, or in defence of the truth, or in hindrance of a miscarriage of justice : attention is given to that only which is required by the public hatred,— namely, a confession of the name, not an enquiry into the charge. Whereas when you judicially examine into the case of some criminal, you are not content to pronounce the verdict at once upon his confession of the mere name of murderer, or sacrilegious or incestuous person, or public enemy (to adopt our own indictments), without eliciting the attendant circumstances,—the nature of the deed, its frequency, the place, the method, the time, the accessories, the accomplices. Yet in our case you do nothing of the |6 kind; although the information ought just as much to be extorted (whichever the charge may be that is falsely cast in our teeth), as to how many murdered infants each had already tasted of, how often incest had been committed under cover of the darkness, who were the cooks, what dogs were present. O how high would be the reputation of that magistrate who had unearthed any one who had already eaten one hundred infants! And yet we find enquiry into our case forbidden!
For Pliny Secundus, when governor of a province, after the condemnation of some Christians and the degradation of others, being distressed at their very number notwithstanding, consulted Trajan the Emperor6 as to what he should do in the future, alleging that beyond their obstinate refusal to sacrifice, all he had discovered was that they were in the habit of assembling at dawn to sing to Christ as God 7, and to bind themselves together under a strict rule, forbidding homicide, adultery, fraud, perfidy, and all other crimes. Then Trajan wrote back that persons of this class were not indeed to be enquired after, but if brought up before the court, were to be punished.
What an inevitably inconsistent decision! It forbids them to be inquired after, as though innocent, and yet bids them be punished, as though guilty. It is at once lenient and merciless; it ignores while it |7 punishes. How strangely does this judgement overreach itself! If it condemns, why does it not also institute enquiry? if it does not institute enquiry, why does it not also acquit? Military stations are appointed by lot throughout every province for tracking robbers; against traitors and public enemies every civilian is in arms; the enquiry is extended further to their confederates and accomplices. The Christian is the only person against whom an enquiry may not be set on foot, though he may be produced in court;—just as if the enquiry was for any other purpose than the production before the magistrates! And so you condemn the man brought before you, though no one wished him to be sought out; a man, I take it, who did not at first deserve punishment because he was guilty, but because, being forbidden to be sought out, he was found!
Nor likewise in another point do you act towards us according to your ordinary procedure in judging criminals; for you apply torture to others, when denying, to make them confess; to the Christians alone, to make them deny; whereas if there were criminality, we should indeed deny, and you as surely would compel us under torture to confess. Nor could you pretend that an investigation of Christian criminality might be dispensed with on the ground that the mere profession of Christianity would prove it; for to this day, although cognizant of what constitutes murder, you nevertheless elicit from a confessed murderer the circumstances attendant upon the committal of the deed : whence, still more perversely, |8 having assumed our guilt from our confession of the name, you compel us under torture to retract our confession, so that in our denial of the name we may of course equally deny also the crimes of which you had presumed us guilty from our Christian profession. I must suppose of course that you do not wish us to perish, whom you believe to be the worst of men! It is doubtless your custom thus to speak to a murderer : 'Deny it;' to order one who is guilty of sacrilege to be torn in pieces if he persists in confessing it! If, then, you do not so act in the case of criminals, you thereby adjudge us to be quite free from guilt; since, assuming our perfect innocence, you will not have us persist in that confession which you know you are bound to condemn—on grounds of necessity however, not of justice.
A man exclaims, 'I am a Christian.' He tells you what he is; you wish to hear what he is not. Presiding judicially with the object of eliciting the truth, it is from us alone that you are at pains to hear falsehood. 'I am,' says he, 'that which you ask whether I am; why torture me to get a false statement? You torture me if I confess, what would you do if I denied?' Truly you are not so accommodatingly credulous in the case of others who deny; to us, upon our denial, you give immediate credence. Let this crooked dealing of yours lead you to suspect the existence of some secret hidden power, which compels you to act in opposition to the recognized forms and essentials of legal trial,—nay, in opposition to the very laws themselves. For, unless I am |9 mistaken, the laws order evil-doers to be unearthed, not to be concealed; they enjoin that confession shall lead to condemnation, not to acquittal. This is laid down by the decrees of the senate, by the commands of emperors, and by the government whose servants you are. The authority vested in you is a constitutional, not a despotic one. For with despots torture is made use of as a form of punishment; with you its use is moderated and confined to purposes of examination only. Abide by your law in this respect up to the time of confession, and if torture is anticipated by confession, it will be superfluous. Sentence must be pronounced : the culprit must be discharged from the obligation of the penalty by undergoing it, and must not be released from it. No one, in fact, desires to acquit him; it is not lawful to wish it; and therefore no compulsion is put upon any one to deny. You regard a Christian as a man guilty of every crime, hostile to the gods, to the emperors, to the laws, to morals, to all the dictates of nature; and yet you compel him to deny that you may be able to acquit him; for his denial will alone allow you to do so. You are in collusion to defeat the laws. You wish him to deny that he is guilty, so that you may return him as guiltless (though very much indeed against his will), and not as a criminal, in respect of his past life. Whence comes this perversion of intellect which neither leads you to grasp the fact that more credit is to be given to a voluntary confession than to a compulsory denial, nor to consider the possibility that, if the accused is compelled to deny, |10 he may deny untruly, and when acquitted, straightway behind your tribunal laugh at your malevolence, a Christian once more?
Accordingly, since in every particular you deal with us otherwise than with other criminals, by directing your efforts solely towards excluding us from the use of this name (for we are excluded if we consent to perform certain actions like others who are not Christians 8), you can well understand that there is no question of crime in the case, but only of a name,— a name persecuted by some system of malevolent agency which aims primarily at making men refuse to gain a clear knowledge of what they know they are clearly ignorant of. Consequently they both believe things of us which are unproven, and they refuse to have them enquired into, fearing that they should be proved to be other than they prefer men to believe them to be; their object being that the name which is opposed to that hostile system may be, by its own confession alone, condemned on the presumption, not the proof, of criminality. Hence we are tortured if we confess, and are punished if we persist, and are acquitted if we deny, because the contention is about a name. |11
Why, lastly, do you read out from the judicial tablet that so and so is a Christian, why not add that he is a murderer? If a Christian be a murderer, why not also a committer of incest, or anything else you credit us with being? Is it in our case alone that you are too much ashamed or disgusted to give the exact names of our offences when you pronounce the verdict? If a Christian is guilty of no crime, it is indeed a dangerous name if the crime lies in the name alone.
1. So great a persecution was at that time opened against us in many places that Plinius Secundus, one of the most noted of governors, being disturbed by the great number of martyrs, communicated with the emperor concerning the multitude of those that were put to death for their faith. At the same time, he informed him in his communication that he had not heard of their doing anything profane or contrary to the laws, — except that they arose at dawn and sang hymns to Christ as a God; but that they renounced adultery and murder and like criminal offenses, and did all things in accordance with the laws.
2. In reply to this Trajan made the following decree: that the race of Christians should not be sought after, but when found should be punished. On account of this the persecution which had threatened to be a most terrible one was to a certain degree checked, but there were still left plenty of pretexts for those who wished to do us harm. Sometimes the people, sometimes the rulers in various places, would lay plots against us, so that, although no great persecutions took place, local persecutions were nevertheless going on in particular provinces, and many of the faithful endured martyrdom in various forms.
3. We have taken our account from the Latin Apology of Tertullian which we mentioned above. The translation runs as follows:
4. And he reported this also, that the Christians arose early in the morning and sang hymns unto Christ as a God, and for the purpose of preserving their discipline forbade murder, adultery, avarice, robbery, and the like. In reply to this Trajan wrote that the race of Christians should not be sought after, but when found should be punished.”
Such were the events which took place at that time.
Pliny the Younger, who had been appointed persecutor with other judges, reported that the Christians were doing nothing contrary to the Roman laws apart from their profession of belief in Christ and their inoffensive meetings. Moreover, he said that none of them, sustained by their harmless belief, thought death a matter of grief or of dread. Upon receiving this information, the emperor at once modified his edict by rescripts couched in milder terms. Nevertheless the Golden House at Rome, which Nero had built with a great outlay of both private and public wealth, was suddenly burned to the ground. Thus it was made plain that, though the persecution was set in motion by another, the punishment fell most heavily upon the buildings of that man who first began the persecution and who was the real author of it.
RADICE, Betty, The Letters of the Younger Pliny (New York: Penguin, 1963);
DE STE.- CROIX, G.E.M., "Why were the Early Christians Persecuted?," Past and Present, 26 (Nov 1963), 6-38;
WILKEN, Robert, "Pliny: A Roman Gentleman," in idem., The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984), 1-30;
A. N. SHERWIN-WHITE, The Letters of Pliny: A Historical and Social Commentary (Oxford, 1966);
IDEM, "The Early Persecutions and Roman Law," in Letters of Pliny, Appendix V (= JTS 2 [1952], 199ff.);
FREUDENBERGER, Rudolf, Das Verhalten des römischen Behörden gegen die Christen im 2. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1967);
KERESZTES, Paul, "The Imperial Roman Government and the Christian Church, I. From Nero to the Severi," ANRW II 23.1, 247-315: 273-287.
Pliny tells us that he was seventeen at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius, which would mean he was born in 62 CE. He began his career as a lawyer at the age of eighteen. After holding a series of minor administrative offices, he was appointed as a administrator (praetor) of military affairs by Emperor Domition in 93 CE. From 98-100 he served as administrator of the treasury, during which time he also continued to function as a civil prosecutor. Leaving the Treasury office, he continued to carry out various civic responsibilities, including a three-year stint in which he was responsible for maintaining the river banks to prevent Rome's sewers from flooding. In 111 CE he was appointed as the Emperor Trajan's official representative in Bithynia and Pontus, where he died in 113. (for all this, see Radice, 12-15; S-White, 72-82; Scholars differ as to precise dates). The letters of Pliny are collected in ten books. The first nine books contain 247 letters of personal correspondence, and book ten contains 121 more official letters to and from Trajan written during his ministry in Bithynia and Pontus.
Regarding the letter collections as a whole
With regard to the authenticity of the letters as letters, Sherwin-White observes, "Modern scholars have taken no very coherent line about this. Some regard the letters as entirely fictitious, written for the books in which they appear... Others speak of the letters being written up for publication from simpler originals..." (11) With regard to the letters concerning Christians (10.96-97), for S-White "it is hardly necessary to defend the genuine character of these two letters," since the letters were known to Tertullian (691) and "this type of theory, like the notion that Tacitus' account of the Neronian affair is a forgery, raiser greater difficulties than it solves..." (692). Keresztes observes that "the genuineness of the correspondence on the Christians, especially that of Pliny's letter, has been questioned, or even completely rejected by many scholars," but that "the complete authenticity of these letters has always had staunch and convincing defenders" (274f) - which seems to settle the matter for him.
S-White observes that the "more personal letters" form a special group.
"They are highly polished specimens. Yet it is unlikely that their topics and occasions were entirely fictitious... Anything is possible, no doubt, in the field of imagination. But it would require an extraordinary ingenuity to invent so many convincing minor details for the setting of so miscellaneous a subject-matter as that of these letters. It must be reckoned at least [as] a probability that Pliny was in the habit of advising or consoling his friends on occasion with appropriate litterae curiosius scriptae, and that these formed one basis of the collection." (11f).
This is not a very strong argument for authenticity.
In a similar way, we are told that letters dealing with Pliny's business affairs and domestic arrangements "are full of precise and particular details that can hardly have been invented." And then it is strangely explained that "they read as literary revisions of practical letters which have been polished in language and style and simplified by omission of the most technical and transient details... These letters are close to the realities of correspondence." (12)
Is this the most that can be said even by a defender of the letters! - they are filled with "particular details" many of which were omitted (which also explains their lack of concrete details), so that they are "close to the realities of correspondence" (in the same way that good forgeries would be).
S-White assures us that Pliny's letters of recommendation for promotion written for his friends are also "close to the realities of correspondence"... and "have never been regarded as other than genuine letters." (12)
With regard to the "letters of substance" offering "long descriptions of character, of political and social events, or natural phenomena, and the rest," S-W observes that "there is no reason why Pliny should not have written long descriptions of his famous trials, for example, to his educated friends..., who otherwise would depend for public news solely on what appeared in the acta diurna ("daily news")..." But it is also not impossible that someone else fabricated such accounts.
And again we are told that the "numerous brief notes... seem to carry signs of authenticity... One would seldom sit down to invent this kind of thing..." (13) Unless this kind of thing supported the authenticity of other letters.
The point here is not that Pliny's correspondence is probably spurious, but only that S-White's arguments in favor of their authenticity are not overwhelming.
A related question is whether the letters are literary imitations, either by Pliny himself or by someone else. S-White observes that "Pliny certainly writes under strong literary influences, both in the language and the content of the letters. Reminiscences of Vergil and of various subsequent writers of the imperial period are common enough." But to conclude from this that the whole thing should be taken as a fiction simply because Pliny writes in the language of his predecessors "seems a rather crude approach to the understanding of classical literature..." (16) But the matter is not quite that simple, since this would also be what one might expect from a forger.
Such a criticism has been made of Pliny's report to Trajan about the Christians, where echos of Livy are alleged (R. Grant, HTR [1948], 273ff.). S-White counters that "the echos turn out to be genuine but faint and dim, and in no way affect the historicity of the narrative... To a man immersed by long education and continued reading in his native literature, the appropriate language arose from memory's store at the prompting of the theme. It is doubtful whether this is a wholly conscious process." (17) S-White later suggests (p. 692) that the immediate influence "may not be Livy but an account, in any of the annalists of the Julio-Claudian period, of measures taken to repress Druids, Magisians, or Jews."
What S-White doesn't seem to perceive is that if the question has to do with the authenticity of what is reported here, it doesn't matter where the material was stolen from (and we don't have to assume it was Pliny who did it). S-White also fails to notice that such borrowing would be far more probable in a literary fiction.
Chronology -
Assuming the letters to be authentic, there is no agreement among scholars regarding when the various books of letters were compiled, or when they were published, or whether they were published separately, one by one, or in groups, or some separately and some in groups, or all at once. According to S-White, for example, "the evidence points to three or four separate publications: I-II together or separately, III-VI or VII together, VII or VIII-IX together." (52)
The only thing scholars must agree about is that the collection of letters from Pliny's time in Bithynia and Pontus could not have been compiled by Pliny (since he died there), although no one knows who collected and published them, or when (or why).
Radice observes (32) that for Book 10 "there is a very fragmentary MS. authority."
All this raises a number of difficult questions. How were such letters collected? How did Pliny retrieve his letters from the hundreds of different people he wrote to? And when he did, why would such letters be preserved and copied and recopied for a thousand years? On the other hand, however, why would anyone fabricate such letters?
The Letters concerning the Christians
"No mention is made of Christians in any of his other letters" (Wilken, 16)
According to S-White (80f.), Pliny arrived in Bithynia in September 109 and died sometime between January and September 111. Radice (15) places his mission in Bithynia-Pontus between 111 and 113 (also Wilken). It is generally thought that Pliny spent the first year in Bithynia, and traveled further east to Pontus only after September 110. Pliny's itinerary in Pontus is puzzling: he seems have gone first to Sinope, then east to Amisus, and back- either by sea, or by passing through Sinope again-to Amastris, before returning to Bithynia. His letter to Trajan concerning Christians must have been written sometime between September 110 and January 111 (when he ceased writing letters), and stands between a letter written from Amisus (on the eastern border of Pontus) and another written from Amastris, about 100 miles west of Amisus, on the way back to Bithynia. But we are not told where Pliny was when he wrote the letter.
We do not know, therefore, where the letter was written, nor do we know whether the problem Pliny encountered arose in Amisus, Amastris, or somewhere else. "The city where the trouble first arose cannot be determined" (S-White, 693; cf. Wilken, 15). Wilken tells us (15) that Pliny no doubt assumed "that Trajan would know where he was." But how would Trajan have known this? And even if he knew where the letter was written from, how would he have known in what city the problem arose? - which might not be unimportant, since Amisus was a self-governing city with significant freedom to determine its own way of life (Wilken, 14). In any case, it is strange that, particularly in a letter of such length and detail, dealing with such an important subject (as he emphasizes in his letter), Pliny makes no mention of where the trouble arose.
Nor does Pliny explain how the trouble arose. The nature of the actual charges brought against the Christians is obscure.
Wilken: "What precisely the complaint (against the Christians) was we do not know (15)... No doubt some trouble had arisen between Christians and others in the city. This was unusual. In most areas of the Roman Empire Christians lived quietly and peacably among their neighbors, conducting their affairs without disturbance... What specifically caused the hostility in Pontus, however, Pliny does not say." (16)
Wilken speculates (15) that the complaint may have been made by local butchers and others engaged in the slaughter and sale of sacrificial meat because people were not making sacrifices and business was poor -- which reminds one of Luke's story of Paul in Ephesus (Acts 19:23-27). But this does call attention to the last paragraph of Pliny's letter where reference is made to the "great number of persons of every age and class" being brought to trial, and the fact that, in spite of this, "not only the towns, but villages and rural districts too" are infected by this wretched cult (indeed, all of Pontus?). This sounds like Christian exaggeration.
In any case, Keresztes states the problem very clearly: "Our problem, however, is serious, and it is this: What was the juridicial basis for Pliny's unhesitating decision to have the faithful confessors put to death?" (278).
This is the crucial question, since the real issue has to do with whether we are dealing here with Christian legend or with historical facts. The plausibility of all the persecution and martyrdom stories depends on answering this question. And it is not surprising, therefore, that Christian historians have devoted so much energy to answering this question -- and that so many answers have been proposed. It has been proposed that they were executed because they engaged in indecent and immoral practices (flagitia), or because they refused to worship the Emperor, or make sacrifice to the gods of the State, or because they pursued an illegal "superstition" (de Ste. Croix) or because they constituted illegal colloqium or hetaeria (cf. Frend, 221), or simply because (as Pliny says) they were stubborn and obstinate. And for every one of these proposals it is easy to find several scholarly refutations.
Since few people find any of these answers really satisfactory, a very common proposal is that Christians were slaughtered simply because they were Christians. According to Keresztes, it is clear from Pliny that the Christians were "punished for the name alone" (284)... "The Christian name, without any connection with flagitia, alone remains a capital crime" (287). For Keresztes, this answers the question regarding the juridicial basis for Pliny's decision to execute Christians. But can one really refer to this as a "juridicial basis." Must it not still be determined why, from a legal perspective, simply being a Christian was regarded as a capital crime?
According to Keresztes, "Pliny's unhesitating decision to have the faithful confessors put to death" indicates the existence of a general practice, and the legal basis for such a practice can only be some kind of imperial edict previously issued by Nero. But we have no evidence whatsoever for the existence of such an edict under Nero. Nor does Keresztes indicate what might have been the grounds for executing specified in such an edict. Nor do we have any evidence that at this early time Christians were already persecuted by Nero or anyone else simply because they were Christians.
Reflections
Pliny's letter is problematic. We have already observed that the fact that we do not know where it was written or in what city the Christian problem surfaced is strange.
More problematic, however, is that, according to Pliny, there was a "great number" Christians, "of every age and class," not only "in the cities" [plural] "but in villages and rural districts as well" -- i.e., just about everywhere. This doesn't seem like a realistic scenario.
Another problem is that if Pliny has no direct knowledge of judicial proceedings against Christians, nor of the punishments usually meted out, why did he nevertheless proceed in the way he did-executing those persons who confess to being Christian. In spite of what he says to begin with, Pliny seems to know very well how to deal with persons who confess to being Christians, and the only uncertainty he seems to have concerns the special cases in which people retract their beliefs and renounce Christianity. But why did Pliny decide that Christians should be put to death simply because they were Christian? To put this another way, in spite of his questions, Pliny already knows the answer to the most important question: punishment of Christians has nothing to do with any specific crimes they commit.
Trajan's reply is also problematic. To begin with, he doesn't answer all of Pliny's questions. He only assures Pliny that his course of action against Christians is correct, which includes at least implicit affirmation of Pliny's execution of Christians. He makes no reference to Pliny's question concerning distinctions on the basis of age. But he adds the very important specifications that Christians should not be hunted out, that charges made against them- presumably the charge of being Christians-must be proved (in a civil court before the governor), and that anonymous accusations should be rejected.
But the problem concerns the source and basis for Trajan's instructions. Did he make all this up on the spot, or did he have some basis or precedent for his reply? Is the implication that (even though Pliny is unaware of it and seems to know nothing about the Christian movement) persecution of Christians is already quite common, and Trajan is simply following established precedents? Does what Trajan says here apply only to the problems in Pontus, or is this some kind of general edict? Or is Keresztes right, and presupposed here is an edict previously propagated by Nero? At the very least, Keresztes recognizes that there is a problem here, even if an appeal to an edict by Nero doesn't really solve the problem - since it still remains unclear why Christians were condemned to death simply for being Christians.
Why would later Christians invent a dialogue like this between Pliny and Trajan. To begin with, it supports the Christian myth that from the very beginning Christians were persecuted for no reason at all except for the fact that they were Christians - that to be a Christian means to share the suffering and death of Christ. All attempts by Christian historians to determine the real reasons why Christians were persecuted fail to recognize the apologetic and mythical character of such claims, for which the most important point is that there "were" no reasons.
At the same time, however, Trajan's instructions would be very favorable to Christians when persecution did take place in the third and early fourth centuries: Christians should not be hunted down; charges against Christians must be proven in a court of law; anonymous accusations have no merit; and Christians who deny their faith should be pardoned - a stipulation many Christians later made use of.
Darrell J. Doughty
TERTULLIAN AND THE PLINY-TRAJAN CORRESPONDENCE (Ep. 96).: G. A. T. DAVIES, Journal of Theological Studies 14 (1913) pp. 407-414
C. Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Younger) : Letters : Manuscripts and transmission
Giovanni Giocondo: (ca. 1433 – 1515) Discoverer.
The Chronicle of St. Jerome: Manuscripts.
A Forgery (Pliny) by Michael Sympson
Pliny, Tacitus and Suetonius: No Proof of Jesus D.M. Murdock/Acharya S
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Ancient Source
(2) THE APOLOGY OF TERTULLIAN FOR THE CHRISTIANS
CHAPTER II.
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Ancient Source
Eusebius, Book 3, Chapter XXXIII — Trajan forbids the Christians to be sought after.
Chapter XXXIII. — Trajan forbids the Christians to be sought after
“And indeed we have found that search for us has been forbidden. For when Plinius Secundus, the governor of a province, had condemned certain Christians and deprived them of their dignity, he was confounded by the multitude, and was uncertain what further course to pursue. He therefore communicated with Trajan the emperor, informing him that, aside from their unwillingness to sacrifice, he had found no impiety in them.
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Ancient Source
Jerome, Interpret. Chron. Eus. Ann. 2121
Citation not yet located.
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Ancient Source
1.5 Paulus Orosius, Historiae Adversus Paganos, 7.12
12. In the eight hundred and forty-seventh year of the City, Trajan, a Spaniard by birth, and the eleventh emperor in succession from Augustus, took the helm of state from Nerva. He held it for nineteen years. Trajan assumed the emblems of the imperial office at Agrippina, a city in Gaul. He at once restored Germany beyond the Rhine; he subdued many tribes beyond the Danube; he formed provinces of the districts beyond the Euphrates and the Tigris; and he took possession of Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and Babylon. Trajan erred in judgment, however, in his persecution of the Christians, the third persecution from that of Nero. He ordered that Christians should be compelled, wherever found, to sacrifice to idols or be put to death if they refused. Great numbers of them were executed.
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Modern Source
The Basis of the Text in Book X of Pliny's Letters
Author(s): S. E. Stout
Source: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 86 (1955), pp. 233-249
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/283620 .
Some time between 1499 and 1506, probably not before 1502, the Italian scholar
Fra Giacondo of Verona discovered in or near Paris a minuscule manuscript of
the ten books of Pliny's Letters, which had descended from Z. This manuscript is now referred to as P.
It had only a brief history of a half-dozen years after it was discovered, but
made important contribution to our knowledge of the text of the Letters. Giacondo
first made a complete copy of P, to which I shall refer as I. He intended to use I
in preparing his projected edition of the Letters, but upon his return to Italy in
1506 his attention was required by other pressing matters and he turned Manuscript I
over to his friend Aldus Manutius, the publisher, who used it in preparing the text
of his edition of the Letters which was published at Venice in November 1508, the
earliest printed edition that contained ten books. This edition is now referred to as a.
Manuscript I disappeared after a was published. Manuscript P itself, having been
secured by the Venetian Senator Mocenicus, who was ambassador from Venice at the
court of Louis XII at this time, was taken to Venice by him in 1508 and given to
Aldus some time before a was published.
It was perhaps used to some extent by Aldus in the last stage of the preparation
of the text for his edition. No trace of P has ever come to light since the publication
of the edition of Aldus. Fortunately a direct copy of portions of P or I, made by
Giacondo for the French scholar Bude before 1506, is still preserved in a volume in
the Bodleian Library of Oxford University.
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Modern Source
The Origin of the Ten-Book Family of Pliny Manuscripts [1]
Author(s): S. E. Stout
Source: Classical Philology, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Jul., 1958), pp. 171-173
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/265876 .
[1] 1. Manuscripts of the Epistulae fall into three families:
the nine-book (X), the eight-book (Y), and the ten-book (Z)
p.172-173
If a ten-book edition of the Letters had been published
in Pliny's lifetime or soon after his death, it, and not
the nine-book corpus, would have become the standard edition
and have been passed on down to posterity. But when in the
third or fourth ceintury the parent manuscript of the X and Y
families was produced, it was made from a nine-book manuscript.
Clearly no ten-book manuscript was known in that part of the
Roman world at that time. I have shown elsewhere5 that the
Letters of Pliny were not available to scholars and teachers
from about A.D. 150 to 450 and that his very name and existence
had been forgotten. When a manuscript of the Epistulae was dug
up somewhere, probably around Rome, by Sidonius Apollinaris
about 450, it was a nine-book manuscript that he found. He knew
nothing, even at the time of his death about 484, of the
correspondence between Pliny and Trajan.
All of this seems to justify the assumption that the ten-book
family, Z, of Pliny manuscripts originated between A.D. 480 and 500.
The enthusiastic admiration of the Epistulae by Sidonius and the
fact that after being lost for 300 years they had again come to
light may be assumed to have aroused interest in them among scholars
and teachers in the late fifth century. The indexes which are found
in the Z manuscripts may well have been made in this period.
The double names of the addressees could of course have been more
easily determined about the time of Pliny's death, but this should
not be thought impossible in the fifth century. There was much helpful
data in the old Senate lists, in such of the acta diurna
as had been preserved, in historical writings of which we no longer
have knowledge, and in thousands of inscriptions in Italy and
southern France that were available then but are now lost.
We need not feel absolutely sure, moreover, that there are no guesses and errors
in the double names in these indexes. In the case of many of of them
we have no way to verify them from internal or external sources.
The nine-book manuscript which was combined with the Trajan correspondence
to make the first ten-book manuscript may, however, have received the indexes
either at that time or at some earlier date. We do not know when a manuscript
of the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan was rediscovered. Before it was
joined with the nine-book corpus, or at that time, it received editorial attention.
The letters were grouped in such a way that Pliny's letter and the reply of Trajan,
if the reply had been included, formed a unit. These units were numbered to facilitate
reference. At the head of each unit a lemma was inserted that informed the reader
what the letter was about. This editorial work is of a sort that could be expected
between A.D. 450 and 500, but hardly so in 115. Such lemmata were not supplied in
the first nine books. This shows that the ten-book manuscript was not produced as a unit,
but merely brought together two corpora that had different editorial backgrounds.
The new ten-book corpus received a title, C PLINJI SECVNDI EPISTVLARVM LIBRIl NVMERO DECEM,
the last two words of which emphasize the fact that the Epistulae had up to that time been
thought of as of nine books.
This would have been natural in the latter half of the fifth century.
As to many other points in the history of Roman culture, a positive
answer cannot yet be given to the question of date raised in this article,
but the known facts seem to be most satisfactorily accounted for on the
assumption that the union of the two corpora of the Epistulae of Pliny
was made near the end of the fifth century.
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Modern Source
Notes on Pliny: Persecution and Martyrdom in Early Christianity, Pliny's Questions concerning Treatment of Christians and Trajan's Reply, Notes ... Professor Darrell Doughty.
Professor of New Testament
Drew University, Madison, NJ, 07940[index]
Modern Source
LINKS
WIKI: Pliny on ChristiansBryn Mawr Classical Review 2006.05.36: Fra Giovanni Giocondo (ca. 1433-1515), who edited the text of Vitruvius, was perhaps the most important late fifteenth century epigrapher. He collected inscriptions and produced a pattern book for letters; he also started to record whether he had examined the inscription himself, or whether his source had done so, and he recognized that letter-forms change over time and can therefore assist in dating. Giocondo helped promote epigraphy as an important scholarly activity for any "self-respecting humanist," securing the patronage of the most influential princes of the time. Lorenzo de'Medici commissioned a copy of Giocondo's manuscript of inscriptions in 1488, and soon prominent patrons were happy to copy Lorenzo.
The Rev. Robert Taylor then casts doubt on the authenticity of the letter as a whole, recounting the work of German critics, who "have maintained that this celebrated letter is another instance to be added to the long list of Christian forgeries..." One of these German luminaries, Dr. Semler of Leipsic provided "nine arguments against its authenticity..." He also notes that the Pliny epistle is quite similar to that allegedly written by "Tiberianus, Governor of Syria" to Trajan, which has been universally denounced as a forgery.
Also, like the Testimonium Flavianum, Pliny's letter is not quoted by any early Church father, including Justin Martyr. Tertullian briefly mentions its existence, noting that it refers to terrible persecutions of Christians. However, the actual text used today comes from a version by a Christian monk in the 15th century, Iucundus of Verona, whose composition apparently was based on Tertullian's assertions. Concurring that the Pliny letter is suspicious, Drews terms "doubtful" Tertullian's "supposed reference to it." Drews then names several authorities who likewise doubted its authenticity, "either as a whole or in material points," including Semler, Aub, Havet, Hochart, Bruno Bauer and Edwin Johnson. Citing the work of Hochart specifically, Drews pronounces Pliny's letter "in all probability" a "later Christian forgery."