The “Christian Question” was a topic raised by Pliny the Younger in his letter to Emperor Trajan during his governorship of Bithynia and Pontus. First, we will see the content of Pliny’s letter and Trajan’s reply to Pliny. Then, we will briefly see the characters involved in this exchange, such as who Pliny was and who Trajan was. Finally, we will discuss the Roman Empire itself, such as the state of the Roman Empire, the perception of the Romans regarding Christians, and the nature of the persecutions under the Roman Empire.
The following letter was translated directly from early 2nd century AD Latin. I tried my best to keep the sentence structure as close as possible to the original, even though this proved to be impossible for some sentences, and I was thus forced to make changes to the structure of said sentences. This I did so that, if some are interested, they can compare it directly with the original Latin text here.
English Text:
Gaius Plinius II: EPISTVLAE
Book 10, Letter 96
From Hans H. Ørberg: SERMONES ROMANI
Pliny’s Letter
Gaius Plinius to Imperator Trajan
1 It is customary to me, Master, to ask you every matter that is uncertain in nature. Who else is better to rule my uncertainty or to educate my ignorance?
I have never been present in the investigations of Christians. Therefore I do not know what or how they are usually punished or searched for.
2 I am also hesitant in the modes of:
-should age be differentiated, or should the weak not be differentiated from the strong?
-Should pardon be given to the repentant, or is stopping (from being a Christian) not beneficial to Christians?
-His name, if it lacks indignity, or if there is indignity connected to the name, be punished?
In the meantime, in matters of those Christians who were brought to me I follow this procedure:
3 I interrogated them whether ‘they were Christians?’. I interrogated those who confessed again for the third time under threat of torture. Those who persevered I commanded to be taken away. I do not doubt, whatever the nature of their admission, certainly the stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy deserve to be punished.
4 Those others [who were] similarly mindless, whom I noted to be sent to the city [Rome] because they were Roman citizens.
Soon — as it usually happens, accusations spread — many types of those.
5 A defamatory publication without an author containing many names was put forward.
Those who denied ‘I am not a Christian’ or ‘I was’, while, following my example, calling the Gods and supplicating to your image (which for this I commanded to be brought) with incense and wine, above all spoke ill of Christ — which I think cannot be said by those who are truly Christians — , I think I should be sent away.
6 Others who were accused by an informer ‘he is a Christian’ — and later be denied: ‘he was, but no longer’, someone ‘three years ago’, someone ‘many years ago’, and even not no one ‘twenty [years] ago’. These people both venerated your image and the statues of the gods and spoke ill of Christ as well.
7 They affirmed whether ‘are these all totally wrong or in erred, whether it is their custom to gather before the sun rises at a certain day, talk and sing about Christ like a God, vow to each other in a sacrament to each other to not do any wickedness, but not to commit theft, robbery, adultery, not to deceive [other people’s] faith, not to deny any call for a credit of trust. After these were done, it is customary for them to go and gather together again to get food — although normal and innocent — these activities they stopped doing after my edict’, which follows your mandate to forbid gatherings.
8 It is more of a necessity I believe, ‘what is true’ — and through torture — to ask from two female slaves, who are called ministers. But I found no other superstitions as perverse and immodest [as christianity]!
9 For that reason, [after] delaying judgement, I hurry to consult you. It seems to me indeed this matter warrants consultation, because of the many number of accused. Many indeed of all age, all [societal] order, of either sex as well are and were called into peril. This contagion spread not only to citizens, but also villagers and farms.
10 What is seen can be stopped and corrected: it is known that temples which were nearly abandoned are beginning to be frequented, and sacred ceremonies long stopped are now done again, from everywhere come sacrificial animals, which buyers were until now very rarely found.
Out of this, it is easy to imagine a multitude of people to be able to be corrected if given he is in a position to repent.
Trajan’s Reply
Gaius Plinius II: EPISTVLAE
Book 10, Letter 97
From Hans H. Ørberg: SERMONES ROMANI
Trajan to Pliny
1 You follow the methods that are proper for you, my follower, in searching for the cases of those Christians who were brought to you. No method, which has a semi-certain form, can be constituted in all cases.
2 They should not be searched for. If they were brought and tried, they should be punished, however for those who deny ‘he is a Christian’ and make apparent these things, which is supplicating to our gods, whatever suspicion had before, give them pardon due to repentance.
It is proper to have no defamatory publication without authors in any accusations proceedings. For these are both bad precedents and not (the way) of our time.
Commentary:
Gaius Plinius Secundus
Pliny the Younger (AD 61 — c. AD 113) was a legatus Augusti (literally “the legate of Augustus”), or a Roman Governor, for the Roman Province of Bithynia et Pontus. He was born as Gaius Caecilius Cilo to an equestrian family (roughly a Roman Knight, just below the senatorial rank in social standing during the era of the empire). His father, Lucius Caecilius Cilo, died when Pliny was only a child leaving Pliny to live primarily with his mother. His uncle, the famous Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus), helped to raise and educate Pliny. After Pliny the Elder died in Stabiae during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Pliny the Younger was adopted by his uncle, thus changing his name to Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus.
One could say that Pliny was quite a successful politician. He was primarily a legal advisor, not a military man. Besides a brief stint as a military tribune attached to Legio III Gallica in Syria, he spent most of his political career before his governorship in Rome. He climbed up the ranks of the cursus honorum relatively quickly, becoming a consul when he was 39. A few years later, he was elected as a public priest before being selected as a magistrate responsible for the banks of the Tiber River. Finally, at the age of 49, Pliny was sent to provincia Bithynia et Pontus as a legatus Augusti. He died probably in AD 113 since there was no letter dated after this year.
Early in his life, he aspired to be known as a writer. However, fate said otherwise, and Pliny himself realized this. Therefore, he resigned himself to writing letters, and out of hundreds of letters he wrote, only 247 survived to this day. The letters that survived gave us the valuable opportunity to glimpse how the Romans lived in that era and the workings of the imperial government during the height of the empire.
On a personal note, Pliny appeared to be a stereotypical Roman senator. While he had the ambitions and talent as a Roman politician, all this he had as a Roman aristocrat. He appeared to lack the bravado of a Roman frontier general and the sense of adventure which drove some to travel to Greece to learn philosophy. Before he was appointed governor, he spent most of his life in Rome, being a normal Roman senator and climbing the ranks as expected from a man of his class and talent. And even after he was appointed governor, based on his letter, he appeared to lack the zeal of an ideologue obsessed with maintaining the “ways of the elders” of the Roman people. He just wanted to do his job well and be in the good grace of the emperor. This is not to say that he lacked actual talents and rose through the ranks only through connection and blood. Instead, it is to say that we should just judge him as a competent and skilled Roman aristocrat.
Emperor Trajan
Imperator Caesar Nerva Traianus Augustus (AD 53 — AD 117) was the second emperor of the “five good emperors”. Most contemporary resources on Trajan were lost to time. Thus, compared to the other emperors from the Nerva-Antonine dynasty, the historical reconstruction of his life is more complicated. He was born as Marcus Ulpius Traianus in Italica, although despite not being born in Rome, he was born to a senatorial family. However, unlike Pliny, he was more of a soldier than an aristocrat during his early years. As a soldier, Trajan traveled to the Roman frontiers, and at times, was even engaged in combat himself. This military experience allowed him to be popular with the soldiers in his later years, a fact which helped him become an emperor through popularity.
After the assassination of Domitian, Nerva was selected by the Senate to be the new emperor in order to establish a new precedent for imperial successions. While he was a competent ruler, he was not popular with the soldiers. Under the threat of mutiny, Nerva adopted Trajan as his successor. This adoption proved to be a great choice for the empire. When Trajan succeeded Nerva 16 months after Nerva’s ascension to power, Trajan proved to be a very capable leader.
Most accounts of his contemporaries sang praises to him. He was bestowed the title “optimus princeps” by the Senate (literally “best leader”). Throughout his reign, he made the Roman Empire into its best self by bestowing gifts to cities, constructing public infrastructures, and stabilizing the Roman government. According to Pliny the Younger, Trajan ruled by example and not by fear. He always kept the Senate at his side, and unlike his predecessor, Domitian, kept the Senate as the main governing body under him (although keep in mind that by this point, the effective power of the Senate is only symbolic, Trajan still held all the power). Trajan’s reputation even remains even after his death. Every new Roman emperor since then was given the wish “felicior Augusto, melior Traiano” (literally meaning “luckier than Augustus, better than Trajan”), and even after the empire’s demise, Machiavelli included Trajan as one of the “five good emperors”.
Under Trajan, the Roman Empire reached its maximum territorial expansion, reaching as far as Britannia in the northwest and Mesopotamia in the southeast. In one of his military campaigns, he finally conquered Dacia, a kingdom well known for its precious metal mines. Near the end of his life, due to a diplomatic dispute with Parthia over the succession of the Armenian King, Trajan invaded Armenia and finally Parthia with ten legions. Armenia was then made into a Roman province, and Trajan managed to sack Parthia’s capital and later established the province of Mesopotamia. While Trajan reported this as a massive success back to Rome, this success might be disputable. Rome had no way to defend Mesopotamia and Armenia effectively, and thus, while it is true that these areas were subjugated, one might wonder whether Rome truly had effective control over these two provinces or not. Not long after this campaign, Trajan died during his return trip to Rome, being succeeded by his cousin Hadrian after Trajan supposedly adopted Hadrian on his deathbed.
The State of the Empire
While perhaps we often hear that the Roman persecutions of Christians were quite severe, this was rarely the case. Contrary to what is often said, the central government of Rome basically could not be bothered when it came to the Christians during the 1st to 2nd century AD. Christianity itself was virtually unknown to the Roman senatorial class for the first half of the 1st century AD, and during the 2nd century AD, Christianity was never seen as a threat that serious to the security of the Roman Empire. For the eternal city of Rome, some groups were considered to be more threatening to the security of the people, such as the Jews during the First Jewish-Roman War (AD 66–73), the Illyrians, who just revolted during the reign of Augustus (the Great Illyrian Revolt, or Bellum Batonianum, AD 6–9) and most of all, the Germans (who continued to be a thorn on Rome’s side even after the campaign of Germanicus during the early reign of Tiberius in AD 14–16), and the Dacians, at least until they were finally pacified under Trajan in AD 106. Therefore, persecuting the Christians held little merit for the Romans. Even the infamous Emperor Nero, who blamed Christians for the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64, limited his persecutions to the local Christians who lived in the eternal city itself.
However, even if the imperial government had the political will to persecute Christians, Rome did not have the necessary manpower to search for Christians throughout the empire. During the time (and for most of its existence), the Roman Empire was woefully lacking in manpower. Even though Rome’s bureaucracy was one of the best in the world for its time, it was still ill-equipped to deal with the entire population living within the imperial borders. According to Dr. Peter Brown, Egypt, one of the most heavily guarded and bureaucratized provinces in the entire imperium due to its importance (Egypt was Rome’s primary source of revenue and grain), only had one bureaucrat for every 10,000 men. This means that for other provinces which were less important than Egypt, the local administration could even be more undermanned.
This lack of manpower made Rome woefully ineffective when it came to governing the daily affairs of the local population. Unlike in our modern-day cities, the Roman Empire did not have a unified police force, a unified court, a unified fire-fighting force, or even a unified taxation office (Rome continued to depend on local officials to collect their taxes for them even during the time of the empire). These public necessities we take for granted today were instead delegated haphazardly to soldiers, military officers, senators, or even to pre-existing local officials. Even then these officers would also be responsible to build roads, maintain public safety (which ranged from petty crimes such as theft to murder to rioting or even to open rebellion), public buildings upkeep, and all other public matters that are usually held by different officials today from different specialised state offices. Furthermore, if a rebellion suddenly flared up near where a given legion was stationed, these military officers and their soldiers who were responsible for keeping public order and other public matters would be sent away to deal with said rebellion, leaving the area alone to fend for itself. This manpower limitations, along with the technological limitations during the time, gave the Augusti (emperors) pretty much little to no choice but to give Rome’s provincial governors a free hand when it came to dealing with the daily affairs of the local population, as long as they themselves obeyed Roman law (or at least appeared to do so), and even then these local governors would still have to depend on the pre-existing local social hierarchy as well to enforce their authority partially. Therefore, in short, Rome simply did not have the incentive nor the necessary workforce to search for and persecute Christians within the entire territory of the empire during the 1st to 2nd century AD.
It was within this context did Pliny send the letter we saw earlier to Trajan, and now we can see why. Since Christianity was not something the Romans treated that seriously until this point, no law was passed to deal with them. Therefore Pliny basically had to operate under precedents, which was the natural thing to do in the absence of a specific law in the Roman world. However, Pliny knew no such precedents and was thus unsure of what to do. Thus, left with no clear guidance, and given the fact that Roman governors wielded incredible power, it was only natural for Pliny to send an inquiry to Trajan regarding how to best deal with Christians. This inquiry could be considered somewhat unnecessary since it was entirely within his power to execute Christians here and there if he wanted to, as long as the province remained stable. Roman governors could usually get away with plenty of things; even corruption could easily go unpunished. However, Pliny probably wanted to stay within the good grace of Trajan and thus decided to send the letter anyway.
Christianity in the Eyes of the Romans
However, just like what we can see from the letter, while Christians were not to be sought for, both Trajan and Pliny saw Christians as enough of a nuisance to public order to warrant punishment. It can be seen as well from Pliny’s letter that the local population of Bithynia et Pontus were pretty eager to accuse one another of “being a Christian”. This means that at least some part of the local population viewed Christians with great suspicion. Why was that?
Before we continue, we have to understand that the Romans were quite tolerant (to an extent) when it comes to religions from outside the eternal city of Rome. It is a known fact that the Romans did import other gods into the city of Rome itself from regions outside Italy. Veneration of local gods were common in the provinces. In the city of Rome itself, religions that worship deities other than the usual Roman deities existed as well, such as the Cult of Isis and the Cult of Mithras (the latter also suffered persecutions by the Romans sometime during the Roman-Persian war, and by Christians sporadically throughout the cult’s existence). Judaism — a religion also famous for refusing to make sacrifices to the emperor — was also spared under certain conditions (mainly because of their old age and already established institution). While the Jews did suffer some persecutions, it was also partially due to political and economic reasons; overall, Judaism as a religion fared pretty well during the 1st-2nd century AD. The Romans of the time were — to a large extent — military pragmatists. For them, public order and stability were the most important of all. Therefore, Romans usually avoided persecuting local religious sects for not wanting to worship the Roman gods. If they did, it would only serve to needlessly antagonise the locals and create public disorder. For example, the Governor of Syria (Iudaea was under the control of the Province of Syria), Publius Petronius, tried to and managed to stall the erection of the statue of Caligula in the Temple of Jerusalem for nearly a year out of fear of creating unrest within the local population. Thus, it is within this framework of public order that we should ask the question and examine the reasons why Christians were persecuted during the 1st to 2nd century AD.
There could be several reasons for persecuting Christians when it comes to the local non-romanised population. First, Christianity could be seen as a threat to the popularity of the established local religious order. Second, Christianity could just be a victim of baseless rumours, considering how easy it was for false rumours to spread unchecked. Third, it was entirely reasonable to think that some part of the local population just did not like Christians (e.g., the Jewish population). Nevertheless, we are more interested in how the Roman citizenry (or at least a romanised person) viewed Christianity and why they were so suspicious towards Christians.
Like the people who were not Roman citizens, there were also many kinds of Roman citizens. Some were more pragmatic than others, some were more disinterested in religious matters, and some were more conservative than others. Therefore, keep in mind that there were also many reasons why they persecuted Christians. One or more of these reasons might have been true for one Roman, and yet were dismissed by another Roman as unimportant. Therefore, while experts seem to put forward multiple reasons why Christians were persecuted during the pax romana and thus appear to disagree with one another on this subject, I do not think that anyone’s reason is truer than the rest. Instead, I would prefer to think of these multitudes of reasons as somewhat reflecting the diversity of Roman thinking at the time regarding Christians.
First, we have to understand how the Romans viewed religion at the time. Unlike how we think of religions today, for the Roman citizens, religious activities were considered to be public affairs. For them, the essence of religion was not in believing a certain set of doctrines like we do today, but instead in observing the proper ceremonies and festivals together with other people in the city (hence the term religio, which means “the proper performance of rites in veneration of the gods”, according to Cicero). It was all about honoring the gods and cultivating a healthy relationship with them through actions so that the gods may bless the city (or the empire) with good order, harmony, and good fortune (the pax deorum, literally “peace of the gods”). It is not a stretch to think that for the locals, observing the proper ceremonies and festivals was not that different from obeying the rules of the Roman governor (and, to an extent, the emperor himself). Whether one knew what one’s emperor was like personally or not was unimportant, as long as one paid the proper respects to him. In a similar vein, one did not have to know the proper doctrine of Jupiter-worship as long as one participated in the proper festivals and ceremonies in honor of Jupiter. Of course, the governor was not a god himself (even the Roman emperors were not gods when they were alive), but both activities of paying taxes and participating in festivals were similar in that they were seen as essential for cultivating a healthy and working relationship with those in higher places so that there may be peace and good fortune within the empire. In short, religion was a public activity done in public, for the good of the public, in broad daylight, and not something that was done within the privacy of one’s own house under the cover of darkness.
Because religions were seen as public in nature, it became unavoidable for religion to be thought of as identical to a person’s cultural identity. For example, just like if one wore a toga virilis and spoke Latin, he was regarded as a Roman, he would also be considered as a “civilized Roman” if he worshiped Jupiter and celebrated Saturnalia (a festival dedicated to Saturn). Likewise, if a person spoke Aramaic and worshiped one of the eastern gods and refused to pay taxes based on land ownership, that person had to be a Jew. The Romans did not have the concept of racial identity like we do today. For them, ethnic identity (although this classification did not exist in Roman times) was the closest thing they had to a “public identity”. To be a Roman was to act like a Roman, and to not act like a Roman was to not be a proper Roman. The public cultural expression of a person is his identity.
For these reasons, Christians, with their traditions (during the 1st and 2nd century AD) of meeting at a designated house sometime before the sun rose in a designated day and had a feast in private (they did have a feast with fellow Christians, but in the eyes of the Romans, it was still very different from the normal public feast), along with their reluctance (or even outright refusal) to participate in the time-honored public ceremonies and festivals to honor the gods for the good of the public, were seen as anti-socials. They were seen suspiciously as a secretive cult for their secretive privative behaviors that were done under the cover of darkness. Pliny himself said in his letter to Trajan that he had never seen a cult (superstitio) that was as depraved and immodest as Christianity. For the Romans, it was not a far-fetched idea that the these small Christian gatherings might turn out to be something far more sinister, like a cult that derived enjoyment from drinking human blood (the saying “blood of Christ” did not help to improve matters either), or even a rebellious group planning to create chaos and topple the local Roman government.
Their cult-like behaviour (in the eyes of the Romans) and their reluctance and refusal to participate in public religious ceremonies and festivals (which may or may not include conducting sacrifices to the emperor) made it even more likely for Romans to see Christians as a dangerous group. While some thought Christians as a possible agent of chaos, some other Romans saw Christianity also as a “corrupting influence” to the “Romanness” of a proper Roman by refusing to act “as a Roman should”. Some other Romans even saw Christians as the sources of disasters for the local population. Remember that for the Romans, participating in the proper public festivals and ceremonies were important to cultivate a relationship with the gods. With this mentality in mind, when Christians refused to participate in sanctioned public festivals, it was almost as if they were wishing for the wrath of the gods. It was, to an extent, the same as refusing to pay taxes to the local governor, an action that would undoubtedly bring legionaries into one’s doorstep. It was entirely within Roman reason to think that Christians would like nothing else but to see the city they lived in fell into disorder and chaos. Some Romans even began attributing natural disasters to Christians. And thus, while they were not necessarily seen as rebellious or barbarous (this can be seen from the fact that Emperor Trajan advised against the usage of anonymous accusations in court, which means the Romans at least did not treat Christianity as that dangerous), they were certainly seen as a source of local unrest and anti-socials.
An interesting thing to note, this reason for being a “mysterious cult” was also used by the Romans to suppress the Cult of Bacchus, a mystery cult dedicated to the Roman god of wine during the middle Roman Republic. Similar to Christianity, this cult was also subjected to ungrounded rumours of murder, sex parties, and treasonous behaviors due to their somewhat “privative” nature according to Roman standards. Needless to say, none of these were true. From these cases, we can see that basically any secretive “mystery cult” was just easy targets for the Romans, especially if they were seen as possibly corrupting and debasing, if not outright treasonous. It is worth mentioning that Bacchus was an official Roman god, and that members of the cults would certainly participate in other public religious festivals as well.
Nature of Persecutions
While we have seen that the city of Rome did not have the political will nor the manpower to enforce empire-wide persecutions of Christians, this does not mean that local persecutions never happened. Being given so much power over the local populations, it was entirely possible (and it did happen at times) for the local government to pass laws intended to persecute Christians within his own local jurisdiction. However, since these persecutions were not based on some official edict of the emperor, these persecutions were largely dependent on the whims of the local governor. In some places, the persecutions might be severe, while in other places, Christians might be able to live in relative peace with their neighbours. Moreover, it was quite possible then for a local government that was previously infamous for persecuting Christians to suddenly change its policy towards Christians to that of leniency. Likewise, it was also quite possible for a local government that has always been tolerant towards Christians to suddenly begin province-wide persecutions of Christians when a new governor took charge.
However, even if a local provincial government chose to enact province-wide persecutions of Christians, it was still pretty much impossible to ensure that every Christians within the province could be rounded up or expelled. Due to the manpower shortage previously mentioned, it was not terribly hard for Christians to live undetected for decades, especially if the local population happened to be quite friendly or just indifferent towards the local Christian population. Nevertheless, even if the local population were relatively suspicious towards Christians, as we can see in Pliny’s letter, the provincial government would mostly reject any anonymous accusations. This was done to keep the local population stable and so that no new negative precedent was established for the next governor to come. If the local population was especially disturbed by the activity of Christians to the point of lynching them one by one, the local government would probably choose to round up just several Christians and execute them to appease the local mass. However, it rarely became a serious military operation until the 3rd century.