Letters of Pliny Part 25

[Footnote 1067: It was one of the privileges of a Roman citizen, secured by the Semprorian law, that he could not be capitally convicted but by the suffrage of the people; which seems to have been still so far in force as to make it necessary to send the persons here mentioned to Rome. M.]

[Footnote 1068: These women, it is supposed, exercised the same office as Phoebe mentioned by St. Paul, whom he styles deaconess of the church of Cenchrea. Their business was to tend the poor and sick, and other charitable offices; as also to a.s.sist at the ceremony of female baptism, for the more decent performance of that rite: as Vossius observes upon this pa.s.sage. M.]

[Footnote 1069: If we impartially examine this prosecution of the Christians, we shall find it to have been grounded on the ancient const.i.tution of the state, and not to have proceeded from a cruel or arbitrary temper in Trajan. The Roman legislature appears to have been early jealous of any innovation in point of public worship; and we find the magistrates, during the old republic frequently interposing in cases of that nature.

Valerius Maximus has collected some instances to that purpose (L. I. C.

3), and Livy mentions it as an established principle of the earlier ages of the commonwealth, to guard against the introduction of foreign ceremonies of religion. It was an old and fixed maxim likewise of the Roman government not to suffer any unlicensed a.s.semblies of the people.

From hence it seems evident that the Christians had rendered themselves obnoxious not so much to Trajan as to the ancient and settled laws of the state, by introducing a foreign worship, and a.s.sembling themselves without authority. M.]

[Footnote 1070: On the coast of Paphlagonia.]

[Footnote 1071: By the Papian law, which pa.s.sed in the consulship of M. Papius Mutilus and Q. Poppeas Secundus, u. c. 761, if a freedman died worth a hundred thousand sesterces (or about $4,000 of our money), leaving only one child, his patron (that is, the master from whom he received his liberty) was ent.i.tled to half his estate; if he left two children, to one-third; but if more than two, then the patron was absolutely excluded. This was afterwards altered by Justinian, Inst. 1. III. t.i.t.

8. M.]

[Footnote 1072: About $7,000.]

[Footnote 1073: About $175]

[Footnote 1074: About $350.]

[Footnote 1075: The denarius=7 cents. The sum total, then, distributed among one thousand persons at the rate of, say, two denara a piece would amount to about $350.]

[Footnote 1076: These games are called Iselastic from the Greek word invehor, because the victors, drawn by white horses, and wearing crowns on their heads, were conducted with great pomp into their respective cities, which they entered through a breach in the walls made for that purpose; intimating, as Plutarch observes, that a City which produced such able and victorious citizens, had little occasion for the defence of walls (Catanaeus). They received also annually a certain honourable stipend from the public. M.]

M.]