The reply of the emperor briefly approves of the procedure adopted by Pliny: No formula capable of universal application can be laid down. The Christians are not to be sought out ; if reported and convicted, they are to be punished, with this reservation that any person who denies that he is a Christian and confirms his testimony by overt act, that is, by worshipping our gods, however suspect he may have been in the past, shall obtain pardon by penitence. Anonymous publications ought to have no place in a criminal charge. It is a thing of the worst example and unworthy of our age (et pessimi exempli nec nostri saeculi est).
The full discussion of the questions raised by the correspond ence on the matter of the Christians belongs to the province of Church history, but no one can fail to be interested in the ac count which Pliny gives of the practice of the early Christians: the meeting on a fixed day before day-break (if the "fixed day" means Sunday, the early hour points to a desire for secrecy per haps rather than to the rest of the day being occupied with other avocations) ; the singing or reciting of a hymn or psalm of an antiphonal character (71. O.T. Psalm lxxxvii. 7) ; the recital of the ten commandments; the love feast (Al/Corn) with its innocuous elements; the existence of women office-bearers or deaconesses.
When a person selects for publication from his private letters, or when he writes a private letter with an eye to its eventual pub lication, he is necessarily confronted by a dilemma. The self revelation, the candour of motive, the frankness of prejudice or predilection, which are not merely appropriate to the private let ters but are its chief charm, are incompatible with the reserve which is proper to a public document, and while suppression and excision inevitably produce an air of unreality, unreserved publica tion is almost certain to expose the writer to a charge of priggish ness or self-conceit. Those who care to attack Pliny on this ground
will find a store of arrows ready-winged for their satire in his let ters, even without mistranslating or misunderstanding his words (e.g., "Maxime imitabilis" used quite innocently of Tacitus in VII. 20). It is a kinder and more pleasing occupation to recog nize the amiability and culture of the character which the Letters everywhere reveal, and, what at least no competent judge will seek to controvert, the many admirable qualities—conciseness combined with lucidity, precision united with the picturesque— of the style in which they are written.
It need only be added that though Pliny on occasion courted the Muses (Epp. IV. 27, Ego interdum versibus ludo, cf . Mart. X. 19, Non Musis vacat ant suis vacaret) and wrote a Greek tragedy at the age of fourteen (Epp. VII. 4), the specimens of his verses which he quotes (Epp. VII. 4 and 9) do not suggest that his talent lay in that direction.
BismoGRApHy.—Editio princeps of Letters ix. (Venice, 1471), Schurener (Rome, 1474), Letters i.—ix. Panegyricus, (Venice, 1485). The Correspondence of Trajan, Epp. first published by Avantius (Verona, 1502), Epp. 1-40 by Aldus (Venice, 1508). Critical ed. of text, Keil (Leipzig, 1870). Ed. with comment. Gesner and Schaefer (1805), Gierig (1796-1806). Correspondence with Trajan, E. S. Hardy Selected letters, Westcott (1899) , Merrill (1903). For Pliny and the Christians, cf. Ramsay, The Church in the Roman Empire (1893), Hardy, Studies in Roman History (1906) ; E. T.