PLINIO il GIOVANE (Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus). – The nephew on his sister’s side Plinio il Vecchio (v.), he was born at Como in 62 A.D.; he came to Rome, where Quintilian was his teacher; he was consul in 100, and was sent with the rank of proconsul («legatus Augusti pro praetore») to Bithynia in 111–12; he died at Rome in 113, immediately after returning from his mission.
As a rhetorician, he wrote various speeches, of which only the Panegyricus Traiano dictus survives, composed to thank the Emperor for appointing him consul. It is an inflated work, dictated according to the rules of the rhetoric of the period. His poetic production has been lost. On the other hand, nine books of Epistulae remain, dating from 96 to 109 and numbering 247 in all. They were written with publication in mind and assembled without regard to chronological order; they therefore lack the freshness of correspondence written spontaneously, but in return offer a valuable and varied picture of the life of the aristocracy of the period in the city and in the country villas. Particularly moving are those describing the fearless death of his uncle (VI, 16,20), and brilliant is the one on the sources of the Clitumnus (VIII, 8). The ten books were later supplemented by Book X, containing P.’s correspondence with Trajan during his mission to Bithynia. There are 122 letters (72 reports by P. and 50 replies from Trajan) written during the mission in Bithynia, which show with what scrupulousness P. fulfilled his task as an honest official. The authenticity of this book, preserved only in a now-lost codex Parisinus, was formerly contested without justification, since it had been included in the editions of Avantius (1502) and Aldus (1508), and cited by the humanist and philologist G. Budé (1506). Moreover, Tertullian (Apolog., 2, 6 ff.) already knew in 197 and cited the contents of a letter by P. included in this book, together with Trajan’s corresponding reply (Epp. 96 and 97). These deserve special mention. In the first, P. asks Trajan for instructions on how to proceed against the Christians, given: 1) their great number in the cities and countryside; 2) the harmlessness of their assemblies, which take place on appointed days before sunrise, for the purpose of singing responsively a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and in which those gathered bind themselves by oath not to commit thefts, robberies, or adulteries, not to betray their trust, and not to refuse to return a deposit entrusted to them; after this, they disperse, only to gather again to consume a common and innocent meal; 3) the fact that, having subjected two female servants or ministers of that sect to trial and torture, he has elicited from them only a profession of a perverse and immoderate superstition (prava et immodica). In his reply, Trajan, who held the authority of the State in high regard and opposed unauthorized associations, orders him not to seek out Christians, but to punish them if they are denounced—not, however, on the basis of anonymous libelli—unless they deny that they are Christians and prove it by sacrificing to the gods of the Empire. This correspondence shows, on the one hand, that a procedure against the profession of Christianity had already existed since the end of the first century; P., who is a magistrate, knows this, but, since he has never taken part in investigations (cognitiones) against Christians, he does not know what, and to what extent (quid et quatenus), ought to be prosecuted and punished in their case: whether the name of Christians or the crimes associated with that name. He is also held back by the great number of Christians.
In his reply, Trajan justifies P.’s hesitation by suggesting a legally illogical rule (against which Tertullian rightly inveighs: «if they [the...