Such doubts as this arose from his examination of the renegades and the slaves who were called deaconesses, in which he learned that there were no crimes other than sacrilegium involved in the name, and, therefore, was emboldened to suggest that renegades should be pardoned.
Trajan’s answer authorises the policy suggested: “Any one who denies that he is a Christian and gives plain proof of his. truthfulness, that is, by worshipping our gods, though his past may not be above suspicion, shall obtain pardon by his repentance’! No anonymous accusations are to be entertained,? and Christians are not to be sought out. If they are brought before the governor and convicted of being Christians they must, of course, be punished. Pliny did well to investigate the cases of the so-called Christians, who had been brought before him.’ No general policy can be laid down. Trajan is content to endorse the existing practice of punishing obdurate Christians as Christians, and to sanction the pardon of such Christians as were prepared to renounce their Christianity and to ratify their renunciation by performance of heathen rites.
Trajan’s endorsement of the action which Pliny took without hesitation against the Christians as such, proves that “persecution for the name” was already an established and familiar part of Roman policy. If Pliny had been present at trials of Christians before becoming governor of Bithynia, he might have learned that the vulgar were wrong in ascribing foul crimes to the Christians, as. such. But there is no question that Christians, as such, were liable to capital punishment. In the first instance, when he had only to do with those Christians who refused to apostatize, Pliny con- demned them to death almost instinctively as a matter of routine and immemorial tradition.
Under Domitian (according to Dio Cassius) Flavius Clemens was put to death on the charge of atheism, and many others who embraced the customs of the Jews were condemned to death or
1 Trajan to Pliny, xcvii. (xcviii.). . . . puniendi sunt ita tamen ut qui negaverit se Christianum esse idque re ipsa manifestum fecerit, id est supplicando dis nostris, quamvis suspectus in praeteritum, veniam ex paenitentia impetret”’.
2Ibid.: ‘‘Sine auctore vero propositi libelli in nullo crimine locum habere debent. Nam et pessimi exempli nec nostri saeculi est.” 3Ibid.: ‘“* Actum quem debuisti, mi Secunde, in excutiendis causis eorum qui
Christiani ad te delati fuerunt secutus es. Neque enim in universum aliquid quod quasi certam forman habeat constitui potest. Conquirendi non sunt: si deferantur et arguantur, puniendi sunt”... .