24 PLY 10.34.
25 See Millar, ‘Trajan: Government by Correspondence’, p. 39 on Pliny encountering Christians in the remote part of the province.
26 Tacitus Annals 15.44; Suetonius Life of Claudius 25.4 with Orosius History Against the Pagans 7.6.15–16. The crucifixion of Christ had helped to quell the ‘deadly belief’ for a time, but by the mid first century ‘It would have been difficult to shut them out of the city without causing riots among the crowd’ (Dio Cassius Roman History 60.6.6).
27 On cognitio see Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, p. 695.
28 PLY 10.96.1.
29 Tacitus Annals 15.44.
30 PLY 10.96.3.
31 See G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy, edited by M. Whitby and J. Streeter, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2006, especially pp. 110–11.
32 PLY 10.96.7.
33 See V. A. Alikin, The Earliest History of the Christian Gathering, Brill, Boston and Leiden, 2010, p. 36.
34 Dio Cassius Roman History 60.6.6.
35 Minucius Felix Octavius 8.4, also cited by S. Benko, Pagan Rome and the Early Christians, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indianapolis, 1984, p. 10.
36 Tertullian de Resurrectione Carnis 47, also cited by J. Ker, ‘Nocturnal Writers in Imperial Rome: The Culture of Lucubratio’, Classical Philology, Vol. 99, No. 3, July 2004, p. 240, who discusses the use of the word lucubratio for nocturnal Christian prayer versus Roman night-writing.
37 Martyrdom of Polycarp 9.3. Polycarp’s refusal to blaspheme Christ is also mentioned in light of Pliny’s procedure by both Benko, Pagan Rome and the Early Christians, p. 10 and L. W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Michigan, Cambridge, 2003, p. 609.
38 See Goldsworthy, Pax Romana, on the so-called pax Romana.
39 PLY 10.96.8.
40 Justinian Digest 48.18. See also W. W. Buckland, The Roman Law of Slavery, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1970, p. 87 on the torture of slaves while extracting evidence.
41 Eusebius Church History 3.18.
42 Tacitus Annals 15.44.
43 See N. E. Pasachoff and R. J. Littman, A Concise History of the Jewish People, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Oxford, 2005, pp. 86–9 on the impact of the loss of the shrine on Judaism. Hadrian later built a temple to Jupiter on the site.
44 PLY 10.96.9–10.
45 PLY 10.97.
46 Benko, Pagan Rome and the Early Christians, p. 10.
47 Tertullian Apology 1.4–5.
48 Tertullian Apology 2.8.
49 Eusebius Church History 3.33.2. See Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, p. 692.
50 PLY 10.120.
51 PLY 10.121.
52 See Millar, ‘Trajan: Government by Correspondence’, pp. 25–41 on the precedent set by Trajan’s absence from Rome, his ‘government by correspondence’ with Pliny, and the challenges of sending messages over such a wide empire.
EPILOGUE: Resurrection
1 C. F. Ciceri, Selva di Notizie Autentiche Risguardanti La Fabbrica della Cattedrale di Como con altre memorie patrie, Eredi Caprani, Como, 1811, pp. 110–14.
2 On the representation of Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger as Christian saints on Como Cathedral see McHam, ‘Renaissance Monuments to Favourite Sons’, pp. 480–1.
3 It is uncertain whether the sculptures of the two Plinys, which date to around 1480, were completed by Giovanni Rodari or his two sons. The sons seem to have completed the sculpture niches. Their names are still visible on the plaque beneath the sculpture of Pliny the Elder.
4 CIL V 5263.
5 When Benedetto died, his tomb was placed inside the cathedral. The Historiae Patriae, speeches, and poems, the plaque proclaims, ‘do not allow Benedetto Giovio to die’.
6 PLE 2.49.
7 See F. Wallis, Bede: The Reckoning of Time, translated, with introduction, notes and commentary, Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 1999, pp. 78–9.
8 E. Barbaro, Castigationes Plinianae, Hermolaus Barbarus, Venice, 1493, p. 1. On Leoniceno and Barbaro and the Natural History, see B. W. Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2008, pp. 121–33 and G. Williams, Pietro Bembo on Etna: The Ascent of a Venetian Humanist, Oxford University Press, New York, 2017, pp. 139–44.
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