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“Trajan Letter to Pliny about Christians - Latin Text with English translation”

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Click here to read at earlychurchtexts.com in the original Latin (with dictionary lookup links). The English translation below is from from Pliny the Younger, Letters (The Harvard Classics. 1909–14).

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W.H.C. Frend

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Geoffrey de Ste Croix

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G. W. Bowersock

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Pagans and Christians

Robin Lane Fox

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You have adopted the right course, my dearest Secundus, in investigating the charges against the Christians who were brought before you. It is not possible to lay down any general rule for all such cases. Do not go out of your way to look for them. If indeed they should be brought before you, and the crime is proved, they must be punished; with the restriction, however, that where the party denies he is a Christian, and shall make it evident that he is not, by invoking our gods, let him (notwithstanding any former suspicion) be pardoned upon his repentance. Anonymous informations ought not to be received in any sort of prosecution. It is introducing a very dangerous precedent, and is quite foreign to the spirit of our age.
 



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Reply to Pliny about the treatment of Christians in Bithynia.
Latin from the Loeb 1915 edition of Pliny's Letters (letter 10.97).
Translation from Pliny the Younger. Letters. The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

 

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