Pliny Blog

Pliny's letter to Trajan concerning the Christians is making a complete mockery out of the tourture he is ordered to give any person who is a Christian. The only doubt that Pliny has is that they are making a mistake and that they should be toururing these people. He finds out the great exent of the Christian horrors is them "gathering together before dawn to sing to Christ as if he were a God." It is incocievable that, the destructive threat to the Roman Empire takes oaths to committ; "no theft, no fraud...." Pliny is satiring the entire principle of attacking a group of people because he doesn't understand them. A Roman with little contact to Christians would think that while the have different beliefs, they are merely trying to be better people after reading Pliny's letter. They would not be filled with fear about the "virus" which is spreading across the Empire. They have exetreme superstition, but that doesn't require execution. Pliny's doubt lie in how wrong the treatment of the Christians is, not how to conduct an investigation of them.