Page:The early Christians in Rome (1911).djvu/94

 But in spite of the evident goodwill of the great Emperor and his eminent lieutenant, the sword of persecution was left hanging over the heads of the Christian sect suspended by a very slender cord. How often the slender cord snapped is told in the tragic story of the Christians in the pagan empire during the two hundred years which followed the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan.

The information supplied by these Letters respecting Christianity at the beginning of the second century, emanating as they do from so trusted a statesman, so distinguished a writer, as the younger Pliny, supplemented by a State communication containing an imperial rescript of far-reaching importance from the hands of one of the greatest of the Roman Emperors, is so weighty that it seems to call for a slightly more detailed notice than the particulars which appear in the foregoing pages of this work.

There is no doubt but that "Letters" such as those written by Pliny during the eventful period extending from the days of the Dictatorship of Julius Cæsar to the reign of Honorius—a period roughly of some four hundred and fifty years—occupied in the literature of Rome a singular and important position.

They were in many cases most carefully prepared and designed for a far larger "public" than is commonly supposed. Long after the death of the writer these Letters, gathered together and "published" as far as literary works could be published in those ages when no printing-press existed—were read and re-read, admired and criticized, by very many in the capital and in the provinces.

The first great Letter writer undoubtedly was Cicero, who flourished as a statesman, an orator, and a most distinguished writer from the days of the first consulship of Pompey and Crassus, in 70, down to the December of 43 , when he was murdered during the proscription of the Triumvirate.

Of the multifarious works of the great orator, possibly the most generally interesting is the collection of his Letters, a large portion of which have come down to us.

The art of "Letter-writing" suddenly arose in Cicero's