architects to consult with him on some important public work. And these
letters disclose to us what a wonderful system of organised government
the Roman Empire possessed. Pliny even writes to Trajan to ask
permission that an evil-smelling sewer may be covered over in a town
called Amastria. If all the governors of the provinces wrote home for
orders on such points, the Emperor must indeed have been busy, and some
of his replies to Pliny show that Trajan hinted very plainly that a
governor ought to have some initiative of his own. None the less, the
tenour of this correspondence proves that Trajan held the threads of
government very jealously in his own hands. When Pliny suggested the
establishment of a small fire-brigade in Nicomedia, where the citizens
had stood enjoying the aesthetic beauty of a disastrous fire which
destroyed whole streets, instead of putting it out, Trajan sharply
vetoed the suggestion, on the ground that the Greeks were factious
people and would turn even a fire-brigade to illicit and seditious
purposes.

There is, of course, one letter to Trajan which has achieved world-wide
fame, that in which he asks the Emperor how he wishes him to deal with
the Christians who were brought before him and refused to worship the
statues of the Emperor and the gods. So much has been written upon this
subject that it is almost superfluous to add more. Yet it may be
pointed out that the letter only confirms our estimate of the kindliness
and scrupulous justice of Pliny. He acquits the Christians of all
criminal practices; he bears testimony to the purity of their lives and
their principles. What baffles and vexes him is their "pertinacity and
inflexible obstinacy"--Neque enim dubitabam, qualecunque esset quod
fateretur, pertinaciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem debere
puniri. He could not understand, in other words, why, when the theory
of the Roman religion was so tolerant, the Christians should be so