list of the Emperor, but the words must not be taken too literally. He
was given to boasting, and he may easily have represented, when the
danger was past, that the peril in which he had stood was greater than
it really was. No doubt he felt keenly the judicial murder of his
friends Senecio, Rusticus, and Helvidius, and the banishment of
Mauricus, Gratilla, Arria, and Fannia--for women were not spared in the
general proscription; but, after all, the fact that he held office
during the closing years of Domitian's life is ample proof that he knew
how to walk circumspectly, and did not allow his detestation of the
informers to compromise his safety. When at length, in 96, the Emperor
was assassinated in the palace, and the Senate raised Nerva to the
purple, Pliny stepped forward as the champion of the oppressed, and
impeached Publicius Certus for compassing the death of Helvidius
Priscus, though he was only so far successful that he prevented Certus
from enjoying the consulship which had been promised him. Pliny revised
the speech and published it in book form, and Certus died a few days
after it appeared, haunted, so Pliny tells us, by the vision of his
prosecutor pursuing him, sword in hand. Nerva's reign was short, but he
was succeeded by one of the best of the Roman Emperors, Trajan, a prince
under whose just, impartial and strong rule, a man of Pliny's character
was bound to thrive and pass from office to office. In 98 he had been
appointed by Nerva Prefect of the Treasury of Saturn, and in 100 he held
the Consulship for two months, while still retaining his post at the
Treasury, and delivered his well-known Panegyric on the 1st of
September in that year. Either in 103 or 104 he was advanced to the
Augurate, and two years later was appointed Curator of the Tiber. Then
in 111 or 112--according to Mommsen's Chronology--Trajan bestowed upon
him a signal mark of his esteem by selecting him for the Governorship of
the province of Pontus and Bithynia, which he had transferred from the
list of senatorial to that of imperial provinces. Pliny was given the