Letters of Pliny
to the censors, who were only, as Cicero somewhere calls them, guardians
of the discipline and manners of the city; but in process of time they
engrossed the whole privilege of conferring that honour. M.]
1060 (return) [ This, probably, was some act whereby the city was to
ratify and confirm the proceedings of Dion under the commission assigned
to him.]
1061 (return) [ It was a notion which generally prevailed with the
ancients, in the Jewish as well as heathen world, that there was a
pollution in the contact of dead bodies, and this they extended to the
very house in which the corpse lay, and even to the uncovered vessels
that stood in the same room. (Vid. Pot. Antiq. V. II. 181.) From some
such opinion as this it is probable that the circumstance, here
mentioned, of placing Trajan's statue where these bodies were deposited,
was esteemed as a mark of disrespect to his person.]
1062 (return) [ A thriving Greek colony in the territory of Sinopis, on
the Euxine.]
1063 (return) [ A colony of Athenians in the province of Pontus. Their
town, Amisus, on the coast, was one of the residences of Mithridates.]
1064 (return) [ Casaubon, in his observations upon Theophrastus (as
cited by one of the commentators) informs us that there were at Athens
and other cities of Greece Certain fraternities which paid into a common
chest a monthly contribution towards the support of such of their
members who had fallen into misfortunes; upon condition that, if ever
they arrived to more prosperous circumstances, they should repay into
the general fund the money so advanced. M.]
1065 (return) [ By the law for encouragement of matrimony (some account
of which has already been given in the notes above), as a penalty upon
those who lived bachelors, they were declared incapable of inheriting
any legacy by will; so likewise, if being married, they had no children,
they could not claim the full advantage of benefactions of that kind.]
1066 (return) [ This letter is esteemed as almost the only genuine
monument of ecclesiastical antiquity relating to the times immediately
succeeding the Apostles, it being written at most not above forty years
after the death of St. Paul. It was preserved by the Christians
themselves as a clear and unsuspicious evidence of the purity of their
doctrines, and is frequently appealed to by the early writers of the
Church against the calumnies of their adversaries. M.]
1067 (return) [ It was one of the privileges of a Roman citizen, secured
by the Semprorian law, that he could not be capitally convicted but by
the suffrage of the people; which seems to have been still so far in
force as to make it necessary to send the persons here mentioned to
Rome. M.]
1068 (return) [ These women, it is supposed, exercised the same office
as Phoebe mentioned by St. Paul, whom he styles deaconess of the church
of Cenchrea. Their business was to tend the poor and sick, and other
charitable offices; as also to assist at the ceremony of female baptism,
for the more decent performance of that rite: as Vossius observes upon
this passage. M.]
1069 (return) [ If we impartially examine this prosecution of the
Christians, we shall find it to have been grounded on the ancient
constitution of the state, and not to have proceeded from a cruel or
arbitrary temper in Trajan. The Roman legislature appears to have been
early jealous of any innovation in point of public worship; and we find
the magistrates, during the old republic frequently interposing in cases
of that nature. Valerius Maximus has collected some instances to that
purpose (L. I. C. 3), and Livy mentions it as an established principle
of the earlier ages of the commonwealth, to guard against the
introduction of foreign ceremonies of religion. It was an old and fixed
maxim likewise of the Roman government not to suffer any unlicensed
assemblies of the people. From hence it seems evident that the
Christians had rendered themselves obnoxious not so much to Trajan as to
the ancient and settled laws of the state, by introducing a foreign
worship, and assembling themselves without authority. M.]
1070 (return) [ On the coast of Paphlagonia.]
1071 (return) [ By the Papian law, which passed in the consulship of M.
Papius Mutilus and Q. Poppeas Secundus, u. c. 761, if a freedman died
worth a hundred thousand sesterces (or about $4,000 of our money),
leaving only one child, his patron (that is, the master from whom he
received his liberty) was entitled to half his estate; if he left two
children, to one-third; but if more than two, then the patron was
absolutely excluded. This was afterwards altered by Justinian, Inst. 1.
III. tit. 8. M.]
1072 (return) [ About $7,000.]
1073 (return) [ About $175]
1074 (return) [ About $350.]
1075 (return) [ The denarius=7 cents. The sum total, then, distributed
among one thousand persons at the rate of, say, two denara a piece would
amount to about $350.]
1076 (return) [ These games are called Iselastic from the Greek word
invehor, because the victors, drawn by white horses, and wearing crowns
on their heads, were conducted with great pomp into their respective
cities, which they entered through a breach in the walls made for that
purpose; intimating, as Plutarch observes, that a City which produced
such able and victorious citizens, had little occasion for the defence
of walls (Catanaeus). They received also annually a certain honourable
stipend from the public. M.]