Note 985 — Chapter II · THE ROMAN EMPIRE UNDER ANASTASIUS: THE INHERITANCE OF JUSTINIAN (continued 2)

Pliny, Epist., x, 97, 98. This correspondence and, indeed, the whole book which contains it has been stigmatized as a forgery by some investigators; see Gieseler, Eccles. Hist., i, 33, for refs. The same suspicion rests, in fact, on every early allusion to the Christians. It certainly seems strange that they should be such unfamiliar sectaries to Trajan and Pliny if they were well known at Rome under Nero and Domitian. Much less can we believe that in the destruction of Jerusalem Titus was actuated chiefly by a desire to extinguish Christianity, or that he had weighed the differences in theological standpoint between Jews and Christians; Sulp. Severus, Hist. Sacr., ii, 30. Such is history “as she was wrote” at that epoch. The whole evidence that Christians were popularly known and recognized politically during the first century is scanty and unsatisfactory. Trajan achieved a great reputation, which never died out even among the Christians, perhaps on account of the tolerant attitude attributed to him on this occasion. He was prayed out of hell by one of the popes along with one or two other noted pagans whom the Church was anxious to take under its wing.