Christians on Trial - The Pax Romana Podcast 033

Around AD 112, Pliny the Younger, Roman governor of Bithynia wrote a letter to his emperor Trajan, on a subject that he thought fairly mundane, but this letter has become one of the most important sources in ancient history. What does the letter say? Pliny told Trajan that he had arrested several members of a strange and growing new religion; these men and women called themselves Christians, after a messianic figure—Jesus the Christ—who was crucified under Pontius Pilate in Judea some 80 years prior. As we’ll see in this episode, Pliny put Christians on trial. But how did he find them? What did he force them to do? What did they tell him about their faith? And what did the emperor Trajan have to say about Christianity?