223) prepared a compendium of laws about provincial adminis-
tration called The Duty of the Proconsuls. Its seventh book
assembled responses (called rescripts, rescripta) of emperors to
queries about the punishment of Christians. Not a word of this
seventh book survives, however, and we are entirely reliant on
the Christian Lactantius for the information (Divine Institutes
5.11.19). This brings into sharp focus the difficulties of studying
early Christianity in the Roman world: as is so often the case,
we depend in large measure on what the Christians themselves
tell us.EARLY CHRISTIANITY AND THE ROMAN EMPIRE
224