when an emperor wished to have closer supervision over the
affairs of a particular province. What were the circumstances that
prompted Pliny’s appointment?
Various reasons have been suggested. One is that Pliny’s
appointment was somehow connected with administrative arrange-
ments in the eastern provinces being put in place before Trajan’s
invasion of Parthia (Rome’s enemy across its eastern frontier at
this time) which began in 113, just a year after Pliny’s death. This
all seems unlikely, however: Pliny’s career had been almost exclu-
sively civilian, making him an improbable candidate to assist the
emperor’s strategic arrangements in the lead up to war. In fact, we
need go no further than the letters in book X themselves to dis-
cover why Trajan felt it necessary to appoint Pliny as extraordinary
legate to a province usually governed by proconsuls: the region
was close to a state of chaos (Griffin 2000: 118–20).
There were several reasons for this. One was the intense
rivalry between the cities of Bithynia and Pontus – a phenom-
enon eloquently attested in the period immediately prior to
Pliny’s appointment by one of the region’s own sons, the noted
orator Dio ‘Chrysostom’ (‘Golden Mouthed’, on account of his
eloquence) of Prusa. This rivalry had manifested itself in a series
of extravagant building projects, as the cities strove to outdo each
other; but the financial management of many of these projects
had been disastrous, and Pliny reported on several occasions that
there were constructions of public amenities left unfinished
because of a lack of funds (e.g. Letters10.18, 37–40). There were
problems too relating to public order. Persons condemned for
crimes were still at large (10.31–2) and there were often bitter
rivalries between factions within individual cities (10.59–60).
Perhaps more pertinent to the case of the Christians, there
had been worrying incidents of subversive behaviour. In his
account of the cross-examination of the individuals named as
Christians by an informer, Pliny noted that they claimed to have
ceased meeting with other Christians because of Pliny’s edict (edic-
tum) issued in accordance with the emperor’s orders (mandata)
that banned political clubs (hetaeriae). Pliny is referring here to
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