Author: E. G. HARDY

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2018-03-02

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780666749345

Excerpt from C. Plinii Caecilii Secundi Epistulae: Ad Traianum Imperatorem Cum Eiusdem Responsis Pliny's Letters to Trajan have little share in the literary interest of his other correspondence, and they have hitherto received comparatively scanty attention from editors and scholars. And indeed they would probably have received still less but for the famous letter on the subject of the Christians, contained among them. They have, however, a decided interest and importance of their own. They show us the actual working of the Roman provincial administration, though doubtless under somewhat exceptional circumstances, and in a province of secondary importance. The governors of Bithynia were not concerned with properly imperial interests; they had no important frontier to defend, and no dealings with threatening barbarian tribes. But the routine business, dealing often with petty and trivial matters, the financial disorders, the local jealousies, of which we get here and there in these letters a glimpse, and not least the Suspicious oversight over the local collegia, are, there is every reason to believe, typical of many, if not of most, of the Roman provinces. In the notes to the Letters the attempt has been made, where possible, to refer the procedure of the legatus on the one hand, and the rescripts of the emperor on the other, to the general rules which guided the administration of the provinces. It seems indeed desirable that the wealth of information collected. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.