When Pliny the Younger wrote a letter to Emperor Trajan, Christianity was an inferior religion to Judaism, and did not receive recognition. Many Christians faced persecution for their faith as was the case with those who Pliny the Younger killed. According to Tacitus what made the Christians very disagreeable to the Romans was that Christians did not supplicate to the Roman gods. His accusation was that all libels sent with no author must have come from the Christians, and by that claim, Tacitus meant that only Christians wrote libels. For that reason, the implication of the same is that the courts were right to ‘punish’ (kill/execute) all the Christians brought to them.
When Pliny wrote a few things on how the Romans treated Christians; For starters, Christianity received recognition as a separate religion from Judaism and the Empires did not have to seek and kill Christians, except executing those brought before them for wrong doing. Pliny's dilemma was to legally execute Christians for their faith, yet the Romans had recognized their religion. In most cases, the ‘problems' the Christians caused involved failure to recant their faith and send libels (Josephus 1).
In my view, the people calling for persecution of Christians were Tacitus and Nero. The latter hated Christians and he even accused them of ordering the fire, yet he was the one responsible for it. On the other hand, Tacitus only showed little sympathy towards Christians because he detested, but he did not like them. In his reply to Pliny the Younger, Tacitus held that every Christian accused of any wrongdoing had to be killed unless he recanted his or her faith and agreed to worship the roman gods. While he advised Pliny to not seek Christians for execution, Tacitus that any libel with no author must have come from a Christian, meaning any Christian would face execution if accused of sending libels (Brians, Gallwey and Hussain 1).
5. Sowing the Destruction Seed
The classical societies that 'fell' around the year 500 C.E. were India (Gupta), China (Han) and Rome. In my view, they contributed to their collapse. With the exception of the eastern parts of the Roman Empire, these civilizations fell to the invaders of Hun origin, but the incident occurred after they had started falling apart internally. In China, the decline of the Han started when the bureaucracy adopted corruption and the central government’s power weakened. In India, the fall began with Ashoka’s death, which made the Mauryan dynasty financially unstable and unable to sustain the empire. In addition to that, the Bactria’s invasion finished them off. On the other hand, in Rome, the tax burden for hiring more soldiers to guard the Empire as well as sustain the Emperors’ lavish lifestyles destabilized it. For these reasons, these societies already had problems even before the Hun invaded them. In fact, one would argue that these issues paved the way for the invaders to launch attacks (History Haven 1).
Victims
While the societies might have taken some actions that contributed to their downfalls, it is not appropriate to conclude that they expected to collapse in such a manner. They just had internal problems, which the Hun invaders seem to take advantage of and throw them out of power. For example, a regional family from northwest India rose to form another empire; the Yellow Turbans of China attempted a revolution, and the eastern Roman Empire remained stable. For these reasons, these societies were 'victims' of unforeseen and uncontrollable forces. It was a case of India, China and Rome looking for ways of re-establishing their Empires while the Hun planning to take advantage of the same (History Haven 1).
Works Cited
Brians, Paul, et al. "Tacitus (c. 55 -117 CE): Nero's Persecution of the Christians." Brians, Paul, et al. Reading About the World Vol 1 . Harcourt Brace Custom Books., 1999.
History Haven. "The Decline and fall of classical civilizations." 2016. History Haven. Document. 16 June 2016.
Josephus, Flavius. "Letters of Pliny the Younger and Emperor Trajan." Josephus, Flavius. The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged, New Updated Edition . Hendrickson Publishers, 1987.
