Trajan to Pliny: "In sifting the cases of those who have been indicted on the charge of Christianity, you have adopted, my dear Secundus, the right course of proceeding; for no certain rule can be laid down which will meet all cases. They must not be sought after, but if they are informed against, and convicted, they must be punished; with this proviso, however, that if any deny that he is a Christian, and proves the point by offering prayers to our deities, notwithstanding the suspicions under which he has labored, he shall be pardoned on his repentance. On no account should any anonymous charges be attended to, for it would be the worst possible precedent, and is inconsistent with the habits of our time."
8. PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE.--Philosophy, and particularly moral philosophy, became a necessary study at this time, when the popular religion had lost its influence. In the general ruin of public and private morals, virtuous men found in this science a guide in the dangers by which they were continually threatened, and a consolation in all their sorrows. The Stoic among the other schools met with most favor from this class of men, for it offered better security against the evils of life, and taught men how to take shelter from baseness and profligacy under the influence of virtue and courage. The doctrines of the Stoics suited the rigid sternness of the Roman character. They embodied that spirit of self-devotion and self- denial with which the Roman patriot, in the old times of simple republican virtue, threw himself into his public duties, and they enabled him to meet death with a courageous spirit in this degenerate age, in which many of the best and noblest willingly died by their own hands, at the imperial mandate, in order to save their name from infamy, and their inheritance from confiscation.
Seneca, (12-69 A.D.), a native of Cordova in Spain, was the greatest philosopher of this age. He early displayed great talent as a pleader, but in the reign of Claudius he was banished to Corsica, where he solaced his exile with the study of the Stoic philosophy; and though its severe precepts exercised no moral influence on his conduct, he not only professed himself a Stoic, but imagined that he was one. A few years after, he was recalled by Agrippina, to become tutor to her son Nero. He was too unscrupulous a man of the world to attempt the correction of the vicious propensities of his pupil, or to instill into him high principles. After the accession of Nero, he endeavored to arrest his depraved career, but it was too late. Seneca had, by usury and legacy-hunting, amassed one of those large fortunes of which so many instances are met with in Roman history; feeling the dangers of wealth, he offered his property to Nero, who refused it, but resolved to rid himself of his former tutor, and easily found a pretext for his destruction. In adversity the character of Seneca shone with brighter lustre. Though he had lived ill, he could die well. He met the messengers of death without trembling. His noble wife, Paulina, determined to die with him. The veins of both were opened at the same time, but the little blood which remained in his emaciated frame refused to flow. He suffered excruciating agony. A warm bath was tried, but in vain; and a draught of poison was equally ineffectual. At last he was suffocated by the vapor of a stove.