Clivedurdle

Private voluntary associations of fire brigades were also strongly repressed.

Pliny reads as if he is actually guilty of dereliction of duty by even asking about voluntary groups!

It is also a form of treachery!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigiles

andrewcriddle

Just to clarify.

Are you suggesting that Pliny's correspondance with Trajan is a forgery as a whole or just bits of it ?

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

It does not seem straightforward to me. I think the letter may be a forgery.

Bythnia is over a thousand miles away from Rome by boat.

When did Pliny really expect Trajan to reply to his letter?

Clivedurdle

Neither - just that it does not make sense and therefore looks fraudulent. Could be either whole cloth or judicious amendation but the question of fraud should be asked. What is the earliest copy of this document, whose hands has it been through?

http://books.google.com/books?id=Rfu...m=10&ct=result

This gives a tale of the members of the old republican triumviri nocturni being tried for a major Roman fire in 213BCE.

Remember fire was the major problem in cities then.

rlogan

Round trip ship time plus scribal time.

At five mph that's 200 hours - less than ten days. The whole round-trip exchange is easily accomplished in less than a month. There is regular ship traffic on account of extensive trade.

Look at all of the correspondences. Are the ones asking the emperor permission to make improvements to a bath a forgery too? All kinds of mundane stuff in his letters. But nevertheless questions appropriate to their positions.

Lilyofthevalley

All depends on the word 'deacon'.

Interestingly, I've read that the Greek word for 'deacon' (diakonos), is happily translated into English as 'deacon' or 'minister' when the word seems to refer to men (high status translation of the word).

BUT when the same word in the New Testament refers to women, English translators of the Greek NT translate it as 'servants' (low status translation of same word). But it is the same word in the Greek (give or take masculine/female endings): diakonos, the root of 'deacon'.

This sneaky game of translation is possible, of course, because the word 'minister' literally means 'he who ministers', i.e. a servant. But, of course, differing shades of meaning are employed: a servant who nevertheless leads others with divine apppointment (male) or a servant who... well, is just a servant (female).

If the translators of the Greek NT would be honest, we could at least have a starting point. Were these women 'deacons' i.e. leaders of the church, or were they servants? Will we ever know?

DCHindley

Lily OTV,

The voluntary associations which were most inclusive were the ones organized around the cult of a deity. For example, Kloppenborg mentioned that "[t]he association of Zeus in Philadelphia describes its membership with the formula "men and women, freeborn and slaves (oiketai)."

That Greek word is from oikeths, "from (Aeschylus and) Herodotus down, Latin domesticus, i. e. one who lives in the same house with another, spoken of all who are under the authority of one and the same householder, ... especially a servant, domestic" (per Thayer's Lexicon). An oikeths was a more personal term than a mere doulos, a "household slave/member" as opposed to a "worker slave." While the word is masculine, it can refer to males or females.

Pliny's Latin actually calls these two ministrae, which translates "a female attendant, maid-servant; a female assistant or minister, at religious worship." The masculine form is minister, "an attendant, waiter, servant; also a priest's attendant or assistant; likewise an inferior officer, underofficial; hence, transf., an aider in a good or bad sense, a furtherer, promoter, helper, an abettor, accomplice."

A modern religious minister is a product of the reformation, and would correspond more to the office of a presbyter (elder, later priest), certainly not a deacon. A modern political Minister is something much more than an "underofficial," and certainly no "waiter." It really isn't fair to load the term down with associations it didn't yet have in Pliny's time.

DCH