Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Pliny the Younger (A.D. 62?–c.A.D. 113). Letters.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.

XLI. Trajan to Pliny

YOU will remember you were sent into Bithynia for the particular purpose of correcting those many abuses which appeared in need of reform. Now none stands more so than that criminals who have been sentenced to punishment should not only be set at liberty (as your letter informs me) without authority, but even appointed to employments which ought only to be exercised by persons whose characters are irreproachable. Those, therefore, among them who have been convicted within these ten years, and whose sentence has not been reversed by proper authority, must be sent back again to their respective punishments: but where more than ten years have elapsed since their conviction, and they are grown old and infirm, let them be disposed of in such employments as are but few degrees removed from the punishments to which they were sentenced; that is, either to attend upon the public baths, cleanse the common sewers, or repair the streets and highways, the usual offices assigned to such persons.