258 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
HOME IN THE SECOND CENTURY A.D. 
ABSTRACT OF LECTURE BY THE REV. J. ERSKINE RISK, M.A. 
(Read March 4th, 1880.) 
. The paper mostly treated of Trajan's reign, as embracing the chief 
characteristics of the age, both in its progress and decline. Trajan's 
dislike of trade guilds, or hetcerice ; his magnificent buildings and 
Column. Analogue to latter on Place Vendome, Paris, with 
column now surmounted by the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte as 
Consul, but formerly by that of Napoleon as Emperor. Trajan's 
legislation and noble appearance. Poetic and prose writers of 
Flavian era ; effects of Flavian professorial system of training on 
closeness of thought of poetry of the time. Examples. Juvenal 
and Persius, Statius and Ovid, compared to show results in Flavian 
era. Literary correspondence of the time, especially that of Pliny, 
contains the fairest existing portraiture of Eoman gentleman and 
manners of higher class society. The haunted house at Athens, 
as described by the younger Pliny, and striking resemblance of 
the narrative to modern ghost stories. Penan, in his own peculiar 
fashion in which he refers to everything opposed to his views as 
contrary to progress, bears testimony to the true character of 
Pliny's religious views, % such as they were, and their real dis- 
similarity to those of the Mill school. "Les libres penseurs, in- 
nombrables, au premier siecle avant, et au premier siecle apres Jesus 
Christ, diminuent peu a pen, et disparaissent. ... La science se 
teint de jour en jour. . . . Plini le jeune croit a de pueriles histoires 
de revenants. Epictete veut que Ton pratique le culte etabli." f 
Euthanasia. Popular acceptance of suicide in Pliny's time, and 
even to a certain extent by Pliny himself, not as a light under- 
taking, but as the result of careful reasoning on what he might 
deem the facts ; and comparison of this result with the voice of 
Christendom and the conclusions of really accurate thinkers in 
* Sec Ep. iii. 7 ; v. 16. 
t Sec Kenan's Les Evangiles, pp. 405, 6. 
