Pliny in Bithynia–and what Followed

Abstract

The view that the younger Pliny was sent to the province of Pontus et Bithynia (Bithynia for short) as a ‘financial expert’ who would deal with the accounts of the cities has been thoroughly and properly discredited. Pliny in his province did all the things that his predecessors and successors did or might have done. His funerary inscription at Comum shows him to have been legatus pro praetore consulari potestate, an imperial legate, but with consular power; the regular governors had been proconsuls, men appointed by the senate for one year only after drawing lots for the post with their fellows of equal seniority. But in spite of their title they had been only ex-praetors, while Pliny had held the consulship; hence his cansularis potestas, which secured him the same number of fasces as they had enjoyed, one more than he could have held as a plain legatus Augusti pro praetore. Pliny was a governor of superior standing, chosen by Trajan on the strength of a decree of the senate, to take full charge of the province and to correct all the abuses that were rampant there (‘quoniam multa in ea emendanda apparuerint’, 32.2); and he died in office near the end of his second year of tenure.