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Rhetorical Devices In Pliny Letters 10

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In “Pliny, Letters 10.96-97,” the author writes a letter to Emperor Trajan addressing the concern of Christianity and its believers revolting. Christians did not believe in the Greek Gods and the Kings as god and the Romans did not like that. He starts the letter with a question of an unsureness of what to do about the Christians and so he writes this letter to the emperor to see what he thinks about his idea on execution. From this, the tone of the author shows a big contradictory in the idea that Christians are harmless but also has a high focus on the dislike of Christians using ethos and logos.
The author uses ethos to state the proposal he has on what should be done about the Christians. He states in his letter, “…. whether if they renounce …show more content…

“…, especially as there are so many people involved in danger”. His tone here shows that the Christians were a threat and so to protect the empire he had to execute them. To add, he states, “…it can be checked and set right.” Pliny, Letters 10.96-97, [Add Page]. This showcases how he believes that the Christians are some sort of problem that need to be solved because it was an order to live within the Roman Empire. In the end he discusses, “From this it is easy to infer what vast members of people might be reclaimed, if only they were given an opportunity of repentance” {citation]. He believes that he can threaten to kill them so that they will automatically start to pray to the Emperors. The significance of the emperors shows his motive in reaching towards the audience as a tactic to create fear in those who choose to not believe in the Emperor as their God. The quote is also very contradicting as well because he is saying he can change the people and yet a tone that makes the audience feel like he has no remorse and more like this idea that if he actually cared about them, he would not execute them. Which proves that his dislike of the Christians was logical because of how much the emperors meant to the

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