* Note: Yet the humane Pliny put two female attendants, probably deaconesses to the torture, in order to ascertain the real nature of these suspicious meetings: necessarium credidi, ex duabus ancillis, quae ministrae dicebantor quid asset veri et per tormenta quaerere .-- M.] [Footnote 58: Plin.Epist.v.8.He pleaded his first cause A.D.

81; the year after the famous eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, in which his uncle lost his life.].