This is in a letter from Pliny the Younger to the Emperor Trajan in 96 AD:

“I have never been present at any legal examination of Christians, and I do not know, therefore, what are the usual penalties passed upon them…In the mean time, this is the plan which I have adopted in the case of those Christians who have been brought before me. I ask them whether they are Christians; if they say yes, then I repeat the question a second and a third time, warning them of the penalties it entails, and if they still persist, I order them to be taken to prison…

A pamphlet was issued anonymously, containing the names of a number of people. Those who denied that they were or had been Christians and called upon the gods in the usual formula, reciting the words after me, those who offered incense and wine before your image, which I had given orders to be brought forward for this purpose, together with the statues of the deities–all such I considered should be discharged, especially as they cursed the name of Christ, which it is said, those who are really Christians cannot be induced to do. Others, whose names were given me by an informer, first said that they were Christians and afterward denied it, declaring that they had been but were so no longer, some of them having recanted many years before, and more than one so long as twenty years back…

I thought it the more necessary, therefore, to find out what truth there was in these statements by submitting two women, who were called deaconesses, to the torture, but I found nothing but a debased superstition carried to great lengths.”