Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
1.0| Pliny to his friend Voconius Romanus
1.1| After an interval of several years, the eyes of the Roman people have been offered a remarkable spectacle, one well worth remembering: the public funeral of Verginius Rufus, a very great and very distinguished citizen, and no less fortunate.
1.2| He outlived his own glory by thirty years; he read poems written about himself, he read histories, and he was present at his own posterity. He held a third consulship, so that he reached the highest summit open to a private citizen, since he had refused that of the emperor.
1.3| He escaped the Caesars to whom his virtues had made him suspect and even hateful, and he left behind him, safe on the throne, the best of emperors and the one most friendly to him, as though he had been kept in reserve for this very honor of a public funeral.
1.4| He passed his eighty-third year in the deepest tranquillity, and in equal veneration. He enjoyed sound health, except that his hands used to tremble, though without pain. Only the approach of death was rather harsh and drawn out, but even this was to his credit.
1.5| For while he was practicing his voice in preparation for delivering, as consul, his speech of thanks to the emperor, a book of some size that he happened to have taken up slipped, by its very weight, from the hands of an old man standing up. As he went after it and picked it up, his foot gave way on the smooth and slippery floor; he fell and broke his hip, which was badly set and, with his age working against it, knit poorly.
1.6| The funeral rites of this man brought great distinction to the emperor, great distinction to our age, great distinction also to the Forum and the Rostra. His eulogy was delivered by the consul Cornelius Tacitus; for this was the crowning addition to his good fortune — a eulogist of the greatest eloquence.
1.7| And he, for his part, has departed full of years, full of honors, even those he refused; yet we must miss him and long for him as a model from an earlier age — and I above all, who loved him as much as I admired him, and not only in public life.
1.8| First, because we shared the same district, our towns were neighbors, and even our lands and properties adjoined; and besides, because when he was left as my guardian he showed me a parent's affection. So he supported my candidacy with his vote; so he hurried from his retreats to attend the inauguration of every one of my offices, although he had long since given up duties of that kind; so, on the day on which the priests customarily name those whom they judge most worthy of the priesthood, he always named me.
1.9| Indeed, even during this last illness, fearing that he might be appointed one of the five commissioners who were being set up by decree of the senate to reduce public expenditure, he chose me, a man of my age, to present his excuses, although he had so many friends still living who were old men and former consuls — and in these terms: "Even had I a son, I should entrust this to you."
1.10| For these reasons I cannot help weeping on your shoulder over his death, as if it were premature — if indeed it is right to weep at all, or even to call it death at all, when what has ended for so great a man is his mortality rather than his life.
1.11| For he lives and will live forever, and he will move even more widely in the memory and talk of men now that he has withdrawn from their sight.
1.12| I want to write to you about much else, but my whole mind is fixed on this one contemplation. I think of Verginius, I see Verginius, Verginius I hear, address and hold in images that are empty now, but still fresh. Perhaps we have, and shall have, some citizens his equal in virtue; none in glory. Farewell.
2.0| Pliny to his friend Paulinus
2.1| I am angry — I am not sure whether I ought to be, but I am angry. You know how unfair love can be at times, how often uncontrollable, and always quick to take offense over trifles. This cause, though, is a serious one, and perhaps a just one; but I, as if it were no less just than serious, am seriously angry that there has been no letter from you for so long.
2.2| You can win me over in one way only: if now, at least, you send me a great many very long ones. That is the only excuse I will accept as genuine; all others will seem false. I am not going to hear "I wasn't in Rome" or "I was rather busy"; as for "I was rather unwell," may the gods not allow it. For my part I am enjoying my villa, partly with study and partly with idleness, both of which are born of leisure. Farewell.
3.0| Pliny to his friend Nepos
3.1| Isaeus' great reputation had gone before him, but he has been found to be greater still. He has the utmost facility, fullness and richness of speech; he always speaks extempore, but as though he had written it out at length. His language is Greek — or rather Attic; his introductions are polished, spare and charming, and at times weighty and elevated.
3.2| He calls for several themes for debate; he leaves the choice to his audience, and often the side he is to take as well; he rises, arranges his cloak, and begins. At once everything is at his command, almost all at the same time; recondite ideas present themselves, and words — and what words! — sought out and refined. His extensive reading and extensive writing shine through in these impromptu speeches.
3.3| His openings are apt, his narration clear, his argument keen, his summing up forceful, his ornament lofty. In short, he instructs, delights and moves you, and you could not say which he does best. He has frequent enthymemes and frequent syllogisms, compact and finished, something that is a great achievement even with the pen. His memory is incredible: he repeats from the very beginning what he has said extempore, without slipping by so much as a word.
3.4| He has reached so great a mastery through study and practice; for day and night he does nothing else, listens to nothing else, talks of nothing else.
3.5| He has passed his sixtieth year, yet he remains merely a declaimer of the schools — and there is no class of men more sincere, more straightforward, or better. For we who wear ourselves out in the Forum and in real lawsuits learn a good deal of malice, however unwillingly;
3.6| the school, the lecture hall and the fictitious case are a harmless thing, without weapons, and no less happy, especially for old men. For what could be happier in old age than what is sweetest in youth?
3.7| That is why I judge Isaeus not only the most eloquent of men but also the happiest. And if you do not long to get to know him, you are made of stone and iron.
3.8| So if not for other reasons, nor for ourselves, at least come to hear this man. Have you never read how a man of Gades, stirred by the name and glory of Livy, came from the farthest edge of the world to see him, and as soon as he had seen him went away? It is tasteless, unlettered, sluggish and almost even shameful not to think worth so much a knowledge than which none is more pleasant, none more beautiful, none in short more humane.
3.9| You will say: "I have here those to read who are no less eloquent." True; but there is always an occasion for reading, not always for hearing. Besides, as is commonly said, the living voice affects far more. For although what you read may be sharper, what delivery, face, bearing and even the gesture of the speaker fix in the mind sits deeper;
3.10| unless indeed we think false that saying of Aeschines, who, after he had read out to the Rhodians a speech of Demosthenes while all admired it, is said to have added: "What then, if you had heard the very beast?" and Aeschines was, if we believe Demosthenes, the clearest-voiced of men. Yet he admitted that the one who had brought forth those same words delivered them far better.
3.11| All this tends to one end, that you should hear Isaeus, even if only for the sake of having heard him. Farewell.
4.0| Pliny to his friend Calvina
4.1| If your father had owed money to several creditors, or to any single one other than me, there might perhaps have been reason to hesitate whether to enter upon an inheritance that would be a burden even to a man.
4.2| But since I, led by the duty of kinship, when all others were dismissed who were, I do not say more troublesome, but more exacting, stood forth as sole creditor, and since in his lifetime, when you were marrying, I contributed a hundred thousand to your dowry, besides the sum which your father named as if from my own funds - for it had to be paid from my own -, you have a great pledge of my easy dealing, in reliance on which you should take up the good name and honor of the dead man. And lest I urge you to this by words more than by deeds, whatever your father owed me I shall order to be entered as received from you.
4.3| Nor need you fear that this gift would be a burden to me. Our means, to be sure, are altogether modest, my rank expensive, my income, owing to the condition of my little farms, I do not know whether smaller or more uncertain; but what falls short in income is made up by thrift, from which, as from a spring, our liberality flows.
4.4| That, however, must be so regulated that it does not dry up through excessive spending; but regulated in other cases, whereas in your case its account will easily stand, even if it has exceeded the measure. Farewell.
5.0| Pliny to his friend Lupercus
5.1| The pleading, both often demanded by you and often promised by me, I have presented to you, though not yet the whole of it; for a part is still being polished.
5.2| Meanwhile it was not improper that the portions which seemed to me more finished should be handed to your judgment. To these I ask you to bring the attention of a writer. For so far I have had in hand nothing for which I ought to show greater anxiety.
5.3| For in other pleadings only our diligence and good faith are laid before men's judgment, but in this one our family feeling as well. Hence the book also grew, while I rejoice to adorn and enlarge my native town, and at once serve both its defense and its glory.
5.4| Yet you should cut away these very parts as far as reason requires. For whenever I look to the fastidiousness and pleasures of readers, I understand that our recommendation must be sought even from the very moderateness of the book.
5.5| Yet I, who demand this austerity from you, am compelled to ask what is the opposite, that in most places you relax your brow. For there are some things to be given to the ears of young men, especially if the subject does not resist; for descriptions of places, which will be rather frequent in this book, it is right to pursue not only as history but almost as poetry.
5.6| But if anyone should appear who thinks that we have been more cheerful than the severity of oratory demands, the remaining parts of the pleading will have to win over his - if I may so put it - gloom.
5.7| We have certainly striven to hold readers of whatever different kinds through several styles of speaking, and as we fear that some part may not be approved by some according to the nature of each, so we seem able to trust that the variety itself will recommend the whole to all.
5.8| For in the matter of banquets too, although each of us abstains from most of the dishes, we nevertheless all commonly praise the whole dinner, and the things our stomach refuses do not take away the pleasure from those by which it is taken.
5.9| And I wish this to be received in such a way that I do not believe I have attained it, but that I have labored to attain it, perhaps not in vain, if only you will apply your care for now to these parts, soon to those that follow.
5.10| You will say that you cannot do it carefully enough unless you have first learned the whole pleading: I admit it. For the present, however, these parts will become more familiar to you, and some of them will be such that they can be corrected piece by piece.
5.11| For if you were looking at the severed head of a statue or some limb, you could not indeed from it discern the harmony and proportion, yet you could judge whether that very part was elegant enough;
5.12| and for no other reason are the openings of books passed around, than that some part is thought to be finished even without the rest.
5.13| A certain sweetness of talking with you has carried me on too far; but now I shall make an end, lest I exceed in a letter the measure which I think should be observed even in a speech. Farewell.
6.0| Pliny to his friend Avitus
6.1| It is long to go back further, and it does not matter how it happened that I, a man by no means intimate with him, dined at the house of a certain person who seemed to himself elegant and careful, to me both stingy and extravagant at once.
6.2| For to himself and a few he set out certain rich dishes, to the rest cheap and scanty ones. The wine too he had divided into three kinds in tiny little flasks, not to give the power of choosing but to deny the right of refusing, one for himself and us, another for lesser friends - for he has his friends in grades -, another for his own freedmen and ours.
6.3| The man reclining next to me noticed it and asked whether I approved. I said no. "What custom, then, do you follow?" he said. "I put out the same for all; for I invite people to dinner, not to be branded, and I make equal in everything those whom I have made equal at table and couch."
6.4| "Even the freedmen?" "Even they; for then I reckon them fellow diners, not freedmen." And he said: "It costs you a great deal." "Not at all." "How can that be?" "Because, of course, my freedmen do not drink the same as I do, but I the same as my freedmen."
6.5| And by Hercules, if you keep your gullet in check, it is not burdensome to share with several what you use yourself. That, then, must be repressed, that must be brought, so to speak, into order, if you are sparing of expense, which you will provide for rather more rightly by your own self-restraint than by another's insult.
6.6| Why all this? That the luxury of certain people at table may not impose upon you, a young man of excellent nature, under the appearance of frugality. It suits my love for you, whenever something like this occurs, to warn you beforehand by an example what you ought to avoid.
6.7| So remember that nothing is more to be avoided than that new partnership of luxury and stinginess; which, though most shameful when separate and apart, are more shameful joined. Farewell.
7.0| Pliny to his friend Macrinus
7.1| Yesterday the senate, on the emperor's proposal, decreed Vestricius Spurinna a triumphal statue, and not in the way it was granted to many who never stood in a battle line, never saw a camp, never in short heard the sound of trumpets except at shows, but as to those who won that distinction by sweat and blood and deeds.
7.2| For Spurinna by force and arms brought back the king of the Bructeri into his kingdom, and by a mere display of war he thoroughly subdued a most fierce people by terror, which is the most beautiful kind of victory.
7.3| And this he received as the reward of valor, that as a consolation of grief, that to his son Cottius, whom he lost while away, the honor of a statue was given. This is rare in a young man; but the father deserved this too, whose most grievous wound had to be treated with some great remedy.
7.4| Besides, Cottius himself had given so clear a proof of his nature that his short, narrow life should have been prolonged by a kind of immortality. For he had such holiness, gravity, even authority, that he could challenge in virtue those old men to whom he is now equalled in honor.
7.5| By this honor, as I interpret it, provision has been made not only for the memory of the dead and the grief of the father, but also for an example. Such rewards, set up even for young men, provided they are worthy, will whet the youth to good pursuits; and joys from children who survive, and such glorious consolations for those who are lost, will whet leading men to raise children.
7.6| For these reasons I rejoice at the statue of Cottius in public, and no less in private. I loved the thoroughly accomplished young man as ardently as I now miss him impatiently. It will therefore be most pleasing to me to look at this likeness of his again and again, to look back at it, to stand beneath it, to pass by it.
7.7| For if the images of the dead set in our homes lighten our grief, how much more these, in which in a most crowded place not only their appearance and faces but also their honor and glory are recalled! Farewell.
8.0| Pliny to his friend Caninius
8.1| Are you studying, or fishing, or hunting, or all together? For all can be done together at our Larius. For the lake supplies fish, the woods that ring the lake supply game, and that deep retreat supplies studies in abundance.
8.2| But whether you are doing all together or one thing, I cannot say "I envy you"; yet I am tormented that it is not allowed to me too, who long for it as the sick long for wine, baths, springs. Shall I never break these tightest snares, if I am refused leave to loose them? Never, I think.
8.3| For new business grows onto old, and yet the earlier is not finished: with so many bonds, so many chains, as it were, a larger column of occupations stretches out day by day. Farewell.
9.0| Pliny to his friend Apollinaris
9.1| The candidacy of my friend Sextus Erucius keeps me anxious and restless. I am affected by care, and the anxiety which I did not undergo on my own behalf I suffer as if for a second self; and besides, my modesty, my reputation, my standing are brought into the balance.
9.2| I obtained for Sextus the broad stripe from our Caesar, I obtained the quaestorship; by my vote he has reached the right to seek the tribunate, and if he does not obtain it in the senate, I fear I shall seem to have deceived Caesar. So I must exert myself that all may judge him to be such as the emperor believed him to be on my word. Even if this cause did not spur my zeal, I should still wish to help a young man most upright, most serious, most learned, in short most worthy of every praise, and indeed along with his whole house.
9.4| For his father is Erucius Clarus, a man holy, of the old school, eloquent and practiced in pleading cases, which he defends with the utmost good faith and equal steadfastness and no less modesty. He has an uncle, Gaius Septicius, than whom I know nothing truer, nothing more straightforward, nothing more candid, nothing more faithful.
9.5| All love me, vying with one another and yet equally, and now I can return thanks to all in one man. And so I take friends by the hand, I entreat, I canvass, I go round houses and public lounges, and as far as I have strength by authority or favor, I try it by prayers, and I beseech you to think it worth while to take some part of my burden.
9.6| I shall repay in turn if you ask it back, and I shall repay it even if you do not ask. You are loved, courted, attended: only show that you wish it, and there will be no lack of those who desire what you desire. Farewell.
10.0| Pliny to his friend Octavius
10.1| What a patient man you are, or rather hard and almost cruel, to hold back for so long such remarkable books!
10.2| How long will you begrudge both yourself and us, yourself the greatest praise, us the pleasure? Let them be carried on the lips of men and travel as far as the Roman tongue extends. The expectation is great and already long, which you ought not to go on disappointing and putting off.
10.3| Certain of your verses have become known, and against your will have broken out of their enclosures. Unless you draw these back into a body, they will, like wanderers, find at some time someone to whom they are ascribed.
10.4| Keep mortality before your eyes, from which you can claim yourself free by this one monument; for all else, fragile and perishable, falls and ceases no less than men themselves.
10.5| You will say, as you usually do: "My friends will see to it." I do wish you friends so faithful, so learned, so hard-working that they can and will undertake so much care and effort, but consider whether it is not rather imprudent to hope from others what you do not provide yourself.
10.6| And about publication, meanwhile, as you wish: at least give a recitation, so that you may the more want to let them go, and so that you may at last receive the joy that I have long since confidently anticipated on your behalf.
10.7| For I imagine what a concourse, what admiration, what shout, even what silence awaits you; in which silence, when I speak or recite, I take no less delight than in a shout, provided only the silence be keen and intent, and eager to hear what comes next.
10.8| From so great a fruit, so ready to hand, stop defrauding your studies by that endless delay; when it exceeds the measure, it is to be feared that it will earn the name of inertia and sloth or even of timidity. Farewell.
11.0| Pliny to his friend Arrianus
11.1| It is usually a joy to you if anything has been done in the senate worthy of that order. For although you have withdrawn out of love of quiet, the care of the public majesty still sits in your mind. Hear, then, what has been done in these days, famous for the distinction of the person, wholesome for the severity of the example, everlasting for the greatness of the matter.
11.2| Marius Priscus, accused by the Africans, whom he governed as proconsul, gave up his defense and asked for judges. I and Cornelius Tacitus, ordered to appear for the provincials, thought it fitting to our good faith to make known to the senate that Priscus had exceeded in savagery and cruelty the charges for which judges could be given, since he had taken money for condemning, even for killing, innocent men.
11.3| Fronto Catius replied and begged that nothing be inquired into beyond the law on extortion, and this man, most skilled at moving tears, filled all the sails of his pleading with a kind of wind of pity.
11.4| Great was the contention, great the shouts on both sides, some saying that the senate's jurisdiction was confined by the law, others that it was free and unbound, and that the punishment should be as great as the defendant's crime.
11.5| Finally the consul designate Iulius Ferox, an upright and holy man, proposed that judges be given to Marius for the time being, but that those be summoned of whom it was said that they had sold the punishment of innocent men.
11.6| This proposal not only prevailed, but after so many disagreements was the only one that drew a crowd, and it was noted from experience that favor and pity have keen and violent first onsets, but gradually settle down, as though quenched by counsel and reason.
11.7| Whence it happens that what many defend with a mingled shout, no one wishes to say while the rest are silent; for when you are separated from the crowd, the view lies open of things that the crowd hides.
11.8| Those who had been ordered to appear came, Vitellius Honoratus and Flavius Marcianus; of whom Honoratus was charged with having bought for three hundred thousand the exile of a Roman knight and the ultimate penalty for seven friends of his, Marcianus with having bought for seven hundred thousand several punishments of a single Roman knight; for he had been beaten with clubs, condemned to the mines, and strangled in prison.
11.9| But a timely death took Honoratus from the senate's inquiry, and Marcianus was brought in with Priscus absent. Therefore Tuccius Cerialis, a consular, by senatorial right demanded that Priscus be notified, either because he thought he would be more pitiable or more hated if present, or - what I chiefly believe - because it was entirely just that a common charge be defended by both, and if it could not be cleared, be punished in both.
11.10| The matter was put off to the next senate, the very sight of which was most majestic. The emperor presided - for he was consul -, and besides, the month of January, among its other distinctions, is above all crowded by a full attendance of senators; moreover the importance of the case, with the expectation and rumor increased by the postponement, and the passion implanted in mortals to learn great and unusual things, had summoned everyone from every side.
11.11| Imagine what anxiety we felt, what fear, we who had to speak in that assembly, in the presence of Caesar, on so great a matter. I have spoken in the senate more than once; indeed nowhere am I usually heard more kindly: yet then everything, being new, moved me with a new fear.
11.12| Before me, besides the things I have said above, was the difficulty of the case: the defendant stood there who had been now a consular, now a septemvir of the epulones, but now neither.
11.13| It was therefore exceedingly burdensome to accuse a man already condemned, whom, while the atrocity of the charge pressed upon him, the pity for a condemnation as good as completed protected.
11.14| Nevertheless, I somehow gathered my spirit and thought, and began to speak, with no less assent from my hearers than anxiety in myself. I spoke for almost five hours; for to the twelve water-clocks, which I had received as the most generous, four were added. So true is it that the very things which seemed likely to be hard and adverse to me as I was about to speak turned out favorable as I spoke.
11.15| Caesar indeed showed me so much zeal, so much even concern - for to say anxiety is too much - that he repeatedly admonished my freedman, who was standing behind me, to look after my voice and my side, since he thought I was straining more vehemently than my slenderness could bear. Claudius Marcellinus replied to me on behalf of Marcianus.
11.16| The senate was then dismissed and called back for the next day; for the pleading could not now be begun, except to be cut in two by the intervention of night.
11.17| On the next day Salvius Liberalis spoke for Marius, a subtle, orderly, keen and eloquent man; in that case he brought out all his arts. Cornelius Tacitus replied most eloquently and, what is outstanding in his oratory, with dignity.
11.18| Fronto Catius spoke again for Marius, remarkably, and, as the occasion now demanded, spent more time in entreaties than in defense. Evening shut off his speech, yet not so as to cut it short. And so the proofs went out into a third day. Already this very thing is fine and ancient, that the senate was parted by night, summoned for three days, and held together for three days.
11.19| Cornutus Tertullus, consul designate, an excellent man and firmest on behalf of truth, proposed that the seven hundred thousand which Marius had received be paid into the treasury, that Marius be banned from the city and Italy, and that Marcianus be additionally banned from Africa. At the end of his proposal he added that, since I and Tacitus, having had the advocacy laid upon us, had acquitted ourselves carefully and bravely, the senate judged that we had done so as was worthy of the roles entrusted to us.
11.20| The consuls designate assented, as did all the consulars as far as Pompeius Collega: he proposed that the seven hundred thousand be paid into the treasury and that Marcianus be relegated for five years, and that Marius be left to the penalty for extortion which he had already suffered.
11.21| There were many in each opinion, perhaps even more in this latter, being either looser or softer. For some even of those who seemed to have agreed with Cornutus followed the man who had spoken after them.
11.22| But when the division was made, those who had stood by the chairs of the consuls began to go over to the opinion of Cornutus. Then those who were letting themselves be counted with Collega crossed to the other side; Collega was left with a few. Afterwards he complained much about those who had urged him on, especially about Regulus, who had abandoned him in the motion which he himself had dictated. Regulus has otherwise so changeable a nature that he dares very much and fears very much.
11.23| This was the end of a most ample inquiry. There remains, however, a public duty not light: Hostilius Firminus, lieutenant of Marius Priscus, who, mixed up in the case, was heavily and violently harassed. For both from the accounts of Marcianus and from the speech which he had made in the council of the people of Leptis it was proved that he had lent his services to Priscus for a most shameful ministry, and had stipulated from Marcianus fifty thousand denarii, and besides that he himself had received ten thousand sestertia under a most foul title, in the name of a perfumer, a title which was not out of keeping with the life of a man always groomed and pumiced.
11.24| It was agreed, Cornutus proposing, that a report be made on him at the next senate; for then, by chance or by conscience, he had been absent.
11.25| You have the affairs of the city; write in turn of the country. How are your little trees, how your vineyards, how your crops, how your most delicate sheep? In sum, unless you return a letter equally long, you need not expect afterward anything but the very shortest. Farewell.
12.0| Pliny to his friend Arrianus
12.1| That public duty which I wrote recently remained in the case of Marius Priscus, I do not know whether adequately, yet is cut short and shaved close.
12.2| Firminus was brought into the senate and answered the known charge. Different proposals of the consuls designate followed. Cornutus Tertullus proposed that he be removed from the order, Acutius Nerva that no account of him be taken in the allotment of a province. This proposal prevailed as being milder, though it is in other respects harsher and gloomier.
12.3| For what is more wretched than to be cut out and removed from senatorial honors, and yet not to be free of the labor and trouble? What is heavier than, afflicted with so great a disgrace, not to lie hidden in solitude, but to offer oneself on this highest watchtower to be gazed at and pointed out?
12.4| Besides, what is less fitting or becoming in public matters? To sit in the senate branded by the senate, and to be made equal with those very men by whom he has been branded; to have been removed from a proconsulship because he behaved shamefully as a lieutenant, and yet to judge proconsuls, and, himself condemned for filth, either to condemn or to acquit others!
12.5| But this seemed best to the greater number. For opinions are counted, not weighed; nor can anything else be done in a public council, in which nothing is so unequal as equality itself. For though wisdom is unequal, the right of all is equal.
12.6| I have fulfilled my promise and discharged the pledge of my former letter, which, judging from the lapse of time, I infer you have already received; for I gave it to a hurried and careful courier, unless he met some hindrance on the road.
12.7| It is now your part to repay first that letter and then this with letters such as can return from there most abundantly. Farewell.
13.0| Pliny to his friend Priscus
13.1| You too most eagerly seize occasions to put me under obligation, and there is no one to whom I am more glad to owe.
13.2| For two reasons, then, I have decided to ask of you above all the favor I most want granted. You command a very large army: hence you have a generous supply for kindnesses, and besides a long time in which you have been able to promote your friends. Turn now to mine, and these are not many.
13.3| You would prefer them many; but for my modesty one or two is enough, or rather one.
13.4| He will be Voconius Romanus. His father was distinguished in the equestrian rank, his stepfather more distinguished, or rather a second father - for he succeeded to this name too by his affection -, his mother from among the foremost. He himself was recently flamen of Hither Spain - you know the judgment of that province, how great its seriousness.
13.5| I loved him closely and intimately when we studied together; he was my companion in the city, he my companion in retreat, with him I mixed serious matters, with him jests.
13.6| For what is there either more faithful as a friend or more pleasant as a comrade than he? There is a marvelous sweetness in his talk, and marvelous also in his very face and expression.
13.7| In addition there is a talent lofty, subtle, sweet, ready, learned, in pleading cases; and as to letters, he writes them so that you would believe the Muses themselves were speaking Latin. He is loved by me very much, and yet is not outdone.
13.8| I, for my part, as a young man, at once conferred on him, a young man, as much as I could for my age, most eagerly, and recently I obtained for him from the best of emperors the right of three children; which, although he gives it sparingly and with selection, he yet indulged to me as though he were choosing.
13.9| These benefits of mine I can protect in no way better than by increasing them, especially as he himself interprets them so gratefully that while receiving the earlier he deserves the later.
13.10| You have what sort of man he is, how approved and dear to me, and I ask you to promote him according to his talent and your fortune. Above all love the man; for though you grant him as much as you most amply can, you can grant him nothing more than your friendship; and that you might know the better that he is capable of it even to the most intimate familiarity, I have briefly set out for you his pursuits, his character, in short his whole life.
13.11| I would extend my prayers if you did not dislike being asked for long and if I had not done this throughout the whole letter; for he asks, and most effectively, who gives the reasons for asking. Farewell.
14.0| Pliny to his friend Maximus
14.1| You guess truly: I am pulled in pieces by centumviral cases, which exercise me more than they delight me. For most are small and slight; rarely does one occur that is notable either for the distinction of the persons or the greatness of the business.
14.2| Besides, there are few with whom it is a pleasure to speak; the rest are bold, and for the most part obscure young men, who have crossed over here to declaim, so irreverently and rashly that our friend Atilius seems to me to have said it exactly: that boys begin at the forum with the centumviral cases as at school with Homer. For here too, as there, what is greatest came first.
14.3| But, by Hercules, before my memory - so the older men are accustomed to say - not even the most noble young men had a place unless some consular brought them forward: with such reverence was that most beautiful work honored.
14.4| Now, with the barriers of modesty and reverence broken down, everything lies open to everybody, and they are not led in but burst in. Hearers follow, like the pleaders, hired and bought. A contractor is approached; in the middle of the basilica the sportulae are handed out as openly as in a dining room; from one trial to another they pass for the same pay.
14.5| Hence they are now called, not without wit, "Sophocleses," from "wisely" and "to be called," and the Latin name given to the same men is Laudiceni;
14.6| and yet the ugliness, branded in both languages, grows day by day. Yesterday my two nomenclators - they are, to be sure, of the age of those who have lately taken the toga - were dragged off to applaud at three denarii each. That is what being most eloquent costs. At this price benches however numerous are filled, at this price a huge circle is gathered, at this price endless shouts are stirred up, when the mesochorus has given the signal.
14.7| For a signal is needed among people who do not understand, who do not even listen;
14.8| for most do not listen, and none applaud more. If you ever pass through the basilica and want to know how each man speaks, there is no need to climb the tribunal, no need to lend your ear; guessing is easy: know that he speaks worst who will be applauded most.
14.9| The first to introduce this manner of being listened to was Larcius Licinus, though only so far as to canvass hearers. So, at least, I remember hearing from my teacher Quintilian.
14.10| He used to tell it: "I was attending Domitius Afer. While he was speaking before the centumviri in his grave and slow way - for this was his kind of pleading - he heard from nearby an immoderate and unaccustomed shout. Astonished, he fell silent; when silence came, he resumed what he had broken off.
14.11| Again a shout, again he fell silent, and after the silence began. The same a third time. At last he asked who was speaking. The answer was: 'Licinus.' Then, breaking off the case, he said: 'Centumviri, this art has perished.'"
14.12| What was in any case beginning to perish when it seemed to Afer to have perished, is now almost utterly extinguished and overturned. I am ashamed to report what is said, and in how broken a delivery, and with how feeble shouts it is received.
14.13| Only the clapping, or rather only the cymbals and drums, are missing from those songs: the howling - for by no other word can a praise unseemly even in theaters be expressed - is there in plenty.
14.14| Yet as for me, the interest of my friends and the reckoning of my age still delay and hold me; for I fear that I may seem not to have left these indignities, but to have fled the labor. Still, I appear more rarely than usual, which is the beginning of gradually leaving off. Farewell.
15.0| Pliny to his friend Valerianus
15.1| How are your old Marsi treating you? How is the new purchase? Do the fields please, now that they have become yours? That is rare indeed; for nothing is so welcome to those who have gained as to those who covet.
15.2| My mother's estates treat me rather inconveniently, yet they delight me as my mother's, and besides, by long endurance I have grown callous. Constant complaints have this end, that one is ashamed to complain. Farewell.
16.0| Pliny to his friend Annius
16.1| You, with your usual diligence, warn me that the codicils of Acilianus, who made me heir for a part, are to be held as unwritten, because they were not confirmed by the will;
16.2| which law is not unknown even to me, since it is known even to those who know nothing else. But I have laid down for myself a certain law of my own, that I should uphold the wishes of the dead, even if they fail in law, as though they were complete. Now it is agreed that those codicils of Acilianus are written in his own hand.
16.3| Therefore, although the will does not confirm them, they shall nevertheless be observed by me as confirmed, especially since there is no room for an informer.
16.4| For if it were to be feared that the people would snatch away what I had given, I should perhaps have to be more hesitant and more cautious; but since an heir is allowed to give what has settled into the inheritance, there is nothing to stand in the way of that law of mine, to which the public laws are not opposed. Farewell.
17.0| Pliny to his friend Gallus
17.1| You wonder why my Laurentine villa, or - if you prefer - my Laurens, delights me so greatly; you will cease to wonder when you learn the charm of the villa, the convenience of the site, the extent of the shore.
17.2| It lies seventeen miles from the city, so that when what had to be done is done you can stay there with the day still whole and in order. It is approached by more than one road; for both the Laurentine and the Ostian lead to the same place, but the Laurentine must be left at the fourteenth milestone, the Ostian at the eleventh. On either side a road follows that is sandy in part, rather heavy and longer for a team, but short and soft for a horse.
17.3| The scene varies on this side and that; for now the road is narrowed by woods meeting it, now it spreads out and opens through very broad meadows; there are many flocks of sheep, many herds of horses and cattle, driven down from the mountains in winter, which grow sleek on the pastures and the warmth of spring. The villa is roomy for its uses, not costly to keep up.
17.4| In the first part of it is an atrium, plain yet not mean; then porticoes curved round in the likeness of the letter D, which enclose a small but pleasant courtyard. This is an excellent shelter against storms; for it is protected by window panes and much more by overhanging eaves.
17.5| Opposite the middle is a cheerful cavaedium, then a quite beautiful dining room, which runs out toward the shore and, whenever the sea is driven by the southwest wind, is lightly washed by the last waves, already broken. On every side it has folding doors or windows no smaller than doors, and so from the sides and the front it looks out on, as it were, three seas; at the back it looks back on the cavaedium, the portico, the courtyard, the portico again, then the atrium, the woods and the distant mountains.
17.6| On the left of this, set back a little, is a large bedroom, then another smaller, which with one window admits the rising sun and with the other keeps the setting; from this it looks also on the sea lying below, farther off indeed but more safely.
17.7| By the projection of this bedroom and of that dining room a corner is enclosed, which holds and kindles the purest sunshine. This is the winter quarters, this also the exercise ground of my household; there all winds are silent, except those that bring cloud, and take away the clear sky before the use of the place.
17.8| Attached to the corner is a bedroom curved into an apse, which follows the circuit of the sun with all its windows. In its wall a cupboard is let in in the form of a library, which holds books not to be read but to be read again and again.
17.9| Next adjoins a sleeping room, with a passage between, which, raised on a floor and piped, spreads and supplies here and there the heat it has gathered to a healthy temperature. What remains of this side is kept for the use of slaves and freedmen, most of the rooms so neat that they can receive guests.
17.10| On the other side is a most elegant bedroom; then either a large bedroom or a moderate dining room, bright with abundant sun and abundant sea; after this a bedroom with an anteroom, in height a summer room, in its defenses a winter one; for it is withdrawn from all winds. To this bedroom another bedroom and anteroom are joined by a common wall.
17.11| Next comes the cold-room of the bath, spacious and spread out, in whose opposite walls two basins, as if thrust out, are curved, ample enough if you consider the sea nearby. Beside it lie the anointing room, the hypocauston, and the propnigeon of the bath, then two rooms more elegant than costly; adjoining is a wonderful warm pool, from which swimmers look at the sea,
17.12| and not far off the ball court, which meets the hottest sun when the day is already declining. Here a tower rises, under which are two apartments, as many in the tower itself, besides [….] which commands the widest sea, the longest shore, the most delightful villas.
17.13| There is another tower too; in this a bedroom in which the sun is born and set; behind it a broad storeroom and granary, under this a dining room, which, of a troubled sea, suffers only the crash and sound, and that already faint and dying; it looks on the garden and the carriage drive, by which the garden is enclosed.
17.14| The carriage drive is bordered with box or, where the box fails, with rosemary; for the box, in the part where it is sheltered by the buildings, is abundantly green; in the open air and open wind, and though sprayed from far off by the sea, it dries up.
17.15| Alongside the drive on its inner circuit lies a tender and shady vine walk, soft and yielding even to bare feet. The garden is clothed with mulberry and fig in plenty, trees for which that soil is especially fertile, though less kind to the rest. With this view, no worse than the face of the sea, [….] far from the sea enjoys it, and is surrounded at the back by two apartments, under whose windows lies the entrance court of the villa and another garden, rich and rustic.
17.16| From here a covered gallery extends, almost like a public work. There are windows on both sides, more on the sea side, one each on the garden side but fewer on alternate ones. When the day is clear and still, all of them stand open; when it is disturbed by winds from this side or that, those on the side where the winds are quiet stand open without harm.
17.17| In front of the gallery is a terrace scented with violets. The gallery increases the warmth of the sun poured in by its reflection, and as it holds the sun so it checks and keeps off the north wind, and as much heat as there is in front, so much cold is there behind; likewise it stops the southwest wind, and so it breaks and ends the most opposite winds, one from one side, one from another. This is its pleasantness in winter, greater in summer.
17.18| For before noon it tempers the terrace, after noon the nearest part of the drive and garden, with its shade, which, as the day grows or shrinks, falls now shorter, now longer, on this side or that.
17.19| The gallery itself is then most without sun, when the fiercest sun stands upon its roof. Besides, with its windows open it receives the west winds and sends them through, and never grows oppressive with sluggish, stagnant air.
17.20| At the head of the terrace, and next the covered gallery of the garden, is an apartment which is my darling, truly my darling: I built it myself. In it is a sun room, one side of which looks on the terrace, the other on the sea, both on the sun, and a bedroom whose folding doors look on the covered gallery, and whose window on the sea.
17.21| Opposite the middle wall a zotheca withdraws most elegantly, which by window panes and curtains drawn over or drawn back is now added to the bedroom, now taken away. It has room for a couch and two chairs; at the foot the sea, at the back the villas, at the head the woods: so many aspects of places it both separates and blends with as many windows.
17.22| Joined to it is a bedroom for night and sleep. It does not feel the voices of the slaves, the murmur of the sea, the motion of storms, the light of lightning flashes, nor even daylight, unless the windows are opened. This is the effect of its deep and remote seclusion, because a passage lying between divides the bedroom's wall from the garden and so swallows every sound in the empty space between.
17.23| Attached to the bedroom is a very small hypocauston, which, through a narrow opening, either lets out or holds the heat placed beneath, as need requires. Then an anteroom and a bedroom extend into the sun, which, taking it as it rises, they keep, slanting indeed but still, beyond noon.
17.24| When I have withdrawn into this apartment, I seem to be away even from my own villa, and I take great pleasure in it, especially at the Saturnalia, when the rest of the building rings with the license of the days and festive shouts; for I do not disturb my household's games, nor they my studies.
17.25| This convenience, this charm lacks only running water, but it has wells, or rather springs; for they are at the surface. And altogether the nature of that shore is marvelous: wherever you move the ground, water meets you ready at hand, and pure, not even slightly spoiled by the nearness of the sea.
17.26| The neighboring woods supply fuel in plenty; the colony of Ostia provides the other supplies. For a frugal man even the village is enough, which one villa separates from mine. In it are three public baths for hire, a great convenience if perhaps a sudden arrival or a rather short stay discourages heating the bath at home.
17.27| The shore is adorned, with most pleasing variety, by roofs of villas, now continuous, now broken, which present the look of many cities, whether you use the sea or the shore itself; which a long calm sometimes softens, more often a frequent and opposing swell hardens.
17.28| The sea does not abound in costly fish, yet it yields excellent soles and prawns. But our villa also supplies inland produce, milk above all; for the herds gather there from the pastures, if ever they are looking for water or shade.
17.29| Do I now seem to you to have just reasons for living in, dwelling in, and loving this retreat? You are too much a city man if you do not long for it. And would that you did long for it! that to so many and such great endowments of my little villa the greatest recommendation may be added by your company. Farewell.
18.0| Pliny to his friend Mauricus
18.1| What could have been laid on me by you more pleasant than that I should find a teacher for the children of your brother? For by your kindness I go back to school, and as it were take up again that sweetest of ages: I sit among young men as I used to, and even find out how much authority I have with them from my studies.
18.2| For lately in a crowded lecture room they were joking loudly among themselves in the presence of many of our order; I came in, they fell silent; which I would not report, if it did not concern their praise more than mine, and if I did not wish you to hope that your brother's sons can learn well.
18.3| For the rest, when I have heard all who profess it, I shall write what I think of each, and I shall bring it about, so far as a letter will let me, that you will seem yourself to have heard them all.
18.4| For I owe this loyalty and this zeal to you, and I owe them to your brother's memory, especially in a matter of such importance. What could matter more to you both than that the children — I would say "your" children, except that you now love them more than your own — should turn out worthy of that father, and of you as their uncle? I would have claimed this responsibility for myself even if you had not entrusted it to me.
18.5| Nor am I unaware that in choosing a teacher one has to risk giving offense; but for your brother's sons I ought to accept not only offense but even feuds with as much equanimity as parents do for their own. Farewell.
19.0| Pliny to his friend Cerialis
19.1| You urge me to read my speech to a fairly large gathering of friends. I will do it, since you urge me, though I have strong doubts.
19.2| For I am well aware that speeches, when they are read aloud, lose all their drive and heat, and almost their very name, since what usually recommends them and at the same time sets them alight is the bench of jurors, the crowd of advocates, the suspense over the outcome, the reputation of more than one speaker, and the partisan enthusiasm of the audience divided between the sides; and in addition the speaker's gestures, his stride, even his moving about, and a bodily vigor that matches every movement of the mind.
19.3| This is why those who plead sitting down, although they keep for the most part all the same advantages as those who stand, are nonetheless weakened, as it were, and diminished by the mere fact that they are seated.
19.4| For those who read aloud, the chief aids of delivery, the eyes and the hands, are actually hampered. So it is less surprising if the attention of the listeners flags, when it is neither captured by any external charms nor stirred by any goads.
19.5| Added to this, the speech I am talking about is combative and, so to speak, argumentative. Besides, nature has so arranged it that what we have written with labor we think will also be listened to with labor.
19.6| And really, how few listeners are so upright that they are not more pleased by sweet and sonorous writing than by what is austere and compressed? This disagreement is thoroughly shameful, but it exists, because it usually happens that listeners demand one thing and jurors another, although otherwise a listener ought to be most affected by the very things that would move him most if he were a juror.
19.7| Still, it may be that, in spite of these difficulties, novelty will recommend this book — novelty among us, that is; for among the Greeks there is something that, though different, is not wholly unlike it.
19.8| For just as it was their custom to refute laws they charged with contradicting earlier laws by comparing them with others, so we had to establish that what we were claiming was contained in the law on extortion, by drawing both on this law itself and on others. This is in no way pleasing to the ears of the inexperienced, and so it ought to find all the more favor with the learned, the less it has with the unlearned.
19.9| If I decide to read it, I intend to invite all the most learned people. But do think over carefully, on your own, whether it should be read at all; set down on both sides all the pebbles I have put in motion, and choose the side on which reason wins. For it is you who will have to give an account of your reasons; my compliance will be my excuse. Farewell.
20.0| Pliny to his friend Calvisius
20.1| Get an as ready and hear a golden story — or rather stories; for the new one has put me in mind of earlier ones, and it does not matter which I start with.
20.2| Verania, the wife of Piso, was lying gravely ill — I mean the Piso whom Galba adopted. Regulus came to visit her. First of all, the impudence of the man, to visit a sick woman whose husband he had been the bitterest enemy of, and to whom he himself was utterly hateful!
20.3| Granted, if he only came; but he even sat down right by her bed and put to her the question of the day and the hour of her birth. When he heard, he composes his face, fixes his eyes, moves his lips, works his fingers, calculates. Nothing. After keeping the poor woman in suspense for a long time, he says, "You are in a critical year, but you will come through.
20.4| To make this clearer to you, I will consult a haruspex whom I have often put to the test."
20.5| Without delay he makes a sacrifice, and declares that the entrails agree with what the stars indicate. She, credulous as people in danger are, asks for her will-tablets and writes in a legacy for Regulus. Soon afterward she grows worse, and as she is dying she cries out against this worthless, treacherous man, worse even than a perjurer, who had sworn falsely to her by the life of his own son.
20.6| Regulus does this no less wickedly than frequently — calling down the wrath of the gods, whom he himself deceives every day, on the head of his unhappy boy.
20.7| Velleius Blaesus, the well-known wealthy ex-consul, was struggling with his last illness and wanted to change his will. Regulus, who hoped to get something from the new tablets because he had recently begun to court him for a legacy, kept urging and begging the doctors to prolong the man's breath somehow or other.
20.8| Once the will was sealed, he changes his role, turns his address around, and says to the same doctors: "How long will you go on racking the wretched man? Why do you grudge a good death to someone you cannot give life to?" Blaesus dies, and as if he had heard everything, leaves Regulus not a thing.
20.9| Are two stories enough, or by the rule of the schools do you demand a third? There is material for one.
20.10| Aurelia, a distinguished woman, had put on her finest tunics to seal her will. When Regulus came to witness the sealing, he said, "Please leave me these."
20.11| Aurelia thought the man was joking; he kept pressing her in earnest. In short, he forced the woman to open her tablets and leave him the tunics she had on; he watched her writing, and checked whether she had actually written it. And Aurelia, in fact, is alive, but he forced this on her as though she were about to die. And this man accepts inheritances and legacies as if he deserved them.
20.12| But why do I strain myself over this, in a city where for a long time now wickedness and dishonesty have had no smaller rewards — rather, greater ones — than modesty and virtue?
20.13| Look at Regulus, who from being poor and insignificant has advanced through his crimes to such wealth that he told me himself that when he consulted the omens on how soon he would complete sixty million sesterces, he found the entrails doubled, which portended that he would have a hundred and twenty million.
20.14| And he will have it, if he continues as he started, dictating other people's wills to the very people whose wills they are — the most wicked kind of forgery there is. Farewell.
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