Pliny the Younger wrote hundreds of letters, of which 247 survived, and which are of some historical value. These include 121 official memoranda addressed to Emperor Trajan (reigned 98-117). Some are addressed to reigning emperors or to notables such as the historianTacitus. Pliny served as animperial magistrate underTrajan,[3] and his letters to Trajan provide one of the few surviving records of the relationship between the imperial office and provincial governors.[4]
Pliny rose through a series of civil and military offices, thecursus honorum. He was a friend of the historian Tacitus and might have employed the biographerSuetonius on his staff. Pliny also came into contact with other well-known men of the period, including the philosophersArtemidorus andEuphrates the Stoic, during his time inSyria.[5]
Pliny the Younger was born inNovum Comum (Como, NorthernItaly) around 61 AD, the son of Lucius Caecilius Cilo, born there, and his wife Plinia Marcella, a sister ofPliny the Elder.[6] He was the grandson ofSenator and landowner Gaius Caecilius, revered his uncle, who at this time was extremely famous around the Roman Empire because of his intelligence, and provided sketches of how his uncle worked on theNaturalis Historia.[7]
Cilo died at an early age when Pliny was still young. As a result, the boy probably lived with his mother. His guardian and preceptor in charge of his education wasLucius Verginius Rufus,[8] famed for quelling a revolt againstNero in 68 AD. After being first tutored at home, Pliny went to Rome for further education. There he was taughtrhetoric byQuintilian, a great teacher and author, and Nicetes Sacerdos of Smyrna. It was at this time that Pliny became closer to his uncle Pliny the Elder. When Pliny the Younger was 17 or 18 in 79 AD, his uncle Pliny the Elder died attempting to rescue victims of theVesuvius eruption, and the terms of the Elder Pliny's will passed his estate to his nephew. In the same document, the younger Pliny wasadopted by his uncle. As a result, Pliny the Younger changed his name fromGaius Caecilius Cilo toGaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (his official title wasGaius Plinius Luci filius Caecilius Secundus).[9]
There is some evidence that Pliny had a sibling. A memorial erected in Como (nowCILV, 5279) repeats the terms of a will by which theaedile Lucius Caecilius Cilo, son of Lucius, established a fund, the interest of which was to buy oil (used for soap) for the baths of the people of Como. The trustees are apparently named in the inscription: "L. Caecilius Valens and P. Caecilius Secundus, sons of Lucius, and thecontubernalis Lutulla." The wordcontubernalis describing Lutulla is the military term meaning "tent-mate", which can only mean that she was living with Lucius, not as his wife. The first man mentioned, L. Caecilius Valens, is probably the older son. Pliny the Younger confirms[10] that he was a trustee for the largesse "of my ancestors". It seems unknown to Pliny the Elder, so Valens' mother was probably not his sister Plinia; perhaps Valens was Lutulla's son from an earlier relationship.[citation needed]
Pliny the Younger married three times: first, when he was very young (about 18), to a stepdaughter of Veccius Proculus, who died at age 37; secondly, at an unknown date, to the daughter of Pompeia Celerina; and thirdly to Calpurnia who was 14 at the time and 26 years younger than Pliny, daughter of Calpurnius and granddaughter ofCalpurnius Fabatus of Comum. Letters survive in which Pliny recorded this last marriage taking place, his attachment to Calpurnia, and his sadness when she miscarried their child at the age of 17.[11]
Pliny is thought to have died suddenly during his convention inBithynia-Pontus, around 113 AD, since no events referred to in his letters date later than that.[12]
Pliny was by birth ofequestrian rank, that is, a member of the aristocratic order ofequites (knights), the lower (beneath thesenatorial order) of the two Roman aristocratic orders that monopolised senior civil and military offices during the early Empire. His career began at the age of 18 and initially followed a normal equestrian route. But, unlike most equestrians, he achieved entry into the upper order by being electedQuaestor in his late twenties.[13] (SeeCareer summary below.)
Pliny was active in the Roman legal system, especially in the sphere of the Romancentumviral court, which dealt with inheritance cases. Later, he was a well-known prosecutor and defender at the trials of a series of provincial governors, includingBaebius Massa, governor ofBaetica; Marius Priscus, governor ofAfrica; Gaius Caecilius Classicus, governor of Baetica; and most ironically in light of his later appointment to this province,Gaius Julius Bassus and Varenus Rufus, both governors ofBithynia and Pontus.[14]
Pliny's career is commonly considered as a summary of the main Roman public charges and is the best-documented example from this period, offering proof for many aspects of imperial culture. Effectively, Pliny crossed all the principal fields of the organization of the early Roman Empire. It is an achievement for a man to have not only survived the reigns of several disparate emperors, especially the much-detestedDomitian, but also to have risen in rank throughout.[15]
Pliny wrote his first work, atragedy inGreek, at age 14.[16] Additionally, in the course of his life, he wrote numerous poems, most of which are lost. He was also known as a notableorator; though he professed himself a follower ofCicero, Pliny's prose was more magniloquent and less direct than Cicero's.
Pliny's only oration that now survives is thePanegyricus Traiani. This was delivered in theSenate in 100 and is a description ofTrajan's figure and actions in an adulatory and emphatic form, especially contrasting him with the EmperorDomitian. It is, however, a relevant document that reveals many details about the Emperor's actions in several fields of his administrative power such as taxes, justice, military discipline, and commerce. Recalling the speech in one of his letters, Pliny shrewdly defines his own motives thus:
I hoped in the first place to encourage our Emperor in his virtues by a sincere tribute and, secondly, to show his successors what path to follow to win the same renown, not by offering instruction but by setting his example before them. To proffer advice on an Emperor's duties might be a noble enterprise, but it would be a heavy responsibility verging on insolence, whereas to praise an excellent ruler (optimum principem) and thereby shine a beacon on the path posterity should follow would be equally effective without appearing presumptuous.[17]
The largest surviving body of Pliny's work is his 247Epistulae, letters to his friends and associates. These letters are a unique testimony ofRoman administrative history and everyday life in the 1st century AD. Especially noteworthy among the letters are two in which he describes the eruption ofMount Vesuvius on August or October 24 in AD 79, during which his uncle Pliny the Elder died (Epistulae VI.16, VI.20), and one in which he asks the Emperor for instructions regarding official policy concerning Christians (Epistulae X.96).
Epistles concerning the eruption of Mount Vesuvius
Pliny wrote the two letters describing the eruption of Mount Vesuvius approximately 25 years after the event, and both were sent in response to the request of his friend, the historianTacitus. The first letter outlines the events preceding the death ofPliny the Elder during the attempted rescue of his friend Rectina. The second letter details the Younger's movements across the same period of time. The two letters have great historical value due to their accurate description of the Vesuvius eruption; Pliny's attention to detail in the letters about Vesuvius is so keen that modernvolcanologists describe those types of eruptions as "Plinian eruptions".[18][19]
Reading of Pliny's letter to Trajan about the Christians, in Latin with English subtitles
As the Roman governor ofBithynia-Pontus (now in modern Turkey) Pliny wrote aletter to Emperor Trajan around 112 AD and asked for counsel on dealing withChristians. In the letter (Epistulae X.96), Pliny detailed an account of how he conducted trials of suspected Christians who appeared before him as a result of anonymous accusations and asked for the Emperor's guidance on how they should be treated.[20] Pliny had never performed a legal investigation of Christians and thus consulted Trajan in order to be on solid ground regarding his actions. Pliny saved his letters and Trajan's replies[21] and these are the earliest surviving Roman documents to refer to early Christians.[22]
Voting theorists and historians of social choice note Pliny's early mention of how the choice of voting procedure could influence the outcome of an election.[23][24] On June 24, 105, Pliny wrote a letter toTitius Aristo,[25] where he describes a criminal trial: under the traditional rules of the Senate, there would first be a vote on guilt and then (if the accused were found guilty) on punishment, for which execution and exile were proposed. Of the three distinct proposals, acquittal, exile, and execution, acquittal had the largest number of supporters but not a majority, although exile would have defeated either acquittal or execution in a direct two-way vote. Pliny supported acquittal but anticipated that first guilt and then execution would be chosen under the traditional rules, and so he argued for a novel three-way plurality vote, which would have resulted in acquittal. In response, those in favor of execution withdrew their proposal, the vote defaulted to a traditional majority vote between exile and acquittal, and exile carried.
Thefirst edition of Pliny'sEpistles was published in Italy in 1471. Sometime between 1495 and 1500Giovanni Giocondo discovered a manuscript in Paris of Pliny's tenth book of letters, containing his correspondence with Trajan, and published it in Paris, dedicating the work toLouis XII. The first complete edition was produced by the press ofAldus Manutius in 1508.[26] (SeeEditio princeps for details.)
View ofBellagio inLake Como. The institution on the hill isVilla Serbelloni, believed to have been constructed on the site of Pliny's villa "Tragedy."
Being wealthy, Pliny owned manyvillas and wrote in detail about his villa near Ostia, at Laurentum, Italy.[27]Others included one near Lake Como named "Tragedy" because of its location high on a hill, and, another, "Comedy," on the shores of the lake, so called because it was sited low down,[28] referencing the practice of actors in comedy wearing flat shoes, while those in tragedy wore high-heeledbuskins.[29]
Pliny's main estate in Italy and the one he loved best was hisVilla "in Tuscis" nearSan Giustino, Umbria, under the passes of Bocca Trabaria and Bocca Serriola, where wood was harvested for Roman ships and sent to Rome via theTiber.[30]
As a response to "declining returns from his north Italian farms", Pliny may have contemplated switching the administration of his estate to asharecropping system calledcolonia partiaria. Under the sharecropping system, Pliny's slaves would act as overseers.[31]
^Melvyn Bragg (December 12, 2013)."Pliny the Younger".In Our Time (Podcast). BBC Radio 4. RetrievedJanuary 26, 2020.
^Bennett, Julian (1997).Trajan: Optimus Princeps: A Life and Times. New York & London: Routledge. pp. 113–125.
^Roberts, John W., ed. (2007)."Pliny the Younger".The Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.ISBN9780192801463. RetrievedMarch 24, 2014.The tenth bk. of letters contains all of Pliny's correspondence with Trajan. [...] The provincial letters are the only such dossier surviving entire, and are a major source for understanding Roman provincial government.(subscription required)
^"Iohannem Iucundum architectum illum Veronensem, quem annos 1494–1506 in Gallia egisse novimus, codicem decem librorum Parisiis invenisse testis est Gulielmus Budaeus...Eodem ferme tempore Venetias ad Aldum Manutium editionem suam parantem, quae anno 1508 proditura erat, epistulas ex eodem vetustissimo codice descriptas misit ipse Iucundus." (R.A.B. Mynors,C. Plini Caecili Secundi Epistularum Libri Decem, Oxford University Press (1976), Praefatio xviii–xix
Bell, Albert A. (1989). "A Note on Revision and Authenticity in Pliny's Letters".American Journal of Philology.110 (3):460–466.doi:10.2307/295220.JSTOR295220.
Page, Sven (2015).Der ideale Aristokrat. Plinius der Jüngere und das Sozialprofil der Senatoren in der Kaiserzeit [The ideal aristocrat. Pliny the Younger and the social profile of senators in the imperial era]. Heidelberg: Verlag Antike,ISBN978-3-938032-95-4.
Scarpanti, Edoardo (2021). "Descrivere l'indescrivibile. Il lessico di Plinio il Giovane nelle epistole sull'eruzione del Vesuvio" [Describing the indescribable. Pliny the Younger's lexicon in the epistles on the eruption of Vesuvius].Open Journal of Humanities.9:39–60.doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/6DMZ2.
Stadler, Thiago David (2013).O Império romano em cartas: glórias romanas em papel e tinta (Plínio, o Jovem e Trajano 98/113 d.C.). Curitiba: Juruá Editora.
Stout, Selatie Edgar (1962).Plinius, Epistulae: A Critical Edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
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