Long since the driver murmured at my stay, And when from crowds and business you repair, WILLIAM GIFFORD. 460 465 1 There were temples of Ceres and of Diana at Aquinum. It has been suggested that the former was erected by a member of the Helvian gens, hence the epithet. PLINY THE YOUNGER BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH PLINY's statement that he was in his eighteenth year at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius enables us to place his birth with certainty in 62 A. D. He was the nephew and adopted son of C. Plinius Secundus, the author of the Natural History, whose example undoubtedly did much to stimulate his literary ambitions. He studied rhetoric under Quintilian, and beginning the practice of law at an early age, soon became one of the leading advocates in Rome. He passed through the usual course of official honors, attaining the consulship in 100 under Trajan, and finally in 111 or 112 being appointed governor of Bithynia. He died about 114. He published a number of speeches, some poems, and several books of letters. Of these one speech, the Panegyric on Trajan, and the Letters have survived. The Panegyric was delivered in the senate on the occasion of his election to the consulship, but was only published after careful revision. It is a conspicuous example of the florid type of oratory, shows many signs of studied elaboration, and is full of flattery of the emperor. Of much greater value and interest are the ten books of Letters, the first nine containing epistles on a great variety of subjects addressed to various friends, while the last is confined to correspondence with Trajan during Pliny's governorship of Bithynia. In the first group we have to deal with productions which were only ostensibly letters and which were written to be published, each one dealing with a single theme, and the address to this or that individual apparently being a matter of form. In the precision and crispness of their style they differ greatly from the florid expansiveness of the Panegyric, the divergence indeed being so great as to point to a conscious and deliberate adaptation of manner to conventional standards of oratory on the one hand, and of epistolography on the other. In the tenth book, however, we find real letters, for in these Pliny writes to Trajan for advice on various problems of provincial administration, and the emperor replies in notes, the eminently practical spirit of which forms one of the most noticeable features of the correspondence. From his works we are able to form a fairly adequate idea of our author's character: a man of little more than mediocre ability, upon whose imagination his own activities invariably loomed large; pedantic in matters of literature, irresolute and vacillating in matters of administration, vain to the extreme of vanity, of impenetrable complacency, yet withal amiable, kindly, conscientious, standing for what was good, and genuinely interested in literature. The following letters are from Firth's translation. TO CORNELIUS TACITUS 1 (I., 6.) You will laugh, and I give you leave to. You know what sort of sportsman I am, but I, even I, have bagged three boars, each one of them a perfect beauty. "What!" you will say, "you!" Yes, I, and that too without any violent departure from my usual lazy ways. I was sitting by the nets; I had by my side not a hunting spear and a dart, but my pen and writing tablets. I was engaged in some composi 1 The historian, one of Pliny's intimate friends. tion and jotting down notes, so that I might have full tablets to take home with me, even though my hands were empty. You need not shrug your shoulders at study under such conditions. It is really surprising how the mind is stimulated by bodily movement and exercise. I find the most powerful incentive to thought in having the woods all about me, in the solitude and the silence which is observed in hunting. So when next you go hunting, take my advice and carry your writing tablets with you as well as your luncheon basket and your flask. You will find that Minerva loves to wander on the mountains quite as much as Diana. Farewell. TO SOSIUS SENECIO (I., 13.) THIS year has brought us a fine crop of poets: right through April hardly a day passed without some recital1 or other. I am delighted that literature is so flourishing and that men are giving such open proofs of brains, even though audiences are found so slow in coming together. People as a rule lounge in the squares and waste the time in gossip when they should be listening to the recital. They get some one to come and tell them whether the reciter has entered the hall yet, whether he has got through his introduction, or whether he has nearly reached the end of his reading. Not until then do they enter the room, and even then they come in slowly and languidly. Nor do they sit it out; no, before the close of the recital they slip away, some sidling out so as not to attract attention, 1 The public recitations were one of the features of literary life in Rome under the empire. others rising openly and walking out bodily. And yet, by Hercules, our fathers tell a story of how Claudius Caesar one day while walking up and down in the palace, happened to hear some clapping of hands, and on inquiring the cause and being told that Nonianus was giving a reading, he suddenly joined the company to every one's surprise. But nowadays even those who have most time on their hands, after receiving early notices and frequent reminders, either fail to put in an appearance, or if they do come they complain that they have wasted a day just because they have not wasted it. All the more praise and credit, therefore, is due to those who do not allow their love of writing and reciting to be damped either by the laziness or the fastidiousness of their audiences. For my own part, I have hardly ever failed to attend. True, the authors are mostly my friends, for almost all the literary people are also friends of mine, and for this reason I have spent more time in Rome than I had intended. But now I can betake myself to my country retreat and compose something, though not for a public recital, lest those whose readings I attended should think I went not so much to hear their works as to get a claim on them to come and hear mine. As in everything else, if you lend a man your ears, all the grace of the act vanishes if you ask for his in return. Farewell. TO SEPTICIUS CLARUS (I., 15.) WHAT a fellow you are! You promise to come to dinner and then fail to turn up! Well, here is my |