1

Two Plinys

Vespasian has seized imperial power after a bloody year of civil war. On the shore of a deep Alpine lake, a boy gazes at his hometown. His father has just passed away. He has entered the legal supervision of a tutor, though he continues to live with his mother. The town is Novum Comum (hereafter, Comum); it is a prosperous, midsized Roman settlement on the southern end of the glacial-blue dagger of Lacus Larius. Soon he’ll have to leave.

Titus now governs the empire. Above a terraced seaside villa, a young man squints at a single, hazy mountain challenging the heavens. He and his mother are staying with her brother, a polymath who has completed a multivolume compendium of world knowledge. The villa commands the bustling imperial naval base at Misenum, in the welcoming Bay of Naples. His uncle commands the fleet. The young man scrambles back down to his studies.

Trajan is emperor of Rome. A middle-aged man looks over the muddy, green ribbon of the Tiber River as it slides through the largest city in the world, air thick with smoke from cooking fires and baths. He has tried to tame that river; over the last 25 years, he has developed a healthy respect for the power of nature. He has also supervised men, holding nearly every office on the cursus honorum, the “political career ladder.” A colleague has just asked him to write about a day from his youth when his uncle perished in a terrible catastrophe. It looks like he will never have children; his family name will die. But his story might endure.

This chapter treats the lives of the Younger and Elder Pliny across these three temporal frames, through the main literary and epigraphic sources. It also introduces the other named or speaking individuals who figure in the story of the two Vesuvian letters. Their knowledge, experiences, and relationships form a personal, social, political, and literary framework for Pliny’s letters. That framework began to take shape at the northern rim of the Italian peninsula, where Gauls and Romans had been blending their communities for over two hundred years (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Map of the Italian peninsula and its administrative regions, ca. AD 106. Geographic information: Talbert, ed., Barrington Atlas; ESRI, ArcGIS, P. Foss.

Historical Context

Below the southern wall of the Alps, a local Gallic tribe, the Comenses, had long lived, settling along a high ridge extending southwest of Lacus Larius (Lake Como). However, in 196 BC, a Roman army led by Marcus Claudius Marcellus defeated them.¹ Then came a century of resistance, accommodation, Roman settlement, local resettlement, road-building, and eventual integration in this part of Cisalpine Gaul, north of the Po River, known as Transpadana.² In 89 BC, recognizing the loyalty (or trying to secure it) of local Romano-Gallic communities during the Social Wars—when an Italic confederation attempted secession from Roman control unless they were given citizenship—the Roman consul, Gnaeus Pompeius Strabo, reorganized Transpadana and gave the inhabitants ius Latii, “Latin status.”³ While the rights included in this particular package are not perfectly understood, they usually included such privileges as intermarriage and commercial relationships with Roman citizens. Local communities tended to run their own affairs. By the late 120s BC, a pathway to Roman citizenship had become a reward for army service, and holding local office was increasingly open to local elites in Latin-status communities.⁴ In Transpadana, it has long been thought that Latin status was more titular than practical, but new evidence of land division and registration suggests that the physical imprint of Roman administration was in fact more dramatic, as local landowners with Celtic names had their property rights mapped out on bronze plates using Roman conventions and measurements.⁵ Possibly by 89 BC (but definitely by 49), the residents of the area roughly from Mediolanum (Milan) to Comum were enrolled in the Roman voting district for the tribus Oufentina, the “Oufentina tribe.”⁶

In 59 BC, according to the ancient geographer Strabo (5.1.6), Julius Caesar placed 5,000 settlers in a rectangular fortified town, probably on the footprint of an extant army camp, at the southern tip of the western branch of the lake, perhaps declaring it a Roman colony as well (Figure 1.2).⁷ Its outline still peeks out of the modern street plan of Como, though the present shoreline has now migrated more than 200 m forward from the Republican-era quay.⁸ In 49 BC, Caesar confirmed citizenship for all communities in Transpadana, and Comum became a municipium.⁹ Gauls and Romans mingled and married; by the time of Augustus, the free population of Comum and its territory is estimated to have been about 16,000.¹⁰ Just under a decade after Augustus’ death, the Elder Pliny came crying into the world.

Figure 1.2 Map of Novum Comum and Lacus Larius, ca. AD 100. Sources: Ferrario, et al., “Historical Shoreline”; Luraschi, “Como romana”; Gibson, High Empire; Jorio, Le terme. Geographic information: ESRI, ArcGIS, P. Foss.

The Elder Pliny

He was born Caius Plinius Secundus at Comum in AD 23 or 24.¹¹ There is no surviving ancient portrait, so all images are conjectural (e.g., Figures 1.3, 4.4).¹² He was the uncle (avunculus) to his sister’s son, the Younger Pliny.¹³ Nearly all that we know of him comes from three sources: his nephew’s Epistulae (particularly letters 3.5, 5.8, 6.16); a short biography (the Vita Plinii), probably written by the historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus; and the Elder’s one surviving work, the Historia Naturalis, notably its preface (praefatio).¹⁴ Key portions of those sources are critical for understanding the Elder’s life, so they are reprinted below, in chronological order of composition. These sources provide a (filtered) sense of the Elder’s character, personality, interests, and motivation. Brief discussion follows, as well as in the relevant portions of Chs 4–5 (Ep. 6.16 and 6.20).

Figure 1.3 Portrait of Pliny the Elder from de Laet, Historiae Naturalis, vol. 1 (1635). Vellum-backed book, no. 458.14 (01/03), spine number 11. Tabley House Collection, The University of Manchester.

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The Natural History, confusingly in its modern printed form, has three different numbering systems for references within books (the typographic conventions for which, more confusingly, vary across editions).¹⁵ In 1587, the French medical botanist, Jacobus Dalecampius (Jacques Dalechamps), released a text and commentary on all 37 books, each book internally numbered by chapter, based flexibly on subheadings in the table of contents the Elder himself listed in HN, Book 1.¹⁶ A century later, in 1685, Joannes Harduinus (Jean Hardouin) released a more extensive text and commentary, with a chapter system also based on Pliny’s table of contents (diverging in places from Dalecampius), but now adding line numbers on each page of text.¹⁷ The third system was developed by the German tradition during the late 19th century. Its versions comprise what is known as the “Teubner” edition and include both the Dalecampius and Harduinus chapter numbers—plus yet another system of shorter sections (often called paragraphs) of text, which may be denoted by a section mark (§).¹⁸ This book, in line with most recent translations, uses the Teubner paragraphs.

Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis praef. 1, 12–21, 33.¹⁹

Plinius Secundus Vespasiano Suo S. (1) Libros Naturalis Historiae, novicium Camenis Quiritium tuorum opus, natos apud me proxima fetura licentiore epistula narrare constitui tibi, iucundissime imperator ...

Pliny the Elder greets his friend Vespasian [Emperor-designate Titus]. (1) I have decided to tell you about these books of a Natural History, a brand-new work for the native Muses of your Roman subjects, born as my most recent offspring, in this rather bold letter, most delightful commander…

After this jaunty opening, the Elder rejiggers a poetic line from his fellow northern Italian, Catullus, an exercise in disingenuous self-effacement (among other things).²⁰ He then speaks in familiar terms to Titus, leaning heavily on their joint military service in the late 50s on the Rhine (in 1: hoc castrense verbum, “this army slang”; petulantia, “brash talk”; procaci epistula, “pushy letter”; in 3: castrensi contubernio, “tent-mate in camp”), and continues at bootlicking length to heap praises on the imperial son, whom he envisions as an arbiter of the book. Later, he gets to his project:

(12) Meae quidem temeritati accessit hoc quoque, quod levioris operae hos tibi dedicavi libellos: nam nec ingenii sunt capaces, quod alioqui in nobis perquam mediocre erat, neque admittunt excessus aut orationes sermonesve aut casus mirabiles vel eventus varios, iucunda dictu aut legentibus blanda. (13) Sterilis materia, rerum natura, hoc est vita, narratur, et haec sordidissima sui parte, ac plurimarum rerum aut rusticis vocabulis aut externis, immo barbaris, etiam cum honoris praefatione ponendis. (14) Praeterea iter est non trita auctoribus via nec qua peregrinari animus expetat: nemo apud nos qui idem temptaverit invenitur, nemo apud Graecos qui unus omnia ea tractaverit. Magna pars studiorum amoenitates quaerimus, quae vero tractata ab aliis dicuntur inmensae subtilitatis obscuris rerum in tenebris premuntur. An omnia attingenda quae Graeci τῆς ἐγκυκλίου παιδείας vocant, et tamen ignota aut incerta ingeniis facta? Alia vero ita multis prodita ut in fastidium sint adducta.

(12) Indeed, to my boldness has been added this, that I have dedicated to you these book-rolls of trifling effort: for they are not full of talent, which anyway in my case is utterly average, nor do they contain digressions, speeches, disputations, marvelous occurrences or colorful outcomes—enjoyable to relate, and alluring to readers. (13) Sterile stuff, the “nature of things”—that is, life—is described [here], pretty paltry as far as it goes, and for most items in backwoods or foreign, even “barbarian” terms, which require advance apology. (14) Besides, my path is not a road trod by authors nor one by which the mind seeks to go exploring: none among us (Romans) can be found who has made the same attempt, none among the Greeks who has investigated all these things by himself. Most of us seek out the delights of scholarship, while topics investigated by others that are considered in unfathomable detail get overwhelmed by the dark uncertain corners of their subjects. Must all those things be dealt with that the Greeks call “an encompassing education,” despite being unconfirmed or disputed by clever arguments? Surely the rest has been published in so many words that it has to be regarded as tiresome.

(15) Res ardua vetustis novitatem dare, novis auctoritatem, obsoletis nitorem, obscuris lucem, fastiditis gratiam, dubiis fidem, omnibus vero naturam et naturae sua omnia. Itaque nobis etiam non assecutis voluisse abunde pulchrum atque magnificum est. (16) Equidem ita sentio, peculiarem in studiis causam eorum esse qui difficultatibus victis utilitatem iuvandi praetulerunt gratiae placendi; idque iam et in aliis operibus ipse feci, et profiteor mirari T. Livium, auctorem celeberrimum, in historiarum suarum quas repetit ab origine urbis quodam volumine sic orsum: satis iam sibi gloriae quaesitum, et potuisse se desidere, ni animus inquies pasceretur opere. Profecto enim populi gentium victoris et Romani nominis gloriae, non suae, conposuisse illa decuit; maius meritum esset operis amore, non animi causa, perseverasse, et hoc populo Romano praestitisse, non sibi.

(15) It’s a hard thing to give novelty to the old and authority to the new, sparkle to what’s been scuffed up, light to dim places, pleasantness to what’s scorned, trust to doubts, indeed to everything nature, and to nature all its own. And so, even if I’ve not attained understanding, to have attempted it is an exceedingly beautiful and magnificent thing. (16) Indeed I think that exceptional is the reasoning in the research of those who—after the difficulties have been surpassed—prefer the usefulness of helping, to appreciation for being popular; and this I’ve now done myself in other works, and I confess I’m astonished that Titus Livius, the most distinguished author—in his histories which he begins from the origin of the city—starts in one book something like this: “enough glory has now been sought for himself, and he could have retired, if his restless mind did not need to feed on work.” For certainly it was right that he composed those volumes for the glory of the conquering-people of all nations and for the Roman name, not his own; for the merit would have been greater to have persevered out of love for the project, rather than for one’s own gratification, and to have excelled for the Roman people, not oneself.

(17) Viginti milia rerum dignarum cura—quoniam, ut ait Domitius Piso, thesauros oportet esse, non libros—lectione voluminum circiter duorum milium, quorum pauca admodum studiosi attingunt propter secretum materiae, ex exquisitis auctoribus centum inclusimus triginta sex voluminibus, adiectis rebus plurimis quas aut ignoraverant priores aut postea invenerat vita. (18) Nec dubitamus multa esse quae et nos praeterierint; homines enim sumus et occupati officiis, subsicivisque temporibus ista curamus, id est nocturnis, ne quis vestrum putet his cessatum horis. Dies vobis inpendimus, cum somno valetudinem conputamus, vel hoc solo praemio contenti quod, dum ista (ut ait M. Varro) muginamur, pluribus horis vivimus: (19) profecto enim vita vigilia est. ... (20) Vos quidem omnes, patrem, te fratremque, diximus opere iusto, temporum nostrorum historiam orsi a fine Aufidii. Ubi sit ea quaeres? Iam pridem peracta sancitur; et alioqui statutum erat heredi mandare, ne quid ambitioni dedisse vita iudicaretur ... (21) Argumentum huius stomachi mei habebis quod his voluminibus auctorum nomina praetexui. Est enim benignum (ut arbitror) et plenum ingenui pudoris fateri per quos profeceris, non ut plerique ex his quos attigi fecerunt.

(17) 20,000 items deserving attention—since, as Domitius Piso says, there is need of data collections, not books—by studying about 2,000 volumes, few of which scholars handle, on account of the obscurity of the contents, from 100 choice authors, we have enclosed in 36 volumes, with many additional facts which either previous people have ignored or afterwards life had discovered. (18) Nor do we doubt that many things have escaped us; for we are human, and busy with our duties, and we have worked on these things in our spare time, that is, at night, so that no one of you may think that we are idle during these hours. We spend our days for you, with sleep we calculate our health, or we are content with just this prize that, while (as Marcus Varro said) we dabble around, we sustain ourselves for many hours: (19) for indeed, life is wakefulness. ... (20) Indeed all of you—you, your father and your brother—I’ve spoken about in a proper work, a History of Our Times, undertaken from the end of Aufidius Bassus’ work. Where might it be, you may ask? It has long been finished now, and is inviolable; for the rest, it was decided to entrust it to my heir, so that my life might not be judged to have been given over to ambition ... (21) You will consider, as evidence of this my disposition, that I have furnished up front the names of my sources in these volumes, for it is a generous thing, and replete with character and humility (so I think) to acknowledge those by whom you will have made progress, not like most of those whom I have quoted have done.

Elder proceeds to claim that his work is new for a Roman author, describes the problem of plagiarism, apologizes for not having a catchier title, and admits he did not include everything in his work, as defense against the inevitable literary critics who disparage others while producing little themselves. He finishes:

(33) Quia occupationibus tuis publico bono parcendum erat, quid singulis contineretur libris huic epistulae subiunxi, summaque cura ne legendos eos haberes operam dedi. Tu per hoc et aliis praestabis ne perlegant, sed ut quisque desiderabit aliquid id tantum quaerat, et sciat quo loco inveniat. Hoc ante me fecit in litteris nostris Valerius Soranus in libris quos ἐποπτίδων inscripsit.

(33) Because (for the public good) your public duties must not be hindered, I have attached to this letter what is contained in each of these books, and have made effort with the greatest care so you don’t have to read them through. Thereby you will make sure for others that they need not read them through, but that each person will desire to seek a certain something and will know in what spot they might find it. Valerius Soranus did this before me in Roman literature, in the books he entitled Epoptides (Initiates).²¹

In this preface, basically a cover letter to enclose with the imperial copy of the Natural History for Titus ca. AD 77, Elder Pliny does the following. First, he promotes the worth of his book. He explains how much effort, how much time, and how many specific sources went into his publication (21–22), and armors himself against anticipated critics (28–32). This all implies his production is novel, monumental, and worthy. At the same time, however, he engages in obligatory ingratiation of Titus to contrast with the denigration of his own abilities and ambitions. He says he is not very bright (12: nec ingenii sunt capaces ... in nobis mediocre erat), the work is lightweight (12: levioris operae) and dull (12: [neque] ... iucunda ... blanda), and he is not pursuing fame (16). He has written a contemporary history (20, which includes the reign of Vespasian), but it will only be released after death, to deflect accusations of ambition because of the implied flattery it contains of Titus’ family.²² Finally, there is a table of contents so one can skip to the interesting bits (33).

Section (1) uses language of procreation: the books were “born” (natos) “from him/at his house” (apud me); they are fetura, “offspring.” In section (28), Pliny flips the same metaphor on his philosophical and literary critics, who try to give birth (parturire) to objections, but their gestatation is so slow (iam decem annis) that they never issue live books at birth (abortus facere).²³ Given that his work is a comprehensive investigation of life (13), such metaphors make sense. But his materia, the “stuff” of the project— life, the universe, and everything (rerum natura)—is sterilis, “barren” (13). How do we square the Elder’s excitement over the birth of these scrolls with his apologies for their banality? How do we reconcile his dry concern for the mysteries of life and inevitability of death with his poorly concealed thirst to be remembered and acknowledged? Perhaps in the pithy vita vigilia est (19): “life is being alert,” which speaks to the importance of process over product.²⁴ Pliny lives to work (his scholarship) rather than works to live (his imperial duties). His output is evidence of his indefatigable habits, which define his virtus and mark him as a (modestly self-defined) paragon of the equestrian order, doing his duty for the empire. His exertions are not to ascend the ladder of power, but to enhance his ability to exhibit studium in his studiis.²⁵ Elder Pliny had no human offspring; his books were his children, and perhaps it was only social necessity that required him to adopt someone to whom he could pass on his property and name (heres, “heir”—Younger Pliny, section 20). Younger Pliny faithfully and avidly climbed that social ladder and upgraded the clan name from equestrian to senatorial. There was an often-tense ebb-and-flow of sociopolitical power between the equestrian and senatorial orders which circled around imperial favor. Ripples of that tension can be seen not only in the differences between the Elder’s and Younger’s sentiments, but also between the Younger and one of his own literary students, Suetonius (see below and Ch. 4).²⁶

* * *

In the hagiography of Ep. 3.5, the Younger captures but recasts many of the Elder’s preferences and concerns. First, he catalogs the entirety of his uncle’s publications, two of which the Elder had noted in his preface: the Natural History, and, starting from where a lost work of Aufidius Bassus left off, a History of Our Times (probably stretching from Nero’s reign into the beginning of the Flavian dynasty; preface 19–20).²⁷ Mostly, however, Younger Pliny describes, in detail, his uncle’s daily routine, carefully emphasizing all the hours of night and day and seasons of the year when the Elder tried to fit in scholarship. The letter is addressed to Quintus Baebius Macer, a senator who served as suffect consul in AD 103.²⁸

Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 3.5²⁹

(1) Pergratum est mihi quod tam diligenter libros avunculi mei lectitas, ut habere omnes velis quaerasque qui sint omnes. (2) Fungar indicis partibus, atque etiam quo sint ordine scripti notum tibi faciam; est enim haec quoque studiosis non iniucunda cognitio.

(1) It pleases me that you are so eagerly reading over my uncle’s books such that you wish to have them all and are asking what they all are. (2) I will make out the parts of an index and even make note for you in what order they were written, for this also is not unwelcome information to scholars.

(3) “De iaculatione equestri unus;” hunc cum praefectus alae militaret, pari ingenio curaque composuit. “De vita Pomponi Secundi duo;” a quo singulariter amatus hoc memoriae amici quasi debitum munus exsolvit. (4) “Bellorum Germaniae viginti;” quibus omnia quae cum Germanis gessimus bella collegit. Incohavit cum in Germania militaret, somnio monitus: adstitit ei quiescenti Drusi Neronis effigies, qui Germaniae latissime victor ibi periit, commendabat memoriam suam orabatque ut se ab iniuria oblivionis adsereret. (5) “Studiosi tres,” in sex volumina propter amplitudinem divisi, quibus oratorem ab incunabulis instituit et perficit. “Dubii sermonis octo:” scripsit sub Nerone novissimis annis, cum omne studiorum genus paulo liberius et erectius periculosum servitus fecisset. (6) “A fine Aufidi Bassi triginta unus.” “Naturae historiarum triginta septem,” opus diffusum eruditum, nec minus varium quam ipsa natura.

(3) One volume “On Throwing the Equestrian Javelin”; he composed this work, with equal parts attentiveness and brilliance, while soldiering as a cavalry officer. Two volumes “About the Life of Pompeius Secundus”; by whom my uncle was exceedingly loved. He finished this work as a kind of duty to the memory of his friend. (4) Twenty volumes on “The German Wars,” in which he brought together all the wars we have waged with the Germans. He started it while serving in Germany, having been counseled in a dream. The likeness of Nero Drusus stood by him while sleeping—he who died there, a victor far and wide across Germany. He was entrusting his memory to my uncle and kept begging that my uncle liberate him from the injustice of being forgotten. (5) Three volumes of “The Student,” divided into six parts because of their length, in which he educates the orator from start to finish. Eight volumes of “Problematic Syntax:” he wrote them under Nero in the waning years, when slavery had made dangerous every kind of study that was the slightest independent and ambitious. (6) Thirty-one volumes “from the end of Aufidius Bassus’ history.” Thirty-seven volumes of “Natural History,” a broad and learned study no less varied than nature herself.

(7) Miraris quod tot volumina multaque in his tam scrupulosa homo occupatus absolverit? Magis miraberis si scieris illum aliquamdiu causas actitasse, decessisse anno sexto et quinquagensimo, medium tempus distentum impeditumque qua officiis maximis qua amicitia principum egisse. (8) Sed erat acre ingenium, incredibile studium, summa vigilantia. Lucubrare Vulcanalibus incipiebat non auspicandi causa sed studendi statim a nocte multa, hieme vero ab hora septima vel cum tardissime octava, saepe sexta. Erat sane somni paratissimi, non numquam etiam inter ipsa studia instantis et deserentis.

(7) You might marvel at how such a busy man will have finished so many volumes—and many of them so exacting in detail. You might marvel more if you were to find out that he pleaded legal cases for a considerable time, that he died in his fifty-sixth year, that his in-between time was filled up with, and entangled by, both his immense repsonsibilities and his friendship with the sovereigns. (8) But he had a sharp mind, amazing diligence, and the surpassing ability to stay awake. On the feast day of Vulcan (23 August) he customarily began to work by lamplight, not for the sake of making an auspicious start, but for the sake of studying right from the early hours; indeed, in winter he would begin at midnight or at latest an hour later, and often an hour earlier. To be sure, he was highly liable to drowsiness sometimes even coming on, and leaving, right in the middle of his studies.

(9) Ante lucem ibat ad Vespasianum imperatorem (nam ille quoque noctibus utebatur), inde ad delegatum sibi officium. Reversus domum quod reliquum temporis studiis reddebat. (10) Post cibum saepe (quem interdiu levem et facilem veterum more sumebat) aestate si quid otii iacebat in sole, liber legebatur, adnotabat excerpebatque. Nihil enim legit quod non excerperet; dicere etiam solebat nullum esse librum tam malum ut non aliqua parte prodesset. (11) Post solem plerumque frigida lavabatur, deinde gustabat dormiebatque minimum; mox quasi alio die studebat in cenae tempus. Super hanc liber legebatur adnotabatur, et quidem cursim. (12) Memini quendam ex amicis, cum lector quaedam perperam pronuntiasset, revocasse et repeti coegisse; huic avunculum meum dixisse: “Intellexeras nempe?” Cum ille adnuisset, “Cur ergo revocabas? decem amplius versus hac tua interpellatione perdidimus.” (13) Tanta erat parsimonia temporis. Surgebat aestate a cena luce, hieme intra primam noctis et tamquam aliqua lege cogente.

(9) Before dawn he would go to the Emperor Vespasian (for he also made use of his nighttimes), and then go discharge his official business. After having returned home he would usually devote whatever time was left to study. (10) Often after a meal (which during daytime, he usually ate light and simple, according to the habit of old-timers), in the summer, if he had a bit of free time, he tended to lie under the sun, a book would be read to him, and he would take notes and make selections. For there was nothing he read that he would not excerpt; he even used to say that there was no book so awful that it might not be useful in some aspect. (11) Most of the time after the sunbath he would bathe in cold water, then he’d eat a bite and take a nap; after that he began studying until dinnertime as if it were another day. During the meal, a book would be read and notes taken—and at top speed. (12) I remember one of his friends, when a reader had pronounced some things improperly, called him back and made him repeat them. To this friend my uncle said: “You understood him, didn’t you?” When the man nodded yes, my uncle replied, “Then why were you making him go back? Because of your interruption, we have lost ten lines or more.” (13) Such was his stinginess with time. During summer, he usually got up from dinner while it was still light; in winter, during the first nightime hour, just as if some law was forcing him.

(14) Haec inter medios labores urbisque fremitum. In secessu solum balinei tempus studiis eximebatur (cum dico balinei, de interioribus loquor; nam dum destringitur tergiturque, audiebat aliquid aut dictabat). (15) In itinere quasi solutus ceteris curis, huic uni vacabat: ad latus notarius cum libro et pugillaribus, cuius manus hieme manicis muniebantur, ut ne caeli quidem asperitas ullum studii tempus eriperet; qua ex causa Romae quoque sella vehebatur. (16) Repeto me correptum ab eo, cur ambularem: “poteras” inquit “has horas non perdere”; nam perire omne tempus arbitrabatur, quod studiis non impenderetur. (17) Hac intentione tot ista volumina peregit electorumque commentarios centum sexaginta mihi reliquit, opisthographos quidem et minutissimis scriptos; qua ratione multiplicatur hic numerus. Referebat ipse potuisse se, cum procuraret in Hispania, vendere hos commentarios Larcio Licino quadringentis milibus nummum; et tunc aliquanto pauciores erant.

(14) This [is how it was] amid the duties and the din of the city. On retreat, only time for a bath was usually taken away from his studies (when I say a “bath,” I am speaking of being in the innermost rooms; for while being rubbed down and dried off, he was always listening to, or dictating something). (15) On the road, as if released from other demands, he had time for one thing: a secretary was at his side with a book and writing tablets, whose hands in winter would be fortified by gloves, so that no severity of weather might snatch away any time for study; for that very reason he would also be carried around Rome in a sedan-chair. (16) I recall that I was chided by him because I was walking: “you could have,” he said, “not lost these hours;” for he would always judge that all time was wasted which would not be devoted to study. (17) By this kind of exertion, he completed those volumes, so great in number, and he left me 600 notebooks of selections, written front-to-back even, and in tiny handwriting; by which reckoning this number is multiplied. He himself was always saying that he could have, while serving as procurator in Spain, sold these notebooks to Larcius Licinus for 400,000 sesterces, and at that time, they were considerably fewer in number.

(18) Nonne videtur tibi recordanti, quantum legerit quantum scripserit, nec in officiis ullis nec in amicitia principis fuisse; rursus cum audis quid studiis laboris impenderit, nec scripsisse satis nec legisse? Quid est enim quod non aut illae occupationes impedire aut haec instantia non possit efficere? (19) Itaque soleo ridere cum me quidam studiosum vocant, qui si comparer illi sum desidiosissimus. Ego autem tantum, quem partim publica partim amicorum officia distringunt? Quis ex istis, qui tota vita litteris adsident, collatus illi non quasi somno et inertiae deditus erubescat?

(18) Surely it seems to you, thinking about it—given how much he read and how much he wrote—that he could not have held any formal duties, nor been in the friendship of the emperor; again, when you hear how much work he did put into his studies, does it seem that he neither wrote nor read enough? For what is it that neither these busy-workings could impede, or this perseverance could not accomplish? (19) And so, I’m used to laughing when someone calls me studious, I, who if I were compared to him, am the ultimate layabout. But really, me, whom public obligations and the duties of friends pull apart in both directions? Who among those who devote their entire life to scholarship would not blush, since, compared to him, they are devotees of laziness and sleep?

Younger Pliny starts by acknowledging his correspondent’s eagerness for the Elder’s writing and takes a page from his uncle by crafting an annotated index of all his works. That list forms a mini-biography of the Elder and also expresses the wide range of his interests and expertise.³⁰ But while the Elder played down Natural History’s manifold pleasures (neque ... varios, praef. 12), the Younger characterizes nature’s variety (6) as an attractive literary standard. His uncle’s true virtue and only real passion lay in constant devotion to work, so the Younger catalogs that as well, in terms of daily and seasonal schedules: tanta erat parsimonia temporis (13). Walking was a waste of time (16); though litters were often associated with luxuria, here the Elder converts it to a demonstration of his studium—and Younger avoids both tags.³¹ Furthermore, he could effectively double his time by working at night as the days began shortening (8, 11), just as he was miserly with supplies by writing on both sides of papyrus.³² (The date for his nocturnal practice was the Vulcanalia —in AD 79, the day before the eruption.) The Elder’s attachment to habit (lege cogente) in the same section is relevant to understanding the description of both men’s actions in the Bay of Naples.³³

In particular, Younger Pliny describes in some detail (10–11, 14–15, 17) the steps by which the Elder would process written sources into the commentaries that served as his database, a methodology that reappears in Ep. 6.16.5, 7, 10, 22; 6.20.5 (Chs 4–5), and which both Plinys presumably used.³⁴ First, Pliny read (or was read to) a source, marking passages (or having passages marked) of interest on the scroll (those that ought to be copied and compared to other sources), making personal comments in interlinear and marginal notes, using the back of a scroll if necessary. Later, scribes (slaves) copied the excerpts and notes onto new rolls or other materials, classifying and indexing them, to compile the invaluable commentarii, “notebooks.”

The process would have been slightly different in transit (e.g., Ep. 6.16.10), when observational dictation would have been made on writing tablets (pugillares), later to be copied onto scrolls. The Younger claims it is ridiculous to compare their work ethics (19), seemingly elevating his uncle’s reputation by indirectly praising his own (simultaneously under the guise of personal modesty; the Younger’s ability to say multiple things at once is impressive).³⁵

* * *

In Ep. 5.8, Younger Pliny describes the lure of writing history, a more prestigious form of publication than letters because it eternalizes worthy subjects as moral examples. This gives him a chance again to recall his scrupulous Elder (religiosissime, 5) as an exemplum for his own studium.³⁶ The Elder’s age, experience, and nobility exemplify the prescribed path (recto itinere) a virtuous elite should follow, framed by beauty (pulchrum, 1) and desire (amor et cupido, 2).

Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 5.8.1–2, 4–5³⁷

(1) Suades ut historiam scribam, et suades non solus: multi hoc me saepe monuerunt et ego volo, non quia commode facturum esse confidam (id enim temere credas nisi expertus), sed quia mihi pulchrum in primis videtur non pati occidere, quibus aeternitas debeatur, aliorumque famam cum sua extendere. (2) Me autem nihil aeque ac diuturnitatis amor et cupido sollicitat, res homine dignissima, eo praesertim qui nullius sibi conscius culpae posteritatis memoriam non reformidet. ... (4) Me vero ad hoc studium impellit domesticum quoque exemplum. (5) Avunculus meus idemque per adoptionem pater historias et quidem religiosissime scripsit. Invenio autem apud sapientes honestissimum esse maiorum vestigia sequi, si modo recto itinere praecesserint.

(1) You recommend that I should write a history, and you are not the only one suggesting it: many have often so advised me, and I would like to, not because I believe that I could do it properly (for you might believe that thoughtlessly, if you weren’t an expert), but because it seems to be first of all a beautiful thing not to suffer to perish those who deserve immortality, and to extend the renown of others along with one’s own. (2) For nothing stirs me so much as the love and desire of lasting a long time, a thing most worthy of a person, especially by which he who is aware of no guilt for himself and does not greatly dread the remembrance of posterity.... (4) A familial example also truly drives me to this scholarly zeal. My uncle—likewise my father through adoption—wrote histories oh-so-very devoutly. Indeed I find among the sages that it is the most noble thing to do—to follow the footsteps of one’s elders—if only they have previously passed along the straight-and-narrow.

This letter sees Younger Pliny strongly alluding to Cicero also having been encouraged to write history.³⁸ Pliny is attracted to the idea because the Elder had set a good exemplum (doubling down on the family relationship by calling him both uncle and adopted father). Above all (in primis), he thinks that deserving people ought to be remembered forever (aeternitas), and a historian possesses that special power. Additional benefits are reputational longevity for the historian (diuturnitas), which no upright person should fear, and the delight of their readers. Therefore a good person, by writing well, could ensure that other worthy people not be forgotten (and by so doing also be remembered), while entertaining and informing an audience. The process, the purpose, and the outcomes all add up to a noble and splendid (pulchrum) enterprise.³⁹

* * *

The final major source, the Vita Plinii, has a problematic history of transmission from antiquity, when it was part of a larger collection attributed to Suetonius called De viris illustribus, “On Famous Men.”⁴⁰ There are stylistic reasons and manuscript titles (though no incontrovertible corroboration in another ancient source) to credit Suetonius for the core of the Vita Plinii, though parts appear cribbed from the Younger’s Letters.⁴¹

Plinius Secundus Novecomensis, equestribus militiis industrie functus, procurationes quoque splendidissimas atque continuas summa integritate administravit, et tamen liberalibus studiis tantam operam dedit ut non temere quis plura in otio scripserit. Itaque bella omnia quae unquam cum Germanis gesta sunt. .xxxviii. voluminibus comprehendit; item naturalis historiae. xxxvii. libros absolvit Periit clade Campaniae; nam cum Misenensi classi praeesset et flagrante Vesuvio ad explorandas propius causas liburnica pertendisset neque adversantibus ventis remeare posset, vi pulveris ac favillae oppressus est, vel ut quidam existimant a servo suo occisus, quem deficiens aestu ut necem sibi maturaret oraverat.

Plinius Secundus of Comum, having diligently discharged his equestrian military service, performed a series of illustrious administrative offices with the highest integrity and, meanwhile, turned such great effort toward noble pursuits of learning that someone could hardly have written more during their leisure time. Accordingly, he recounted all the wars that had ever been waged with the Germans, in 38 volumes; likewise, he finished 37 books of Natural History. He died in the disaster in Campania; for while he was in command of the fleet at Misenum, and while Vesuvius was blazing, he had set out in a Liburnian galley in order to explore the causes (of the eruption) nearer at hand, but he was unable to return due to adverse winds; he was smothered by the force of dust and cinders or, as some think, was killed by his slave, whom he (Pliny), failing from the billowing heat, had begged to hasten his death.”

In assigning to the Vita Plinii a publication date, scholarly opinion has ranged between ca. AD 113–128, but Power’s recent study boldly posits a window of AD 105–10.⁴² Chronology matters; it informs what Suetonius and Pliny (and Tacitus, for that matter) all knew of each other’s in-process treatments of the Elder Pliny’s life and death. Suetonius was the younger contemporary; the Younger Pliny helped Suetonius significantly in his political and literary career.⁴³ Recent research suggests the following timeline:⁴⁴

· Preexisting stories about the Elder’s death were in circulation;

· Pliny published the biographical Ep. 3.5 of his uncle (ca. AD 103–04);

· Tacitus, researching the Histories, asked about Elder’s death (ca. 105–06);

· Pliny responded with the original version of Ep. 6.16;

· Tacitus requested more detail;

· Pliny responded with the original of Ep. 6.20;

· Tacitus published his version in an installment of the Histories (ca. AD 105–6);

· Pliny published revised editions of the Vesuvian letters (early AD 108);

· Suetonius published the Vita Plinii (ca. AD 108–09).

Younger Pliny, Suetonius, and Tacitus were all thinking about, writing, advising, sharing, and revising material between AD 103–10, essentially from the publication of Tacitus’ Dialogus de oratoribus to Pliny’s publication of the nine books of his Epistulae and his departure to govern Bithynia and Pontus (Figure 1.4).⁴⁵ The Younger wanted the Elder immortalized, and he could make that happen if he hectored Suetonius to publish his De viris illustribus (which presumably included the Vita Plinii) and provided a juicy enough story in Ep. 6.16 and 6.20 for Tacitus’ Histories, and then published (elaborated?) versions of those same letters himself (in addition to Ep. 3.5 and 5.8)—just to be sure.⁴⁶ How this played out with respect to specifics of the Vesuvian letters becomes apparent in Chs 4–5.

Figure 1.4 Map of the Roman Empire, ca. AD 106. Geographic information: Talbert, ed., Barrington Atlas; ESRI, ArcGIS, P. Foss.

* * *

Let’s encapsulate his life. The young Elder Pliny was of the equestrian order and so belonged to a local, freeborn wealthy elite.⁴⁷ By AD 38–39 he was in Rome, being educated by Pomponius Secundus (mentioned in Ep. 3.5.3, previously).⁴⁸ In his early twenties, he had begun to work his way through the usual series of military assignments for knights: cohort commander (praefectus cohortis), legionary staff officer (tribunus militum), and commander of an auxiliary cavalry unit (praefectus alae equitum).⁴⁹ We have one piece of epigraphic data about Pliny’s military career. In 1854, after their owner, a Hungarian antiquarian named Gabriel Fejérváry, had died, a set of silvered brass military horse-trappings (metal roundels, pendants, loops, clips, bosses, and buckle pieces once attached to leather straps, saddle, harnessing, and a bridle) was purchased by the British Museum.⁵⁰ The pieces had been found at the military camp of Castra Vetera (modern Xanten), located on the lower Rhine, probably buried prior to the camp’s destruction by a revolt of the Batavian tribe in AD 69–70 (Figure 1.4).⁵¹ One large roundel, A3, has an inscription comprised of indentations that spell out: PLINIO PRAEF(ECTO) EQ(UITUM), “from Pliny, cavalry commander.”⁵² This piece was likely issued by Elder Pliny to a cavalry officer, Titus Capitonius Marianus, whose name is punched on a pendant that went with the roundel. Younger Pliny’s Ep. 3.5.4 informs us that the Elder soldiered in Germany and authored a twenty-volume work that covered all the wars that Rome had waged against German tribes up to that time (the Vita Plinii says 38 volumes). It was during his decade or more in military service, ca. AD 47–57, that the Elder worked out his first three publications and saw plenty of the Rhine Valley.⁵³ Toward the end of that stint, he made a key friend: he was a tent-mate (contubernalis) with Titus Flavius Vespasianus, the future emperor to whom he would dedicate his Natural History.⁵⁴

Sometime around AD 59–60, Elder Pliny had returned to Italy; his tutor, Pomponius Secundus, had died, and our trail of evidence thins out.⁵⁵ It is probably during the Neronian 60s when Elder might have finished the military books he had begun during his service, and definitely when he started new works on oratory and the Latin language; his publication on grammar, Dubii Sermonis, has been narrowed down to AD 62–68.⁵⁶ The Elder suggests he took a lot of criticism for those works (Historia Naturalis, praef. 28) from the experts. The Younger Pliny, for his part, tries perhaps a bit hard to defend those publications (3.5.5) by saying it was dangerous to be adventurous under Nero; but even today, scholars often cringe when talking about Pliny’s “style” as it survives in the Natural History: a difficult blend of simple sobriety and bewilderingly florid ellipticity.⁵⁷ Pliny himself apologizes (praef. 13: cum honoris praefatione) for using technical, foreign (externis), or common (rusticis) words, which are necessary and appropriate for rendering accurate and specific detail about the world he is distilling.⁵⁸ Specifically, although using Greek sources throughout his work, Elder Pliny does not hide his animosity for Greek culture.⁵⁹ For Pliny, the most “Greek” of emperors was Nero, who embodied all the Greek vices and none of their virtues.

The Elder’s fortunes languished under Nero, an emperor he often maligns in his work.⁶⁰ But his luck turned after the Year of the Four Emperors (AD 69), when Titus Flavius Vespasianus (the Elder), the father of his army buddy Titus (the Younger), arrived from Judaea to Rome to take the throne. From this point, which marks Elder Pliny’s return to public life, there has been much discussion over what procuratorial posts he held, where, and when. The candidates follow this sequence: “Gallia Narbonensis, Africa, Hispania Tarraconensis, and Gallia Belgica” (see Figure 1.4).⁶¹ The Vita Plinii (above) does state: procurationes quoque splendidissimas atque continuas, which tells us three things: his assignments were plural, prestigious, and back-to-back.⁶² A conservative reading of the evidence confirms only one post (Hispania Tarraconensis), with different levels of circumstantial evidence for the others.⁶³ Given the wide scope and detail of the HN, however, it seems highly likely, indeed necessary, that Elder Pliny traveled extensively (whether in an official capacity or not) across the empire.

By about AD 76–77, Elder Pliny received what would be his final assignment: admiral of the western imperial fleet, headquartered at Misenum, the northwest corner of the Bay of Naples (Figures 1.5–1.6, 4.1).⁶⁴ Pliny probably shuttled back and forth between Misenum and Rome to do that job (Ch. 4, 6.16.4); there is no evidence about whether or how frequently his sister Plinia or his nephew (Younger Pliny) accompanied him. The position of commander at Misenum had been a tricky one during the AD 69 civil wars; three prefects had betrayed their loyalty and their troops to the Vespasianic faction (see Ch. 4, 6.16.4). Starting with the emperor Claudius, imperial freedmen had commanded the fleet, but after Otho, the assignment was given back to equestrians, as had originally been the case under Augustus.⁶⁵ By AD 76, the situation was settled; the Elder Pliny must have been considered a safe pair of hands. It was not such an unduly onerous assignment that it prevented him completing his magnum opus and dedicating it to Titus.⁶⁶

Figure 1.5 Map of the Bay of Naples in AD 79; pre-eruption topography and coastline, cities, roads, aqueduct system, and Elder Pliny’s projected route. Sources: Lorenz et al., “Prominent features”; Illiano, “Misenum”; Vogel and Märker, “Reconstructing”; Talbert, ed., Barrington Atlas. GIS: B. Wilkerson, P. Foss, Salve Project, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Berlin.Figure 1.6 Tabula Peutingeriana, Segment V, copy of ca. AD 1200 after a fourth-c. AD original, Bay of Naples, detail. Codex Vindobonensis 324, Österreichische Nationalbibliotek, http://data.onb.ac.at/rec/AC13945113. Misenum is unnamed at the tip of the left-hand peninsula; Stabiae (Stabios) sits in the corner of the Bay at right. The Via Minervia is shown from Stabiae to the Temple of Athena (Tempł Minervę). Mountain symbology indicates Vesuvius between Oplontis and Ad Teglanum. Herculaneum (Herclanium) is at center next to Naples (Neapoli); to its left, the arched symbol with two openings represents the Crypta Neapolitana, a tunnel that carried the road and aqueduct from Naples to Puteoli (Puteolis). A coastal road also led from Misenum to Cumae (Cumas).

Pliny’s Big Book was of course the Historia Naturalis, an encyclopedic account that must have been in progress for many years, even prior to the “safe” period of Vespasian’s rule.⁶⁷ The HN is a kind of literary infrastructure project, that is, a work of Roman verbal engineering that reproduced and reinforced the order of the physical, lived world within the arrangement of his text. Recent scholarship has stressed two interrelated aspects of this strategy. First, that Elder Pliny consciously aimed for a kind of “objective totality” of knowledge—that the world existed as represented in Pliny’s text. Second, that his was a nationalistic project that firmly anchored Rome at the center of that world.

In praef. 14 (above), Pliny states, attingenda quae Graeci τῆς ἐγκυκλίου παιδείας vocant, “all those things must be dealt with that the Greeks call ‘an encompassing education.’” From this Greek phrase, the term “encyclopedia” emerged in the late 15th century in the works of Italian Renaissance humanists, such as Angelo Poliziano and Erasmus (thence to French scholars, such as Budé and Rabelais, and beyond), who celebrated an esoteric learning that went into deeper detail and ranged more universally than contemporary practical education.⁶⁸ The “encyclopedia” as understood today, however, was not an ancient literary genre.⁶⁹ In fact, the phrase might be read differently than how it usually is, and closer to its appearance in the actual manuscripts. The Teubner text introduces the sentence as ante omnia attingenda, but this is Mayhoff’s preference to the an omnia that appears in the majority of manuscripts. The other usual reading is iam omnia.⁷⁰ If we accept an, however, the sentence could read as a rhetorical question. In that case, the Elder wonders aloud if he has to cover all of that boring preparatory material that ἐγκυκλίου παιδείας generally denoted (he doesn’t and he won’t), and the entire problem of whether Pliny is referring to his own HN with this phrase can be avoided.⁷¹

The next section (15) then reads as a series of parallel contrasts between what Pliny wants to do and what is usually done. He wants novitatem (novelty), auctoritatem (authority), nitorem (sparkle), lucem (insight), gratiam (pleasantness), and fidem (reliability), but the subject matter is vetustis (old), obsoletis (dusty), obscuris (dim), fastiditis (repugnant), and dubiis (problematic). The solution is to set Nature as the subject (omnibus vero naturam et naturae sua omnia). While the project will be difficult (ardua) because of its sheer scale, it is a massively beautiful thing to try.

Pliny drew upon Greek sources, and, based on internal references, looked back particularly to Roman scholars such as Marcus Porcius Cato, the Elder (ca. 234–149 BC), Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC), and Aulus Cornelius Celsus (ca. 25 BC–AD 50).⁷² Pliny set about the challenge of collecting, sorting, cataloging, and writing his universe as he knew and experienced it, as he had read from others about it, and as he conceptualized it through the lens of a wealthy Roman with administrative and military authority. His innovation, he claims in praef. 14, was to have tried capturing an especially wide array of subjects. He presents himself as a global librarian, offering a kind of obvious objectivity in the comprehensiveness, classification, arrangement, content, and verifiability of his information. But it is anachronistic to understand the HN as an “encyclopedia,” even if that misunderstanding gave rise to the very thing we call encyclopedias today.⁷³ Perhaps it is better to say that the HN became an encyclopedia over time. Meanwhile, during his own time, the project of capturing the world in 37 volumes was meant to affirm, reinforce, and preserve Roman primacy and imperial order (praef. 16).⁷⁴

For the Elder, Roman supremacy was natural, historically inevitable, and demonstrated not just by his data, but by his metadata: themes, topics, organization, indices, and categories of source citations: facts (res), historical memory (historiae), and Pliny’s own direct accounts (observationes).⁷⁵ The last section of the preface (33) mentions one paratextual aid: the index (Table of Contents, which immediately follows the Preface and acts as Book 1) and demonstrates another: the source citation of Valerius Soranus. Pliny highlights his production technique and the importance of process: even more important than knowing is finding, and so he closes his cover letter by drawing attention to the relevant feature for his readers: sciat quo loco inveniat, “they will know in what spot they might find it.”⁷⁶

The product will only be useful if the process is worthy. That process is difficult (praef. 15: res ardua), so he inserts himself as a guide to the reader’s searches, and browses through arcane information (within the work and beyond) by verbally hovering over their shoulder, offering context, direction arrows, and asides.⁷⁷ The Elder Pliny’s goal is utility and helpfulness (what the Elder prefers in praef. 16: utilitatem iuvandi)—the joy of knowing someone is using what he built. For the Younger Pliny, however, the goal is opposite (what the Elder defers in praef. 16: gratiae placendi): the pleasure of fame. Just so in Ep. 5.8.2: me autem nihil aeque ac diuturnitatis amor et cupido sollicitat, res homine dignissima, “For nothing stirs me so much as the love and desire of longevity.” Four times in HN, praef. 16, the Elder chooses work well done for the state over being recognized personally. The Elder performs his day job for the empire because it provides him with access and means to research (studium); the Younger’s motivation is prestige and lasting renown.⁷⁸ There is no doubt that the Younger admires the Elder, but it is a complex emotion, blended with a reassessment of priorities and values; the Younger, despite serving under his own bad emperor, chose an alternate ambition for himself (Ch. 4: Ep. 6.16.7). They do share some common vocabulary; Ep. 5.8.1 and Historia Naturalis praef. 15 both use the word pulchrum to denote something conceptually and morally beautiful; for the Elder, it is an honest effort at doing something eminently useful but terribly difficult; for the Younger, it is keeping alive the reputation of deserving individuals (e.g., the Elder, but not excluding himself, either).

A true death for the Elder would have been historical oblivion; his Natural History would not have been very useful if few were consulting it.⁷⁹ The eagerness implicit in the Younger’s own efforts to explain at some length the works and worth of his uncle in Ep. 3.5, 5.8, and 6.16 seem to be solid contemporary evidence for a less than robust distribution. But recent scholarship has pushed back against an obscure reception in antiquity, arguing that the Younger Pliny was deeply familiar with the HN, and expected his correspondents to be similarly aware (I agree).⁸⁰ Still, at the time, the reputation and durability of any work was not guaranteed, so Younger Pliny was doing his best to promote it. The Elder seems rather less bothered about the distribution of his own books; in a place where he might promote it more vigorously (being proud of his tables of contents), he constructs a negative scenario: praef. 33: ... ne perlegant, “(make sure that others) need not read them through.” Most importantly for the purposes of this study, the Younger digested the habits of his uncle’s research process, consciously revealing his enaction of that process in Ep. 6.16 and 6.20, meant to ensure literary immortality for both Plinys.

And so, by the end of AD 77, the Elder Pliny, often perhaps with his sister and teenage nephew in tow, split his time largely between Rome and Misenum, ostensibly retired from his writing projects (but can we imagine that he did not continue to revise the HN?).⁸¹ In Ch. 4, Ep. 6.16 will show him taking just such a chance to acquire delicious firsthand detail about a massive volcanic eruption in his own backyard, and with all of the resources of an imperial naval base at his disposal. His intense, innate, and cultivated curiosity would not have had it any other way.⁸² Curiosity, and its accompanying emotion of wonder, were characteristics of the Elder Pliny’s mind: to be prepared for opportunity, to recognize it, to delve into it, and grow and change from it; this is what it meant to live.⁸³ Praef. 19: vita vigilia est.

The Younger Pliny

As with the Elder, a limited set of documents provide evidence for Pliny the Younger’s life and immediate family. (As with the Elder, we have no ancient likeness, so Figure 1.7.) First, details survive in his literary production (the Epistulae and his paean of thanks to the Emperor Trajan on the occasion of becoming suffect consul: the Panegyricus). In addition, ten distinct inscriptions survive: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL) 5.5262–64, 5.5279, 5.5667, 6.1552 (=11.5272), Supplementa Italica 745–46, the Fasti Ostienses fragment Fl, and L’Année Epigraphique 1972, no. 212.⁸⁴ Finally, there are more than 150 brickstamps from the “Tuscan villa” of Younger Pliny just above ancient Tifernum Tiberinum (Città di Castello) in Umbria, which read “C.P.C.S.,” i.e., “Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus.”⁸⁵ The most important epigraphic sources appear below (in chronological order, as can best be determined), with brief commentary, followed by a biographical sketch of the Younger Pliny (the tradition of a potted life began in 1506, with Cattaneo’s text and commentaries on the Epistulae).⁸⁶ Pliny himself wished to provide biographical highlights in the context of (often post-mortem) commemorative building dedications—the reason most of these inscriptions were carved.⁸⁷

Figure 1.7 Portrait of Pliny the Younger from the pirated version of Johannes Maria Catanaeus, C. Plinii Caecilii Secundi Epistolae, Venice: Johannes Rubeus Vercellensis, 1519, 3r, woodcut.

CIL 5.5279, from Comum, used as an altar table in the parish church of Saint Leonardo in Intimiano (southeast of Como); mid-first century AD. (Parentheses indicate text that fills out abbreviations.)⁸⁸

· L(ucius) Caecilius L(uci) f(ilius) Cilo

· IIIIvir a(edilicia) p(otestate)

· qui testamento suo n(ummum) X̅X̅X̅X̅ municipibus Comensibus

· legavit ex quorum reditu quotannis per Neptunalia oleum

· in campo et in thermis et balineis omnibus quae sunt

· Comi populo praeberetur t(estamento) f(ieri) i(ussit) et

· L(ucio) Caecilio L(uci) f(ilio) Valenti et P(ublio) Caecilio L(uci) f(ilio) Secundo et Lutullae Picti f(iliae) contubernali

· Aetas properavit faciendum fuit noli plangere mater mater

· rogat quam primum ducatis se ad vos

Lucius Caecilius Cilo, son of Lucius, quattuorvir with the power of an aedile, who in accordance with his will, left 40,000 sesterces⁸⁹ to the citizens of Comum, from the proceeds of which, every year, during the feast of Neptune, oil should be provided to the people on the sporting field and in all the grand and modest baths that are in Comum. And he ordered that his will be executed for Lucius Caecilius Valens, son of Lucius, and Publius Caecilius Secundus, son of Lucius, and for Lutulla, daughter of Pictus, housemate. A lifetime has flown by. It had to happen. Don’t cry, mother; mother asks that you bring her to you as soon as possible.

This inscription authors the dedication of Cilo, a familial ancestor of Pliny in the gens Caecilia (such as a great-uncle, though he is also an unfancied candidate for Pliny’s father), a man of equestrian rank.⁹⁰ It shows a family tradition of localized political ambition (as a quattuorvir with authority over public buildings, streets, the food supply, and public festivals or games, Cilo has risen to the junior chief magistracy) and generosity (his private bequest of oil).⁹¹ There are two voices of address: a third-person account of Cilo’s success and bequest with his name in the nominative, and a second-person emotional appeal. In the latter case and the last two lines, the author or authors (presumably Cilo’s child/ren, perhaps including the heirs mentioned in the inscription) poetically express their mother’s longing to join her husband in the afterlife. The register of the appeal differs by gender. They address their mother in the familiar second-person singular imperative (noli plangere) and their father using the more formal second-person plural (ducatis ... ad vos).⁹² In neither case does she speak for herself. These sentiments are not original; they belong to a trope that appears to have begun in the Augustan period; properavit aetas, faciendum fuit, and noli plangere/plorare mater feature in several other funerary inscriptions across Italy and Gaul.⁹³ The inscription therefore has honorific, sociopolitical, legal, and funerary functions.

Supplementa Italica 745-46, from Comum; both fragments found in the garden of the Liceo Alesssandro Volta on Via Cesare Cantù; ca. AD 76–79 (Figure 1.2). The surviving portion of 746 simply repeats parts of the last lines of 745, though not identically arranged. (Parentheses indicate text that fills out abbreviations.) [Brackets enclose words missing from the original that have been restored.]⁹⁴

· [Caeci]liae f(iliae) suae nomin[e] L(ucius) Ca[e-

· ciliu]s C(ai) f(ilius) Ouf(entina tribu) Secundus, praef(ectus)

· [fabr(um)] á có(n)s(ule), (quatttuor)vir i(ure) d(icundo), pontif(ex), tem-

· [plum] Aéternitáti Rómae et Augu[s]-

· [tór(um) c]um porticibus et órnámen-

· tis incohávit,

· [—Caeci]lius Secundus f(ilius) dédic(avit).

· [--- templum]

· Aéternitáti Rómae et Au]gustór[um]

· [cum porticib(us) et órnáme]nt(is) incoh[ávit],

· [- Caecilius Secundus] f(ilius) dédic[ávit].

· (Combined translation of both inscriptions):

“In the name of his daughter Caecilia, Lucius Caecilius Secundus, son of Caius, of the Oufentina tribe, (named) chief builder by the consul; member of the four-man magistracy with juridical authority; priest; began to build a temple to the Eternity of Rome and the Augusti along with its porticoes and furnishings; Caecilius Secundus, his son, dedicated it.”

These two inscriptions record the construction and dedication of a temple to the imperial cult in Comum. Again in the nominative, Lucius Caecilius Secundus began the project in the name of his daughter Caecilia (who must have passed away), but he also died prior to its completion, so it was finished by his son Caecilius Secundus (the Younger Pliny) once he had come of age. We therefore learn the full name of Pliny’s father and the name of the family’s tribe. Oufentina was tribe XVI; it belonged to the “rural” category of the 35 tribes by which Roman citizens were organized to vote (it had nothing to do per se with local ethnic affiliation in Transpadana). It had been established for a part of Latium near Tarracina in 318 BC and was later expanded to include (among others) the communities of Comum and Mediolanum (Milan).⁹⁵ Mention of the tribe is common on inscriptions from the area; it advertises a claim on both geography and suffrage; despite its artificiality, it is a marker of local pride. We also discover that Pliny had a sister, who is otherwise unattested. Finally, we can recognize Pliny’s nomen and cognomen prior to his adoption by the Elder Pliny, a nomenclature he never uses in his surviving Letters, which preference his uncle-given name in their salutations.⁹⁶ His praenomen was either Lucius—the name of his father, or Caius—the name he used in later inscriptions and correspondence, and which was either his own or (more likely) taken from his uncle (Caius Plinius Secundus) upon adoption.⁹⁷

Pliny’s father was of equestrian rank, judging from the title of praefectus fabrum, which denotes top-level supervision over a group of military or civil craftsmen, akin perhaps in this case to a city engineer.⁹⁸ Because of its responsibility, it is a prestigious post, and the author emphasizes that prestige by adding that the appointment was made by a consul. In fact, he rose one step higher than his relative in CIL 5.5279 above (if they were related), earning the senior magistracy of the town, a quattuorvir who had the power to pronounce legal decisions. His generation’s dedication (a temple with colonnades and decoration) is more substantial, more expensive, and more permanent than the previous generation and was announced by not one, but two dedicatory inscriptions. Finally, we see a more blatant declaration of allegiance to Roman authority and its political system, in which the imperial family is elevated to divine status. The family has opted fully into the Roman scheme of social advancement.

Fasti Ostienses, Fragment Fl, from Ostia, the port of Rome, late second century AD, though the date and names of the consuls would have been officially recorded when they took office—in this case, the year when the emperor Trajan and Sextus Julius Frontinus were consules ordinarii (i.e., AD 100):⁹⁹

[k(alendis) Sept(embribus)] C(aius) Iulius Cornutus, C(aius) Plínius Secundus

“Suffect consuls, on the first of September: Caius Julius Cornutus and Caius Plinius Secundus.”

In this official, public list of consuls, Pliny chooses to use his tripartite adopted name, leaving out his father’s clan name (Caecilius). He has thereby adopted his maternal nomen in place of the paternal, which was unusual for the Fasti.¹⁰⁰ It was not unheard of (though not common) for consuls to list four names on the Fasti if they had them, so this seems a conscious choice on Pliny’s behalf. He is adopting a new historical identity along with his new name: he is both himself and his uncle now.¹⁰¹ Pliny held the office from 1 September to 31 October, AD 100.

L’Année Epigraphique 1972, no. 212, from Comum, found in 1970 at the corner of Via Cinque Giornate and Viale Varese (Figure 1.2); AD 100 or shortly thereafter:¹⁰²

· C(aio) Plinio L(uci) filio Ouf(entina)

· Caecilio Secundo

· co(n)s(uli), M(arcus) Cassius Comic(us)

“To Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, son of Lucius, of the Oufentina tribe, consul; Marcus Cassius Comicus (dedicated this).”

This hometown inscription carries the Younger’s full adult name, which fuses the clan name of his birth (Caecilius) with the full name of his adoptive uncle, while still proclaiming his tribal affiliation. It uses this formula, popular among the aristocracy in the first through second centuries AD: adoptive praenomen + adoptive nomen + original nomen + original cognomen.¹⁰³ Pliny is addressed in the dative as the dedicatee, and the dedicator is not otherwise known. The only office named is consul (his highest political appointment, listed first on all subsequent inscriptions). It is likely that it was carved to mark that occasion; the Comum area had already produced two famous consuls (Lucius Verginius Rufus, the Younger’s tutor, in AD 63, 69, and 97, and Corellius Rufus in AD 78).¹⁰⁴ It also caps the local family’s ascent from the equestrian to the senatorial order, though Pliny had already joined that body as a quaestor Augusti around AD 87.¹⁰⁵

Pliny was a novus homo, a “new man,” a term used in two senses: meaning, generally, the first man of senatorial rank in one’s family, and specifically, the first to attain the consulship in a family.¹⁰⁶ During the Roman Republic, such an individual had to have striven particularly hard to break through the patrician near-monopoly on administrative power; notable examples include Marcus Porcius Cato “The Elder” (195 BC), Gaius Marius (107 BC), and Marcus Tullius Cicero (63 BC). We are indebted to the latter for most of the examples that define the term. Under the principate, however, consuls were appointed by the emperor, and by the end of Tiberius’ reign (AD 14–37), new men in the consulship were becoming frequent. The increasing practice of appointing suffect (replacement) consuls during the year gave wider honorary opportunity for families to be so enobled. By Pliny’s day, it was commonplace.¹⁰⁷

Pliny himself refers to the integration of old and new senatorial families in his Panegyricus speech to Trajan, occasioning his own consulship on 1 September, AD 100: deterior esset condicio eorum qui posteros habere nobiles mererentur, quam eorum qui parentes habuissent? “Why should the circumstance of those who deserve to have noble descendants be worse than that of those who have had noble ancestors?”¹⁰⁸ Pliny credits both traditional nobility and the worthy ambition of new blood. He lauds what seems to him a just and benificent imperial system of meritocracy. This inscribed base probably held a statue of Pliny, and was a third-party gift by Comicus, presumably for private display.¹⁰⁹

CIL 5.5667, from Vercellae (Fecchio, Figure 1.1), about 10 km southeast of Comum, in the territory of Mediolanum (Milan); ca. AD 104-108:¹¹⁰

· C(aio) Plini[o L(uci) F(ilio)]

· Ouf(entina) Caec[ilio]

· Secundo [c]o(n)s(uli)

· augur(i) cur(atori) alv(ei) Tib(eris)

· e[t ri]p(arum) et cloac(arum) urb(is)

· p[raef(ecto) a]er(arii) Sat(urni) praef(ecto)

· aer(arii) mil[it(aris)] q(uaestori) Imp(eratoris)

· sevir(o) eq(uitum) R(omanorum) tr(ibuno) m[i]l(itum)

· leg(ionis) III Gall(icae) Xviro

· stl(itibus) iud(icandis) fl(amini) divi T(iti) Aug(usti)

· Vercellens(es)

To Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, son of Lucius, of the Oufentina tribe, consul; augur; curator of the riverbed and banks of the Tiber and of the city sewers; prefect of the treasury of Saturn; prefect of the military treasury; quaestor of the emperor; magistrate on the board of six for Roman equestrians; military tribune of the Third Gallic legion; magistrate on the board of ten for judging legal disputes; priest of the deified Titus Augustus; the people of Vercellae (set this up).

Here is the first extant and extended epigraphic version of the Younger Pliny’s career, lacking only his final appointment to govern the province of Bithynia and Pontus. It is a largely intact honorific inscription to Pliny (his name in the dative) by the people of Vercellae. One position not listed elsewhere is the priesthood of the imperial cult for Titus, who of course was emperor when Vesuvius erupted. Since Titus died shortly afterwards, it seems likely that this honor was bestowed in the early 80s when Pliny was in his early twenties.¹¹¹ The position carried merely local municipal prestige in that northern town, which may be why the people of Vercellae felt it important to include, and why Pliny’s other career inscriptions do not.¹¹² Most discussion of this inscription turns on its mention of praefectus aerari militaris (supervision of the military treasury), during the mid-late 90s, possibly when Pliny claims to have been suffering under the final tyrannic years of Domitian (see below).¹¹³ Mention of the post is extant elsewhere only on the Great Comum Inscription (below, CIL 5.5262).

CIL 5.5263, from Comum. Before it was discovered, it lay upside down as a step in a local house; ca. 1500 Benedetto Giovio affixed the inscription to the S exterior corner of the Cathedral, where it still resides (Figure 1.2).¹¹⁴ It dates between ca. AD 104–113:¹¹⁵

· C(aio) Plinio L(uci) F(ilio)

· Ouf(entina) Caecilio

· Secundo co(n)s(uli)

· aug(uri) cur(atori) alvei Tiber(is)

· et rip[ar(um) et cloac]a[(rum)] urb(is)

To Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, son of Lucius, of the Oufentina tibe, consul; augur; curator of the riverbed and banks of the Tiber and of the city sewers.

This inscription confirms the readings of the other, longer inscriptions. Its form is very close, though not identical, to CIL 5.5667. It could be earlier, later, or roughly contemporary; there is no way to know now if it once included mention of Pliny’s post in Bithynia and Pontus. Like the other career inscriptions, it also mentions his infrastructural administration of drainage problems in Rome: the frequently flooding Tiber and sewer network (see below).

CIL 11.5272 from Hispellum (Spello); the text of the same inscription appears as CIL 6.1552; after Pliny’s death in ca. AD 111–113. The text was carved across two large vertically set blocks (totalling ca. 4 m. wide by 1.5 m. tall), which would have adorned an (unidentified) monumental building, perhaps a temple.¹¹⁶ Both pieces of the lower block were still visible in the 18th c., but only one piece remains today. As with the other inscriptions, the letters and punctuation would have been picked out with colored paint.¹¹⁷ The reconstructed text (which would have started with Pliny’s name, lineage, and other titles, as usual) is:¹¹⁸

· [C(aius) Plinius L(uci) f(ilius) Ouf(entina) Caecilius Secundus co(n)s(ul) augur]

· [Xviro stlit(ibus) iudicand(is) tri(bunus) mil(itum) leg(ionis) III Galli]ca[e]

· [sevir eq(uitum) R(omanorum) quaestor Imperatori]s trib(unus) plebis pr(aetor)

· [praef(ectus) aer(arii) milit(aris) praef(ectus) aer(arii) Saturni cur(ator) alvei] Tiberis ex s(enatus) c(onsulto) pro

· [consulari potestate legatus pr(o) pr(aetore) provinciae Ponti] et Bithyniae et legatus

· [in eam ab Imp(eratore) Caes(are) Nerva Traiano Aug(usto) missus testame]nto [fieri] iussit.

Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, son of Lucius, of the Oufentina tribe, consul; augur; magistrate on the board of ten for judging legal disputes; military tribune of the Third Gallic legion; magistrate on the board of six for Roman equestrians; quaestor of the emperor; tribune of the plebs; praetor; prefect of the military treasury; prefect of the treasury of Saturn; curator of the riverbed and banks of the Tiber; in accordance with a decree of the senate, praetorian legate with proconsular power for the province of Bithynia and Pontus and sent to that province by the emperor Caesar Nerva Trajan Augustus Germanicus, ordered this to be made according to his will.

This inscription largely repeats, and in places helps fill, lost portions of the Great Comum Inscription (below), particularly the nature of Pliny’s provincial administrative post in Bithynia and Pontus, which had proconsular rather than consular authority.¹¹⁹ Similarly, Pliny’s name is in the nominative case here, indicating that he is the author, who likely arranged in his will for this very text to be spelled out in stone.¹²⁰

CIL 5.5262, the “Great Comum Inscription”; after Pliny’s death in ca. AD 111–113 (Figure 1.8). Measuring ca. 3 m. wide by 1.6 m. tall, it was originally set up in Pliny’s hometown of Comum, probably affixed to one of the public buildings Pliny funded (i.e., the baths or library mentioned in the inscription, possibly at the Viale Lecco location [Figure 1.2]).¹²¹ The inscription was eventually broken up, moved to Milan, and the pieces reused for a sarcophagus of King Lothair II of Italy (who died in 950) in the Basilica of St. Ambrose in Milan.¹²² Only the inscription’s upper-left corner survives today, set into the east end of the southeast wall of the basilica’s atrium. Three other portions of the inscription which had been reused as building material for tombs in the Middle Ages were copied down starting in the 15th c., before those fragments were lost at some unknown time; two other portions have never been found, and so require restoration based on other inscriptions and standard epigraphic patterns.¹²³

· C(aius) Plinius L(uci) f(ilius) Ouf(entina tribu) Caecilius [Secundus co(n)s(ul)]

· augur legat(us) pro pr(aetore) provinciae Pon[ti et Bithyniae pro-]

· consulari potesta[te] in eam provinciam e[x senatus consulto ab]

· Imp(eratore) Caesar(e) Nerva Traiano Aug(usto) German[ico Dacico p(ater) p(atriae) missus]

· curator alvei Ti[b]eris et riparum et [cloacarum urbis]

· praef(ectus) aerari Satu[r]ni praef(ectus) aerari mil[itaris pr(aetor) trib(unus) plebis]

· quaestor Imp(eratoris) sevir equitum [Romanor(um) turmae --]

· trib(unus) milit(um) leg(ionis) [III] Gallica[e in provincia Syria Xvir stli-]

· tib(us) iudicand(is) therm[as ex HS ---. ] adiectis in

· ornatum HS C̅C̅C̅ [--- et eo amp]lius in tutela[m]

· C̅C̅ t(estamento) f(ieri) i(ussit) [item in alimenta] libertor(um) suorum homin(um) C

· |X̅V̅I̅I̅I̅|L̅X̅V̅I̅ DCLXVI rei [public(ae) legavit quorum inc]rement(a) postea ad epulum

· [p]leb(is) urban(ae) voluit pertin[ere --- item vivu]s dedit in aliment(a) pueror(um)

· et puellar(um) pleb(is) urban(ae) [D̅ --- item bybliothecam et] in tutelam bybliothe-

· cae C̅

Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, son of Lucius, of the Oufentina tribe, consul; augur; praetorian legate with proconsular power for the province of Bithynia and Pontus, sent to that province in accordance with a decree of the senate by the emperor Nerva Trajan Augustus Germanicus Dacicus, father of the fatherland; curator of the riverbed and banks of the Tiber and of the city sewers; prefect of the treasury of Saturn; prefect of the military treasury; praetor; tribune of the plebs; quaestor of the emperor; commander of a squadron of Roman equestrians; military tribune of the Third Gallic legion in the province of Syria; magistrate on the board of ten for judging legal disputes. According to his will, he ordered public baths to be built at a cost of . . . with an additional 300,000 sesterces for furnishing them, and beyond that, 200,000 for their maintenance. Additionally, he bequeathed to his city a sum of 1,866,666 sesterces¹²⁴ to support 100 of his freedmen, the interest on which he wished subsequently to be spent on an annual dinner for the urban plebs. Likewise, while alive he gave 500,000 sesterces to support the boys and girls of the urban plebs, and also 100,000 for the upkeep of the library.

Figure 1.8 “Great Comum Inscription,” Mommsen, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 5.5262, Basilica of St. Ambrose, Milan. Composite image emended from the diagram in De Agostini, L’Età romana, 19, of a display in the Museo Civico Archeologico “P. Giovio” in Como.

The nature of this inscription is unique; there is nothing quite like it in Italy or elsewhere.¹²⁵ Prominence is not given only to offices but also to numbers—large numbers—describing the sums of money (presumably, mostly from the sale of, and/or income from, property) that Pliny donated. Those numbers describe Pliny’s priorities: to list all of the positions that charted his rise from equestrian to senatorial rank and that marked him out as an elite; and to list all the ways by which he (as an elite) could then benefit the non-elites of Comum: freedmen, the general population, and (parentless) boys and girls. The term plebis, “of the people,” is mentioned three times; only the symbol for money (HS) appears more frequently.

This is a concentrated and detailed accounting of Pliny’s political posts and his euergetistic donations to his hometown, a catalog of accomplishments meant to sustain family, citizens, and the memory of self. Pliny had lost his own parents and a sibling relatively young; he had no biological or adopted children, so he resolved to take care of the children of his town. He demonstrated a deep dedication to his community in cold marble and hard cash.¹²⁶ His legacy and his eternity could reside only in the words and deeds captured in this monumental record (and others in Italy). Here he could try to display, for himself, what he claimed was true for his uncle, in Ep. 6.16.3 (Ch. 4): facere scribenda [et] scribere legenda, “to do things worth writing about, [and] to write things worth reading.” Those worthy things are, in effect, Pliny’s res gestae.¹²⁷

* * *

Now for a biographical summary, to provide a sense of what the young Pliny had experienced prior to the Vesuvian eruption, and what shaped his life in the years up to when he penned Ep. 6.16 and 6.20 to Tacitus.¹²⁸

Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus was born as Caius (or Lucius) Caecilius Secundus between 24 August AD 61 and 24 August 62 in northern Italy at Comum.¹²⁹ His mother was almost certainly named Plinia (see below). His father was (probably) Lucius Caecilius Secundus, son of Caius, of the Oufentina tribe.¹³⁰ The father, an eminent citizen of equestrian rank who had reached the highest elected office of Comum, died during the early years of Vespasian’s reign, ca. AD 70–76. Because Roman inheritance law (at least for elites with a legacy) required supervision if the bereaved child had not reached puberty (conventionally at age fourteen), Pliny was placed into the legal guardianship of a tutor.¹³¹ The tutor was the eminent senator and twice consul Lucius Verginius Rufus, from nearby Mediolanum (Milan), who served as a substitute father, political mentor, ethics coach, and career model.¹³²

When Pliny came of age and no longer required a guardian, he completed construction of a temple in Comum that his father had begun, in memory of his deceased sister (see above, Supplementa Italica 745–46). Having moved to Rome, young Pliny learned from first-rate teachers (the rhetoricians Quintilian and Nicetes Sacerdos for Latin and Greek, respectively) while he was vixdum adulescentulus, “barely a young man,” that is, on the cusp of a broad and ill-defined age range that ranged from the late teens to early twenties, in this case ca. AD 77–78.¹³³ Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus) was born at Calagurris in northeastern Spain but educated in Rome, where in the 70s he eventually opened a school, became the first state-funded professor of rhetoric, and, among other works, wrote the Institutiones Oratoriae, 12 books on rhetorical education, ca. AD 92–94.¹³⁴ Nicetes Sacerdos hailed from Smyrna on the western coast of Asia Minor.¹³⁵

In late AD 79, while visiting his uncle at Misenum, he experienced and wrote up notes on the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and the death of Elder Pliny. Formal adoption by the Elder (whom the Younger’s letters almost exclusively call avunculus, “uncle,” rather than pater, “father”), happened according to the Elder’s will.¹³⁶ This adoption gave access to the Elder’s name, status, and significant wealth and properties. By the age of seventeen, then, Pliny had lost two fathers, and seen his life twice retracked by testament.¹³⁷ The second time, he inherited a massive fortune and new identity. Having vividly and shockingly experienced the precariousness of life, he resolved to make the most of his, and returned to the capital.

Back at Rome, adulescentulus adhuc, “still a young man” ca. AD 80–81, Pliny got married to his first wife (identity unknown), either to hasten getting his own heir (the family was in a precarious position), or quicken his political ascent (see below). He then began a profession pleading cases in the Centumviral Court.¹³⁸ The Centumviral Court (iudicium centumvirale or iudicium quadruplex) was for civil law; 180 men provided a pool of juror-judges (iudices) for up to four panels hearing cases, sometimes before large crowds, in the Basilica Julia at the Forum Romanum. It primarily heard disputes about wills and inheritance.¹³⁹ Many orators, including Cicero, had gotten their start in this court, but Pliny had double personal experience in the area, having inherited from both fathers by the time he stepped to the bar at age 18.¹⁴⁰ Pliny won his first court case defending an obscure man named Junius Pastor against powerful interests, including counselors (amici principis) of the emperor (Ep. 1.18), and he won a reputation; his oratory “really opened the ears of the people to me; it opened the door to recognition.”¹⁴¹ Like his father and uncle, the Younger was still of the equestrian order, but he was about to work his way toward the Senate and cultivate some of the attitudes of that privileged perspective.¹⁴²

Pliny’s first advance happened in that same Centumviral Court. About AD 82, he was appointed decemvir stlitibus iudicandis, abbreviated Xvir in his career inscriptions (see above).¹⁴³ This year-long post, one of the offices within the larger set of twenty minor magistracies called the vigintiviri, was more or less a prerequisite for the senate; its purpose appears to have been to convene and empanel juror-judges and ensure that witnesses appeared in court; it solidified his juridical credentials and his political potential.¹⁴⁴ The same year the Younger was enjoined to become patron of the town of Tifernum Tiberinum (Città di Castello) in Umbria, above which he had inherited a favorite villa from his uncle, described in lavish detail in Ep. 5.6.¹⁴⁵ Such an honor, along with his completion of the temple in Comum a few years before, recognized Pliny’s economic status (on both his mother’s and father’s sides) with respect to local communities.

Pliny was then assigned overseas, as tribunus militum for the Third Gallic Legion in Syria, probably in AD 83–84, a province which had been governed by Titus Atilius Rufus, a fellow countryman from Transpadana, who may have recommended him before his own sudden death.¹⁴⁶ Now in his early twenties (he calls himself a iuvenis in Ep. 8.14.7), Pliny would have served along with four other equestrians (tribuni angusticlavii) and one senatorial-eligible youth (tribunus laticlavius) as staff officers responsible for a range of security, administrative, and judicial duties.¹⁴⁷ Every day the width of the stripe on his and other officers’ tunics would have reminded him of his own political rank and ambition, and the experience seems to have frustrated him. He later wrote scathingly, in Ep. 8.14.7: omnia soluta turbata atque etiam in contrarium versa, “everything was lax, confused, and even ass-backwards,” because inertia, “apathy” was worth more than virtus, “merit,” and nusquam imperium nusquam obsequium, “nowhere (was there) authority or obedience.” But his service did, at least on paper (there’s no evidence Pliny ever saw combat), establish Pliny’s military credentials, and he mentions it frequently.¹⁴⁸ Unlike his uncle, who had also been a military tribune (see above), the Younger did not stay in the army to advance his career. It wasn’t for him. But his conscientiousness on military service may have enhanced his chances of being named, after he had returned to Rome, a sevir equitum Romanorum turmae, probably on the lean side of ca. AD 85–88.¹⁴⁹ In this ceremonial capacity, Pliny would have led one of the six squadrons (turmae) of other young equestrians as they paraded on horseback for public ceremonies, games, and festivals; most important was the annual 15 July ride-by, the transvectio equitum, that served as a review for a new crop of equestrian men.¹⁵⁰

Eventually Pliny achieved the office that admitted him to the senate: the quaestorship. Pliny seems to have been a bit behind the career curve; quaestors had at least to be 24 at taking office (meaning, at earliest for Pliny, AD 86–87), and Pliny may have been a couple of years older, gaining office in 89 (or 90).¹⁵¹ That threshold could be reduced by a year for each of one’s first three children born (the ius liberorum), but Pliny had none.¹⁵² There were twenty slots each year (presumably one for each of the vigintiviri, but it did not usually work out so neatly).¹⁵³ Most were secured through what was left of the Republican-era electoral process, but two quaestors were appointed each year by the emperor.¹⁵⁴ The quaestores Augusti/Caesaris had the often-tricky task of being imperial mouthpieces: reading out the emperor’s speeches to the senate when the emperor was absent.¹⁵⁵ Nomination to this post implies favor at the highest level. Domitian being in charge might have made later mention of the position less of a peach (Pliny does genericize the position quaestor imperatoris in his post-Domitianic inscriptions),¹⁵⁶ but it appears in three of Pliny’s career inscriptions, as well as two letters.¹⁵⁷ Much scholarship has examined whether or not Pliny was being genuine in describing the travails of his survival, or if he more or less thrived as a senator under the rule of a tyrant until Domitian’s assassination in 96.¹⁵⁸

After a customary gap of about a year, Pliny became a tribunus plebis, “tribune of the plebs,” in AD 91 or 92. Originally an office during the Republic that represented a critical check on aristocratic power by representatives of the plebeians (with the power of veto), it was not much more than ceremonial during the Empire. Pliny admits that it was considered an inanem umbram et sine honore nomen, “an empty shadow and title without honor,” but he claims (with not a little self-importance) that he tried to make it mean something.¹⁵⁹

By contrast, a praetor had real power and responsibility. There were 18 such posts each year during the Flavian dynasty; the holders were required to put on public games, undertake public prosecutions, and carry out other administrative duties.¹⁶⁰ Most importantly, the office qualified individuals for the consulship and other choice appointments. Pliny could not have been praetor prior to AD 93 (this sets the dates for his quaestorship and tribunate); he probably held it in that year.¹⁶¹ Pliny was active; he and Helvidius Senecio won an extortion case against Baebius Massa, who had been praetorian proconsul (governor) of Baetica in southern Spain, but soon after the political atmosphere in Rome darkened.¹⁶² The emperor Domitian turned more paranoid and vindictive, and sometime during AD 93–94 a series of treason trials were staged. Three of Pliny’s friends were executed (including his prosecutorial colleague Senecio), and four were exiled. Pliny says he subsequently aided one of the exiles, the philosopher Artemidorus, while he was praetor, claiming (Ep. 3.11.3): Atque haec feci cum ... tot circa me iactis fulminibus quasi ambustus mihi quoque impendere idem exitium quibusdam notis augerarer, “And I did these things [visited the philosopher, borrowed money, and dissolved debts for him], although ... nearly incinerated by so many lightning bolts thrown around me, I was foreseeing, by certain indications, that the same sticky end would threaten me as well.”¹⁶³

Attending the imperial thundercloud were opportunists called delatores.¹⁶⁴ A delator was a prosecutor who informed on, or made a public accusation against, someone (e.g., high-status individuals like senators), pertaining for instance to financial crimes, treason (maiestas), or a private inheritance matter, and who themselves did not have a direct personal stake but who could profit by gaining a share of the penalty from a convicted person’s estate.¹⁶⁵ This legal approach could encourage whistleblowers on wrongdoing (such as genuine plots against the emperor, extortion, or misuse of public funds) and bolster the public treasury from penalties confiscated from the convicted. But when rewards for the accusers were available, some individuals abused (or were perceived to abuse) the process for private gain, and so the term gained a negative connotation in the surviving literary sources of elites who felt targeted by the process.¹⁶⁶ The phenomenon of delatores faded as the risk of calumnia (bringing false charges) rose, and in AD 100, Pliny celebrated Trajan dumping boatloads of delatores out on the open sea to suffer and die (Panegyricus 34–35).

Pliny often advertises his bravery during the terror of Domitian’s last years, but he was not out of work; after the praetorship he took a position (probably those last three Flavian years, AD 94–96) as praefectus aerari militaris, the prefect of the military treasury.¹⁶⁷ This post is nowhere mentioned in Pliny’s surviving writing, but it appears in inscriptions.¹⁶⁸

While several scholars have argued that a lack of literary mention reveals Pliny’s disingenuity about collaborating with Domitian, it seems unlikely he is trying to hide something if he includes the position on his most monumental inscriptions at Comum and perhaps Hispellum.¹⁶⁹ It may not have been particularly prestigious or interesting work.¹⁷⁰ While we lack many details, the job seems to have entailed overseeing certain indirect tax revenues (a 0.5–1 percent auction tax, the du/centesima rerum venalium, and a five-percent inheritance tax, the vicesima hereditatium, payable by citizens) toward their expenditure on the pensions of honorably discharged veterans.¹⁷¹ Pliny remembers those years under Domitian as a kind of “exile,” in which a senate, complicit in its master’s crimes, had its “character blunted, broken, and bruised ever after,” ingenia nostra in posterum quoque hebetata fracta contusa sunt (Ep. 8.14.9).

Late in the morning on 18 September, AD 96, a freedman, named Stephanus, and other accomplices surprised the emperor Domitian and stabbed him to death.¹⁷² The Senate quickly (with the agreement of the praetorian guard and court factions that must have included some of the conspirators) proclaimed the elderly statesman Marcus Cocceius Nerva as a safe pair of hands for the throne, someone who had served both Nero and Domitian but somehow had not accrued any particular opprobrium. Pliny may have been away from Rome at the time.¹⁷³ State drama was soon followed by personal trauma, as Pliny’s wife (either his first or second), the daughter of Pompeia Celerina, passed away around the end of the same year (Ep. 9.13.4).¹⁷⁴ That same letter (written a decade after the events) describes Pliny’s eventually successful efforts, early in AD 97, to get revenge on Publicius Certus, senator and prefect of the state treasury, who had arranged the execution of Pliny’s friend Helvidius Priscus the Younger under Domitian.¹⁷⁵ Domitian’s own death did permit Pliny to begin writing (more freely) the letters he would eventually publish; Book 1 of the Epistulae includes events from ca. AD 96–98, and sets of letters may have begun to be published as early as late AD 100.¹⁷⁶

In 98, after Certus was denied the consulship, stripped of the treasury post, fell ill, and died, Pliny took over his financial assignment, one of greater status and responsibility than the military treasury. From AD 98–100 Pliny became one of two praefecti aerarii Saturni (populi Romani), “prefects of the state treasury,” located in the Temple of Saturn at the base of the Capitoline hill on the west side of the Forum Romanum.¹⁷⁷ In that capacity, Pliny would have managed state finances (direct taxes flowed here from senatorial provinces, as well as indirect taxes such as the 2–4 percent tax on the sale of slaves, and the 5 percent slave tax on freeing slaves—a telling ratio) processed official documents, heard appeals for exemptions to the inheritance tax, and judged financial cases.¹⁷⁸ He describes his duties in Ep. 10.1.9: sedeo pro tribunali, subnoto libellos, conficio tabulas, scribo plurimas sed inlitteratissimas litteras, “I sit on the magistrate’s chair, I sign petitions, I keep accounts, I write many but utterly banal letters.”¹⁷⁹ Pliny hated it: nam distringor officio, ut maximo sic molestissimo, “for I am pulled apart by the work, so very annoying though important (it is).” He contrasts such busy-work with the leisure he’d rather have to listen and learn from a philosopher friend named Euphrates, and here we get a glimpse of the studious boy we will meet in Ep. 6.16 and 6.20.

Pliny became suffect consul on 1 September, AD 100 (see above for his name inscribed on the Fasti Ostienses), and in this case, his promotion to that office was on the rapid side.¹⁸⁰ His colleague was Caius Julius Cornutus Tertullus, also his partner prefect of the state treasury for the previous two years. On the occasion of his honor, he gave a formal speech of praise to the Emperor Trajan, known as the Panegyricus. Pliny went on to publish the three-hour “director’s cut” of that speech which, although it seems on the surface an irritatingly obsequious address to power, exhibits clever sociopolitical persuasion and remains a model of Latin rhetoric.¹⁸¹

Under Trajan, Pliny continued to prosecute and defend cases; probably in early AD 103, he was nominated and co-opted as augur.¹⁸² This priesthood (sacerdotium) was important to Pliny because it linked the prestige of the Roman past to his own present and future; it was ancient (priscum) and notable (insigne) as a lifetime post. He had finally arrived; he had become a complete aristocrat.¹⁸³ The job of an augur was technically to read and interpret divine will concerning matters of state by taking auspices (auspicia) from signs in the natural world: severe weather (especially thunder or lightning), the flight of birds, etc. But during the Empire, all messaging was imperially approved, so the post had become purely ceremonial—remarkable only because of its relative rarity; vacancies were not annual.¹⁸⁴

In about AD 104–05, Pliny was put in charge of the commissioners responsible for managing the banks of the Tiber River (as the curator alvei Tiberis et riparum et cloacarum urbis) in order to protect the city from floods.¹⁸⁵ While no major known floods threatened Rome during his tenure, significant floods had damaged the city in AD 69 and again during Nerva’s reign between AD 96 and 98.¹⁸⁶ Perhaps during AD 105–06, Pliny wrote the Vesuvian missives, letters that appear in Book 6, and then revised and published them in early AD 108.¹⁸⁷

A great flood finally did arrive, probably in autumn of AD 108, when Pliny was still in Rome, and yet a member of the Emperor Trajan’s privy council, the consilium principis.¹⁸⁸ Pliny’s fondness for detail in describing a disaster, so evident in Ep. 6.16 and 6.20, re-emerge in Ep. 8.17, to his friend Macrinus:¹⁸⁹

(1) Num istic quoque immite et turbidum caelum? Hic adsiduae tempestates et crebra diluvia. Tiberis alveum excessit et demissioribus ripis alte superfunditur; (2) quamquam fossa quam providentissimus imperator fecit exhaustus, premit valles, innatat campis, quaque planum solum, pro solo cernitur. Inde quae solet flumina accipere et permixta devehere, velut obvius retro cogit, atque ita alienis aquis operit agros, quos ipse non tangit. (3) Anio, delicatissimus amnium ideoque adiacentibus villis velut invitatus retentusque, magna ex parte nemora quibus inumbratur fregit et rapuit; subruit montes, et decidentium mole pluribus locis clausus, dum amissum iter quaerit, impulit tecta ac se super ruinas eiecit atque extulit. (4) Viderunt quos excelsioribus terris illa tempestas deprehendit, alibi divitum adparatus et gravem supellectilem, alibi instrumenta ruris, ibi boves aratra rectores, hic soluta et libera armenta, atque inter haec arborum truncos aut villarum trabes atque culmina varie lateque fluitantia. (5) Ac ne illa quidem malo vacaverunt, ad quae non ascendit amnis. Nam pro amne imber assiduus et deiecti nubibus turbines, proruta opera quibus pretiosa rura cinguntur, quassata atque etiam decussa monumenta. Multi eius modi casibus debilitati obruti obtriti, et aucta luctibus damna.

(1) You don’t have this harsh and unsettled weather, do you? Here there have been nonstop storms and constant flooding. It has overflowed the channel of the Tiber and pours out deeply over the shallower riverbanks; (2) although it has been drained by the spillway that the most forward-thinking emperor built, it weighs heavy in the hollows, it swims over the flat lands, and where there is level ground, it appears in place of the ground-surface. Hence the streamwaters that [the Tiber] is used to absorbing and (mixed together) carrying away, now, as it were, [the Tiber] meets them, drives them back, and so covers fields with unfamiliar waters. (3) The Anio, most delightful of rivers—which is why it is gathered in and slowed down by the villas along its course—has shattered and carried off most of the groves by which it is shaded; it has undercut hills and, in many places, has been blocked off by the mass of collapsed debris; while it seeks its former course, it has driven buildings headlong, and thrust and transported itself over their ruins. (4) They have seen—those whom that storm has snatched away to higher ground—over here, the equipment and heavy furniture of the rich; over there, farm implements; there, oxen, ploughs, and ploughmen; here, cattle herds, loose and free, and among them the trunks of trees, or the beams and roofs of villas, floating about all over the place. (5) And even those places have not been free of peril, to which the river did not rise. For instead of the river, there has been incessant rain and tornadoes thrown down from the clouds, walls demolished by which prosperous rural estates are enclosed, and family tombs shaken and struck down. Many people in this way have been injured, overwhelmed, and crushed by the disasters, the damages augmented by grieving (for those lost).

(6) Ne quid simile istic, pro mensura periculi vereor, teque rogo, si nihil tale, quam maturissime sollicitudini meae consulas, sed et si tale, id quoque nunties. Nam parvolum differt, patiaris adversa an exspectes; nisi quod tamen est dolendi modus, non est timendi. Doleas enim quantum scias accidisse, timeas quantum possit accidere. Vale.

(6) I fear something similar to this, in proportion of peril (has happened to you), and I ask you, if there has been nothing of the sort, that you as quickly as possible have concern for my worry; but then, if there is such, you should tell (me) that as well. For it differs very little, whether you suffer or whether you wait for suffering; except that there is an end to grieving, but not for fearing. For you grieve as much as you know has actually occurred, while you fear as much as might happen. Farewell.

The tone of the letters in Book 8 fluctuates from light to dark, exemplified by two letters about rivers: 8.8 (the lovely, pleasant, and sacred source of the Clitumnus) and 8.17, about the downstream effects when “good” rivers turn “bad,” due to an excess of the element that makes up their life-giving qualities.¹⁹⁰ Reliable agricultural cycles and familiar landscapes have been upended and transformed into waterways, fixed masonry memorials to family and farm have been thrown to the winds and eroded by waves. Pliny is making literary play with disaster tropes: the majesty of destruction, and the beautiful pain experienced in describing (and reading about) disaster, exemplified in 8.17.5 by a percussive image of families and their memories smashed and dissolved: quassata atque etiam decussa monumenta ... multi ... debilitati obruti obtriti (cf. quassatis in Ch. 5: Ep. 6.20.6).¹⁹¹ Pliny’s final sentence concerns the persistent stress of apprehension during a crisis. It effectively shades the subjunctive mood: grieving is more certain and mercifully finite because it is connected to knowledge (scias) that has occurred (accidisse), while fearing seeps between the present and the future, in the limbo of possit accidere. The passage suggests lingering post-traumatic symptoms, as Pliny describes similar disruptions of the natural equilibrium—by which the elements do not behave, and how this in turn disturbs the behavior of people (creating present anxiety for loved ones and future anxiety about the durability of the social and universal order)—in Ep. 6.16 and 6.20.¹⁹²

Pliny continued to compile, edit, and publish sets of the nine books of his private correspondence until he received what would be his final official position, legatus pro praetore of the province of Bithynia et Pontus (northwest Asia Minor).¹⁹³ His title and powers meant that he acted as the personal representative of the emperor Trajan, and despite being an ex-consul, he had no greater authority than his praetorian-rank predecessors.¹⁹⁴ We have evidence that Pliny completed almost two full years in this position. He arrived on a 17 September, and twice celebrated the anniversary of Trajan’s ascension to the throne (28 January), while his next-to-last letter may refer to provincial summer games of his second year.¹⁹⁵ The year of his appointment is not known for certain, however. It could be AD 109, 110, or 111.¹⁹⁶ It is possible that Pliny lived longer than the epistolary evidence for his governorship, but until recently most scholars have doubted it, and the date of his death has been usually fixed as AD 111, 112, or 113.¹⁹⁷ It is an open question whether he partially or fully supervised the publication of Book 10 of his Epistulae, or whether that was done posthumously, but recent scholarship has tended to favor the former.¹⁹⁸

Younger Pliny was the epitome of the active learned gentleman of the Roman imperial age, a success story of social mobility made possible by privileged access, historical accident, and effort. While young, he suffered the loss of all close family members but, boosted by their previous political and financial investments, trained by top teachers, and driven by his own ambition, he ascended to the highest positions available during the principate. His political savvy kept him alive and apparently prospering during the reign of a dangerous emperor, and his finely crafted sentences won him legal cases, clout, and literary admiration. He had no children to whom he could pass on his name and property; his assets were applied to the several civic donations he discusses in letters and lists in his inscriptions. It is his letters that have most enduringly kept his legacy alive.

* * *

Briefly, here are the other named or speaking characters in the two letters.

Plinia

Pliny’s mother is prominent in both Ep. 6.16 and 6.20, but may have died not long after Vesuvius erupted, since she is barely mentioned elsewhere (Ep. 1.19.1, 2.15.2, 4.19.7, 7.11.3).¹⁹⁹ She is not included as a “person” in some lists of people appearing in Pliny’s Letters, perhaps because she is nowhere given a personal name.²⁰⁰ But then, neither is uncle Elder Pliny. Daughters usually took the feminine version of their father’s nomen, or clan name, so her name was almost certainly “Plinia.”²⁰¹ She was Elder’s sister, but we do not know whether she was older or younger, and we also do not know if she had any other siblings, nor if she was ever married to anyone besides the Younger’s father. We do know that Plinia also had a daughter (see the inscription Supplementa Italica 745–46 above), who died before her husband did. Plinia was also the one parent and authority figure who was on continuous call until the Younger Pliny began his professional legal career. She must have been involved in arranging his education and in facilitating the social and political connections he needed for a public career, not to mention financial requirements and marriage arrangements.²⁰²

In our evidence, Plinia’s character is observant (it is she who first notices Vesuvius’ eruption, Ep. 6.16.4) and anxious for the welfare of her son (6.20.4, 6.20.12). She seems in charge of household affairs when Elder Pliny is away (who otherwise may have been her tutor by Roman law), since the friend from Spain addresses her preferentially (6.20.10), and she probably organized the evacuation from Misenum (6.20.7).²⁰³ Like her brother, however, she is not in the best health when it comes time to escape (6.20.12). Finally, at least according to that last letter (the purpose of which is not to lionize his mother), Plinia appears to possess strong emotional relationships with her son and brother, showing active concern for both during the eruption.²⁰⁴ We read about her actions, and her instructions to be abandoned, but only in the forms of indirect command and indirect discourse (Ch. 5: 6.20.12). In this story, Pliny does not give direct address to female characters.²⁰⁵ We do not know when she died.

Rectina

In danger at her seaside estate, a woman named Rectina appeals to Elder Pliny for rescue (Ch. 4: 6.16.8). The text here is highly variable and problematic in the manuscript tradition, but Rectina is reasonably secure, a name found most commonly in Spain and in central-southern Italy.²⁰⁶ The latter location receives support from late first century AD inscriptions found in Samnium and Apulia that mention a Salvia Rectina, member of a prominent Venosan family.²⁰⁷ From the 18th c. to the early 20th c., scholars debated whether Rectina and her villa were the origin for the town name of “Resina” (modern Herculaneum) but the etymological argument does not hold.²⁰⁸ It is reasonable to consider a wealthy lady using a secondary residence on the Neapolitan coast during the heat of summer. Many sources preserve a second name, likely Tasci, Nasci, or Casci, indicating the possessive genitive form of her husband’s name, likely absent or deceased (Tascus/ius, Nascus, or Cascus).²⁰⁹ As this portion of the text is so corrupt, there has been little consensus over the correct marital name. Nearly all editors since Keil in 1853 have preferred Tascus because it appears in the M ms. of the α family (see Ch. 2 and Table 2.1 for the textual tradition).²¹⁰ Three editors and other scholars have plumped for Cascus (γ family) because that name has more robust prosopographic support.²¹¹ Aldus must have found Nasci in the ancient Parisinus (Π) ms. of the β family; interestingly, the oldest extant version of Ep. 6.16 (U), of the α family, has the same reading. So Nascus may have superior manuscript support, but because that name does not otherwise appear in Roman literature or epigraphy, scholars have shied away from it, and after two 1529 editions it has never been used again.

Rectina lived on the coast near the base of Mt. Vesuvius, almost certainly between just north of modern Torre del Greco and Leopardi (see Ch. 3; Figures 1.5, 3.5–3.6), where enough ash was falling and the earthquakes were strong enough in the earliest phases of the eruption that she felt compelled to send for help all the way across the Bay. Given that Elder Pliny was unable to reach her, it seems unthinkable that she survived. Elder Pliny, clearly her friend, would have known where her villa was; the locational details added by Younger Pliny are to assist Tacitus and other readers in understanding why she felt trapped and terrified.²¹² Chs 3 and 4 discuss how her message affects reconstructing the timeline of Pliny’s account.

Pomponianus

After failing to rescue Rectina, Elder Pliny sailed into the SE corner of the Bay to stay with his friend Pomponianus at Stabiae (Ch. 4: 6.16.11–20; Figure 4.2). This man appears nowhere else in Pliny’s writing. It has been suggested that he is the adopted son of Pomponius Secundus, tutor to Young Pliny and the senator about whom the Elder Pliny wrote a two-volume biography (Pliny, Ep. 3.5.3; see above), but this suggestion has not won wide acceptance.²¹³ Possibly another acquaintance from Spain (cf. Rectina and the “Friend”), Pomponianus was trying to leave by sea, but wind and waves prevented exit. We do not know whether Pomponianus, who fled with everyone in his household on the morning of the eruption’s second day, survived, but someone did, in order to report what had happened to the Elder. In all the descriptions of flight (Plinia at Misenum [6.20.8], Rectina’s plea for seaborne evacuation [6.16.8], and Pomponianus), elites seem to be trying to take significant household goods with them. Our final narrative character, an unnamed guest of Elder Pliny, has better sense.

The Friend from Spain

The only other direct speaking role in these letters belongs to an amicus ex Hispania, who appears twice to exhort Younger Pliny and his mother to flee (Ep. 6.20.5, 10–11). He is described as an associate of the Elder Pliny who (with unfortunately poor timing) had recently (nuper) arrived for a visit.²¹⁴ We do not know who he is, but he provides a stern stand-in for Pliny’s uncle, looking to evident danger and advising Pliny and Plinia to flee quickly.²¹⁵ They ignore him completely the first time, but he seems to continue accompanying them until his second outburst, at which point the Spanish friend flees in almost a comically exaggerated fashion (6.20.11). He is a voice of reason but also of panic; under the circumstances of the grim cloud descending on Misenum, panic was not unreasonable.

From Ep. 3.5.17 we know (see above) that the Elder Pliny served as procurator in Hispania Tarraconensis while Larcius Licinus was iuridicus, “justice official,” ca. AD 72–74. Elder Pliny twice refers to that official, including the story of his death in Spain (HN 19.35, 31.24).²¹⁶ During this time, Elder Pliny observed and recorded many details about gold mining in that province (Chs 3–4) and must have made many political, scholarly, and military acquaintances; perhaps our “friend” was one of these.²¹⁷ Yet this friend was not important enough to have been remembered or mentioned by name (one suspects Pliny would otherwise have done so, or he neglected to record it in his notes, or he was snubbing the fellow). His character evinces annoyance, but he is narratively useful—he serves as a foil for the calm (even complacent) responses of Pliny and Plinia.

Cornelius Tacitus

The Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus is the addressee of Ep. 6.16 and 6.20.²¹⁸ Tacitus was a slightly older contemporary, colleague, and friend of the Younger Pliny, born ca. AD 56–58 (perhaps in southern Gaul).²¹⁹ Like Pliny, he was an equestrian novus homo, and he had a similar career ladder (see Pliny’s career, above), gaining the posts of decemvir stlitibus iudicandis (ca. AD 75–76), tribunus militum (ca. AD 77–79), quaestor Augusti (ca. AD 81, at which point he entered the Senate), tribunus plebis (ca. AD 85), and praetor (securely dated to AD 88). By that time he was also a quindecemvir sacris faciundis, a member of the prestigious priestly college of 15 members that among other duties kept, consulted, and interpreted the Sybiline Books, a set of oracular sayings that guided expiatory rituals in times of stress.²²⁰ More importantly in AD 88, they organized the Ludi Saeculares, the “Secular Games,” major periodic celebrations that had last happened under Augustus in 17 BC and Claudius in AD 47.²²¹ Tacitus became suffect consul in AD 97 and, in that year, delivered the funeral eulogy for Verginius Rufus, tutor for Younger Pliny after his father died (see above).²²² In January AD 100, Tacitus and Pliny successfully teamed up to prosecute Marius Priscus for corruption while proconsul in Africa in AD 97–98.²²³ Finally, we know that he was appointed proconsul of Asia ca. AD 112–13 and may well have had other imperial assignments.²²⁴

Tacitus was the paramount historian of the Roman imperial era, expert in examining the lures and flaws of power, and has been equally admired and feared by Latin students for the intricate and unpredictable difficulty of his prose. He wrote a biography of his father-in-law (Agricola, published in AD 98), which is the major surviving literary source about Roman Britain, an ethnographic-ish treatise on the Germans (Germania, ca. AD 98), which later became the urtext of German nationalism (painting strong and noble savages resistant to an increasingly decadent and domineering empire), and a philosophical treatise on rhetoric (Dialogus de oratoribus, usually dated to ca. AD 102).²²⁵ Tacitus also wrote two long imperial histories: the Historiae, which records the civil wars of AD 69 and the Flavian dynasty down to 96 (published ca. AD 109–110), and the Annales, covering the Julio-Claudian period from the death of Augustus to the last days of Nero (AD 14–68), written between ca. AD 114 and 120.²²⁶ Neither history has survived complete. It was to work on his Historiae that Tacitus, sometime around AD 105–06, requested information by letter about the death of Pliny the Elder. In all, eleven letters from Pliny to Tacitus survive—his most frequent correspondent—and four (or five) others mention him.²²⁷ Sadly, the portion of Tacitus’ production covering the Vesuvian disaster does not survive, except for two fleeting references (Hist. 1.2, Ann. 4.67; see Ch. 5). Fortunately, Pliny’s letters do.

Despite similar career arcs and Domitianic discomfort, Pliny and Tacitus had a complex and changing relationship. Pliny was playfully competitive with his elder rival, revealed at times through an ambitiously sycophantic false modesty that pretended they were collegial fellow experts, and that was reinforced by knowing verbal winks. In Ep. 7.20 and 8.7, Pliny discusses “catching up” with Tacitus, simultaneously elevating the historian while pretending that they are more or less equals.²²⁸ Theirs is a distant intimacy (or intimate distance) that ranges from giggly joking to tetchy petulance, from relaxed collaboration to itchy competitiveness. Perhaps professional requirements, poised between courtesy and utility, regarding the exchange of book drafts or material for publication (Ep. 6.16, 6.20, 7.20, 7.33, 8.7), drew the two men closer together over time.²²⁹ If so, Ep. 9.23 finishes this trajectory by relaying two stories: the first, from Tacitus about a conversation the historian had at the chariot races. Asked by an equestrian about his geographic origin (presumably because of a detected accent), Tacitus replied that the man knew him from his publications (ex studiis), to which the man responded, Tactius es an Plinius? “Are you Tacitus or Pliny?” To this, Pliny’s joy is inexpressible (naturally, he expresses it), and he proceeds to tell a second tale that also ratifies the level of recognition he so ardently seeks (but seems increasingly concerned that he may not achieve).²³⁰ Such stories hint at the substitution that began to happen in their later years, by which the “people” Tacitus and Pliny were being replaced by the “literary figures” of the same names.²³¹ At least the letter suggests that Tacitus knew and cared enough for Pliny to share the story with him in the first place.²³²

The exchange that began to bring the two men closer together (at least as arranged in the Epistulae that Pliny curated for his readers) may have been the volcanic episodes of Ep. 6.16 and 6.20.²³³ Despite different attitudes and writing styles, the two authors seemed to find an odd-couple equilibrium that peeks through the one-way correspondence, not only in obvious co-referencing, but also through subtle intertextuality.²³⁴ Both shared a motivation to leave something for posterity; in Ep. 9.14, the last one addressed to Tacitus that we have, Pliny links hands with his colleague and declares, ... nos certe meremur ... studio et labore et reverentia posterorum. Pergamus modo itinere instituto, “... we definitely deserve (to be remembered) ... for our efforts, hard work, and awesome respect for those who come after us. Just let us continue on our intended path ...”²³⁵ As it turned out, by the Middle Ages, while not quite forgotten, the Younger Pliny had become elided not with Tacitus, but with his homonymous uncle; many scholars were long unaware that there were once two Plinys.

The Problem of the “Two Plinys”

For centuries after the Younger’s death, confusion swirled about whether there were one or two Plinys.²³⁶ The problem ultimately stemmed from the fact that by the time the Younger Pliny began to publish, he had inherited his uncle’s legacy (see above), and so each Pliny authored his own work under the very same name: Caius Plinius Secundus. Younger Pliny may have hankered for immortality through his writing, but it was the Elder’s Natural History that was far more frequently consulted, referenced, and excerpted. The Younger’s post-mortem re-emergence didn’t happen right away; our first clear reference to his work comes from Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus (Tertullian), from Carthage, a convert who penned the first Christian treatises in Latin.²³⁷ In AD 197, he wrote the Apolegeticus, a defense of the religion; in 2.6–8, he treats Pliny and Trajan’s now famous correspondence about Christians in the province of Bithynia and Pontus (Ep. 10.96–97).²³⁸ Tertullian does not reveal whether Plinian confusion existed at this date, but it was shown shortly thereafter, at the highest level of the imperial court, by the teacher of Geta and Caracalla, sons of the emperor Septimius Severus: Serenus Sammonicus.

Sammonicus was reputed to have a 62,000-volume library; he was an erudite (doctus) antiquarian with a gullible streak.²³⁹ He wrote a Liber Medicinalis in hexameter verse that drew its prescriptions largely from the Elder Pliny’s HN, and a multivolume Res Reconditae, “Hidden Things,” parts of which are preserved by the fifth-c. writer Macrobius. In Saturnalia 3.16.5–7, after discussing the price of sturgeon during Trajan’s reign—in so doing, citing the Elder Pliny (Historia Naturalis 9.60)—Macrobius quotes Sammonicus: Plinius, ut scitis, ad usque Traiani imperatoris venit aetatem, “Pliny, as you know, lived until the time of the Emperor Trajan.”²⁴⁰ Sammonicus clearly conflated the two Plinys, and he wasn’t the only one: ut scitis assumed that his readers took this for common knowledge.²⁴¹

Eusebius Hieronymus Sophronius (Jerome), who translated the Latin Vulgate Bible, in various letters and theological treatises, largely written in his later years between ca. AD 392 and 395, frequently refers and alludes to the Younger Pliny’s Epistulae.²⁴² But in commentaries on Isaiah and Ezekiel, Jerome reveals confusion about Pliny’s identity. In Book 15 of his commentary on Isaiah (referencing ch. 54, verses 11–12), which mentions precious stones, Jerome writes: ... Plinium Secundum, eundem apud Latinos oratorem et philosophum, qui in opere pulcherrimo Naturalis Historiae tricesimum septimum librum ..., “... Plinius Secundus, orator and philosopher among the Romans, who in the 37th book of his most illustrious work, the Natural History ...”²⁴³ Book 37 of the HN concerns gemstones, and the Elder Pliny was a philosopher of sorts, but he was certainly not an orator like his nephew.

Jerome’s muddle also occurs in his revised translation, from the Greek, of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Chronicon (ca. AD 325). In Jerome’s Chronicle, his “single” Pliny dies in the entry for the year AD 109: Plinius Secundus Novocomensis orator et historicus insignis habetur, cuius plurima ingenii opera exstant, “Plinius Secundus, from Novum Comum, is considered to be a notable orator and historian; many of his works of talent survive.”²⁴⁴ Pliny already had appeared in the entry for the year AD 108, with a paraphrase of Tertullian’s comments about Pliny’s Book 10 letters with Trajan about the Christians.²⁴⁵

No Pliny appears in the Chronicle’s mention of Vesuvius for AD 79: Mons Vesuvius ruptus in vertice tantum ex se iecit incendii, ut regiones vicinas et urbes cum hominibus exureret, “Mount Vesuvius, having erupted from its top, threw out so much fiery material from itself that it burned away neighboring regions and cities along with their populations.” This highly distilled passage may echo parts of Cassius Dio’s account in Greek (66.20–23; see Ch. 3).²⁴⁶ Although Jerome clearly had access to some of Pliny’s Letters, it is unclear that he had read all of them. The dissemination of the Epistulae was often piecemeal; not all authors and not all parts of the Empire had equal access at the same time. But during the late fourth century AD, Decimus Magnus Ausonius, Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, Aurelius Ambrosius (Ambrose), and the unknown author of the Epitome de Caesaribus all reveal knowledge of Pliny’s Epistulae.²⁴⁷ Two things were happening. First, so-called “Silver-Age” Latin (of the first–early second century AD) was enjoying a revival.²⁴⁸ Second, around AD 300, a major format shift began to take place; the parchment codex began to replace the papyrus scroll, driven in great part by the growing Christian population’s preference for the book format.²⁴⁹ Transference of texts into the new format accelerated, and many books that had fallen into relative obscurity came back to the attention of scholars, writers, and patrons. Pliny’s Epistulae seem to have been in this category.

The fifth-c. poet, epistolographer, and aristocratic bishop Sidonius Apollinaris certainly knew Pliny’s Letters. He read them carefully, quoted them, put allusions in his own letters, and assumed that his readers were also familiar with the corpus.²⁵⁰ He also knew that there were two Plinys (though not that they shared the same full name); in his letter to Claudianus Mamertus 4.3.1, he notes: Plinii, vel avunculus vel Secundus, “The Plinys, either the uncle or Secundus.”²⁵¹

Yet readers struggled through this problem for centuries afterward. In a marginal gloss for Jerome’s Chronicle at AD 109 in manuscript M (late eighth century), someone added in different handwriting: perit dum invisit Vesuvium, “he died while he was observing Vesuvius.”²⁵² Clearly a scholar who read Plinius ... orator et historicus as the Elder wished to correct the date, place, and manner of his death. But this still does not indicate that the unknown (and undatable) reader knew there were two Plinys. Vincent of Beauvais, active ca. 1245–60, consulted a fine manuscript of Pliny’s Ep. 1–5.6 (B; see Ch. 2; Table 2.1; Figure 2.2a) that was bound together with the Historia Naturalis of the Elder Pliny, apparently unaware that they were two different authors.²⁵³

Sometime between ca. 1313 and 1320 in Verona, Johannes Mansionarius (Giovanni de Matociis) consulted a manuscript (called “γ” in the scholarly tradition; see Ch. 2) of Pliny’s Epistulae in the Biblioteca Capitolare di Verona, and wrote two pages entitled Brevis adnotatio de duobus Pliniis that settled the question.²⁵⁴ Finally, during the 15th century, with the arrival of the printing press and the practice of formal textual criticism, scholars began to designate the two individuals as Plinius Iunior/Minor, “Pliny the Younger” and Plinius Senior/Maior, “Pliny the Elder.” (Though some scholars, such as André Thevet in his 1584 compilation of famous lives, continued to be confused.)²⁵⁵ They also began trying to determine what the original authoritative text might have been. The key to understanding how this happened is to examine the manuscript tradition, i.e., the pathways by which Pliny’s original master manuscripts of the Epistulae dispersed and diverged through publication (as scribes made errors in their copying), over more than a millennium. The arc of efforts —from medieval and Renaissance scholars stealing and scrambling for texts, to 20th-c. philologists making their best arguments and guesses about the original Epistulae—is the subject of Chapter 2.

Notes

· 1 Livy, History of Rome, 33.36.9–15, says it was a bloody affair, with more than 40,000 Gauls killed; the Comenses were allied with the Insubres tribe. He calls the local Gallic settlement simply: Comum oppidum.

· 2 Ando, “Cisalpine Identity,” 277–82.

· 3 Ando, “Cisalpine Identity,” 283, citing Asconius, Against Piso, 3. For entrance into the debate about Latin rights, what they constituted, and when various rights emerged for which communities, see Coşkun, “The Latins”; Piper, “Latins and the Roman Citizenship,” 43.

· 4 Coşkun, “The Latins,” 561–62.

· 5 Maganzani, “Per una revisione,” and Maganzani, “Foedus.” See also Piegdón, “Legal and Administrative”; Mouritsen, “Cives Sine Suffragio,” 419–25; Luraschi, Foedus; Hardy, “Transpadani.”

· 6 Taylor and Linderski, Voting Districts, 123–31, 370–71.

· 7 Caesar made the settlement using the Lex Vatinia according to Suetonius, Julius 28. See Ramsey, “Proconsular Years,” 50; Ewins, “Enfranchisement,” 75, 79–80, 85–86; Hardy, Some Problems, 126–49; Hardy, “Transpadani.” Evidence for a walled town comes from Catullus 35.3–4, written between 59 and 56 BC: novi relinquens Comi moenia Lariumque litus: “leaving the walls of New Comum and the Larian lakeshore.” For a possible familial connection between Catullus’ friend, Caecilius, and Pliny (whose familia name was also Caecilius), see Kronenberg, “Me, Myself,” 368, n.3.

· 8 Ferrario et al., “Historical Shoreline”; Ferrario et al., “Buried Landscapes.”

· 9 Ando, “Cisalpine Identity,” 283, referencing Cassius Dio 41.36.3. For a detailed study of the history and development of Comum, see Luraschi, “Como romana,” a compilation of his previously published articles. Also Gibson, High Empire, 32–33, 253–54.

· 10 De Light, “Cisalpine Gaul,” 157, 169.

· 11 Pliny, Ep. 3.5.7: decessisse anno sexto et quinquagensimo, “he died in his 56th year (i.e., at age 55; Henderson, “Knowing Someone,” 283, Laehn, “Defense,” 2), combined with his known death in the AD 79 eruption (Ep. 6.16) provides the calculation.

· 12 See Carey, Pliny’s Catalogue, 1–17, on post-antique images of the Elder Pliny.

· 13 The uncle to a brother’s son was called a patruus.

· 14 Modern scholarly summaries of the Elder’s life all draw from these same sources. See: Gibson, High Empire; Sallmann, “(der Ältere)”; Beagon, Human Animal, 1–34; Healy, “Science and Technology,” 1–23; von Albrecht, History of Roman Literature, 1265–75; Conte, Latin Literature, 497–504; Keyser, “Pliny the Elder”; Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 219–21; Syme, “Pliny the Procurator”; Reynolds, “Elder Pliny.” Harduinus, Caii Plinii Secundi, also includes Ep. 3.5 and 6.16 and the Vita Plinii (along with other excerpts) in his 1685 publication of the Natural History, as testimonia for the Elder’s life, but with limited commentary. Prosopographia Imperii Romani: Groag et al., P0493.

· 15 For the story of manuscripts and scholarly editions of the HN: Reeve, Transmission. Also, Reeve, “Editing”; De Beer, “World Upside Down,” 144–70; Nauert, “Humanists, Scientists,” 76–81; Nauert, “C. Plinius Secundus”; Loveland and Schmitt, “Revival of Pliny,” 2–14; Beagon, Human Animal, 35–38. Concerning typographic conventions, for instance: in Bostock and Riley, Natural History, Dalecampius’ chapters are within parentheses and Harduinus’ chapters are not; in Mayhoff, Naturalis Historiae, Dalecampius’ chapters are in bold and Harduinus’ chapters are within parentheses. Best to consult the prefatory explanations, though they do not always help.

· 16 Dalecampius, Plinius, his system followed by, e.g., De Laët (1635), Gronovius (1669), Holland (1601), and Poinsinet de Sivry (1771–82). See De Beer, “World Upside Down,” 158–62, esp. 161; Bostock and Riley, Natural History, vol. 1, 13. Dalecampius’ commentary was hardly the first (cf. Hermolaus Barbarus’ Castigationes Plinianae, 1492, which simply excerpted portions of lines from the Latin text before making arguments and explanations), but it was the first to introduce a numbering system for textual reference in the HN.

· 17 Harduinus, Caii Plinii Secundi. Harduinus’ system was followed in other editions by, for instance, Valpy (1826), Lemaire (1827–32), Ajasson (1829–33), and Sillig (1851–55). See De Beer, “World Upside Down,” 162–70, esp. 164, 168–69; Gudger, “Popular Natural History,” 276–77; Bostock and Riley, Natural History, vol. 1, 13.

· 18 Mayhoff, Naturalis Historiae. The Budé edition, with commentary and French translation, is still in progress; it follows Mayhoff; see Beaujeu et al., Pline l’ancien.

· 19 Latin text: Rackham, trans., Natural History, Loeb vol. 330, 2–21 (praef. 1, 12–21, 33), with the rejection of ante or iam, common textual corrections for an in section 14, as discussed below. For the preface, see Roche, “Author and Authority,” Isager, Art and Society, 18–31; Fögen, “Scholarship,” von Staden, “Writing the Animal,” 129–33; Carey, Pliny’s Catalogue, 17–40; Howe, “Encyclopedic Mode.”

· 20 On Pliny’s play with Catullus, see Gibson, “Elder and Better,” 189–93; Howe, “Encyclopedic Mode,” 567–72; Henderson, “Nature of Man,” 147–48.

· 21 On Soranus and his lost work Epoptides, see Murphy, “Privileged Knowledge.”

· 22 Gibson, High Empire, 71–72 and n.112.

· 23 Baldwin, “Composition,” 81, servicing his argument that Elder Pliny took much longer to research and write the HN than the seven years often attributed.

· 24 Baldwin, “Composition,” 80; Henderson, “Knowing Someone,” 267–77. Note that the Elder falls asleep during the Vesuvian eruption and nearly gets trapped in his room (Ep. 6.16.13–14), hardly demonstrating his wakeful vigilence at a critical time. Ker, “Noctural Writers,” 232–36 for Pliny and the trope of the midnight scholar’s lucubratio.

· 25 Roche, “Author and Authority,” esp. 437–38; Henderson, “Knowing Someone,” 269–72 (on studium); 279 (“equestrian pride”), referencing Natural History 33.29–36, the Elder’s mini-history of the equestrian order. Also, Schönberger, “Vesuv-Briefe,” 534–36, Méthy, Les lettres, 420–30.

· 26 Gibson, “Suetonius,” 199–203, 215–29.

· 27 Ash, “Attitude to Warfare,” 3–4, esp. n. 12.

· 28 Baebius Macer: Groag et al., Prosopographia, vol. 1, B20; Syme, Tacitus, 666–67.

· 29 The Latin of 3.5: Mynors, Epistularum, 72–75. See Henderson, “Knowing Someone,” 260–64 and Henderson, Pliny’s Statue, 69–102 for a playful translation and insightful disassembly of this letter. Also: Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 108–23; Lefèvre, Römertum zum Ästhetizismus, 123–26 (a revised and updated version of Lefèvre, “Vesuv-Briefe,” 193–98).

· 30 For analyses of Ep. 3.5 and 5.8, see also Haynes, “Tyranny”; Gibson, “Elder and Better”; Ash, “Pliny the Historian”; Augoustakis, “Nequaquam historia digna”; Whitton, “Tread Our Path”; Morello, “Saying Nothing.”

· 31 O’Sullivan, Walking, 71–74.

· 32 Ker, “Noctural Writers,” 234–35; Dorandi, “Commentarii.”

· 33 On the power and purpose of reading for posterity: Johnson, Readers, 32–62.

· 34 As reconstructed, e.g., by Dorandi, “Commentarii,” and Naas, “Réflexions.”

· 35 Keeline, “Model,” argues that Younger Pliny subtly criticizes the modes of his uncle’s life, making his own life choices seem more admirable. By contrast: Bromberg, “Telemacheia,” 66–67; Marchesi, Art of Pliny’s Letters, 153–55, on Younger Pliny’s concern about measuring up to his uncle.

· 36 This is where we learn of the Younger’s adoption; N.F. Jones, “Vesuvius Letters”; Ludolph, Epistolographie, 74–75 for the Elder as a domesticum exemplum to the Younger, though the latter chooses his own stylistic and topical path. Bromberg, “Telemacheia,” 67–68: both Young Pliny and Telemachus lack the mentorship of a biological father, and must learn from “proxies and exemplars.”

· 37 Mynors, Epistularum, 146–47. See Haynes, “Tyranny,” for Pliny’s struggle (a flawed and “fragmentary discourse”) over how to talk about Domitianic-era events as “history.”

· 38 Cic., Leg. 1.1–7; Cic., Att. 14.14.5: hortaris me ut historias scribam: Woodman, “Writing History,” 223–25.

· 39 Woodman, “Writing History,” 225–33, contra Marchesi, Art of Pliny’s Letters, 151–71. Also, Ash, “Pliny the Historian,” 216–21; Morello, “Saying Nothing,” 202–6; Baier, “Κτῆμα oder ἀγώνισμα”; Ludolph, Epistolographie, 73 (Pliny’s recusatio, “polite refusal”).

· 40 Wallace-Hadrill, Suetonius, 52–54; a critical source for the individuals contained in Suetonius’ De viris illustribus is Jerome (AD 347–420), who credits Suetonius as his literary model in his own De viris illustribus, Preface 1–2. See Halton, On Illustrious Men, 1. Jerome’s references to Suetonius’ famous men are scattered throughout his Chronicle, an updated Latin translation of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Chronicle, but he does not include the Elder Pliny (whom Jerome elided with the Younger Pliny, see below). Attribution of the Vita Plinii to Suetonius’ Illustrious Men comes from the manuscript headers themselves. See now Reeve, Transmission, 143–55.

· 41 Reeve, “Vita Plinii”; Sallmann, “Quo verius,” 217–18. The Latin is Reeve’s new edition (213–14), who also includes an apparatus criticus and discussion of authorship and authenticity. On Reeve’s authority (209, 216), I do not include the “tailpiece” of the Vita, later appended as an introduction to editions of the HN (with which it appeared until the 16th century), because Suetonius did not write the tailpiece. Also Gibson, Book 6.

· 42 Power, “Literary Career,” offers an elaborate and persuasive allusory argument that Suetonius had written the Vita relatively early as part of his then-unpublished De viris illustribus, based in part on how Pliny, Ep. 5.10.3 urges Suetonius to release a perfectum opus absolutumque, “finished and complete work.” Pliny unfortunately does not provide the title, but Power works through the language of Ep. 5.5, 5.8, and 5.10 (among other sources) to hypothesize, in agreement with much previous scholarship, that the unnamed work must be De viris illustribus. For further discussion of attribution, including citation of contrary views, see Maxwell-Stuart, “Studies in the Career,” 6–15; Lindsay, “Suetonius,” 459, 464; Wallace-Hadrill, Suetonius, 50–59; von Albrecht, History of Roman Literature, 1392; Walsh, Complete Letters, xxvii; Syme, “Travels,” 115; Baldwin, Suetonius, 379–466, esp. 400–5; Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 222; Hillard, “Other Accounts,” 1–5; and most recently, Gibson, “Suetonius,” 201–3. Additional bibliography for Pliny and Suetonius: Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 304.

· 43 As seen in Ep. 1.18, 1.24, 3.8, 5.10, 9.34, and 10.94–95; see von Albrecht, History of Roman Literature, 1391.

· 44 See Bodel, “Publication,” esp. 63–74, 105–8 (and below, this chapter), and Beck, “Petis ut,” 17–25, who argues sensibly that Pliny published revised editions; also Riemer, “Ein Beispeil,” 34; Ash, “Pliny the Historian,” 215. Bell, Jr., “Revision” (re: non-Vesuvian letters) thought Pliny made minimal, if any revisions to what he thought were already polished products. For approximate dates of Tacitus’ Histories, see Pagan, “Introduction,” 3; Woodman, “Contemporary Scene,” 31; von Albrecht, History of Roman Literature, 1100; Syme, Tacitus, 120.

· 45 See Bodel, “Publication,” 57–74, 100–3, 107–8, for various opinions about the dates of books in Pliny’s Epistulae and the date of his governorship. See also Murgia, “Chronology.” For the date of the Dialogus (as early as AD 98, at latest, 103, but usually, 102): Brink, “Tacitus’ Dialogus”; Rutledge, “Tacitus’ Dialogus”; Dominik, “Tacitus and Pliny.”

· 46 Gibson, “Suetonius,” 203; Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 374.

· 47 Wiseman, “Definition of ‘Eques Romanus’,” for requirements and rights of the equestrian class, including a property rating of 400,000 sesterces and three family generations of free birth, which were rationalized by the emperor Tiberius in AD 23, just about the time of the Elder Pliny’s birth.

· 48 Healy, “Science and Technology,” 3–4; Pliny gives an eyewitness account from his time in Rome that provides the date: Rackham, trans., Natural History, Loeb vol. 353, 242–43 (9.117–18); see also Oliver, “Lollia Paulina,” 150. For Pompeius Secundus, who was both a playwright and a triumphant general under the emperor Claudius, see Syme, “Pliny the Procurator,” 202; Ash, “Attitude to Warfare,” 3; Baldwin, “Composition,” 78.

· 49 Healy, “Science and Technology,” 2, 5–7; Syme, “Pliny the Procurator,” 204–8; and Ash, “Attitude to Warfare,” 1–4 for reviews of Pliny’s military career, all ultimately based on Münzer, “Die Quelle.”

· 50 Jenkins, “Horse-Trappings,” for the entire discussion of this find, catalogued as British Museum GR 1854,0717.1–55 and GR 1868,0220.1.

· 51 Jenkins, “Horse-Trappings,” 157; Gawroński and Karasiewicz-Szczypiorski, “Roman Cavalry,” 327, n.19.

· 52 Espérandieu et al., CIL 13.10026.22, with the reading emended by Wilkes; see Jenkins, “Horse-Trappings,” 154.

· 53 Healy, “Science and Technology,” 5–6; Syme, “Pliny the Procurator,” 206–7 sets limits of AD 46–58 for the Elder’s military service; also Marincola, Authority and Tradition, 47–51; Carro, Quadriremi, 46.

· 54 Historia Naturalis, praef. 3; Gibson, High Empire, 73–75 on the relationship between the Elder and the Flavians.

· 55 According to Syme, “Pliny the Procurator,” 207–8. But see Ch. 5, 6.20.18, for doubts about the reasoning behind the date of AD 59.

· 56 Baldwin, “Composition,” 73. Syme, “Pliny the Procurator,” 208–10 concludes that Elder Pliny was “out of touch,” that is, not politically active. He does include the interesting detail from Tacitus, Dialogus de oratoribus 8.1, that one Transpadanan equestrian, Verginius Rufus, was active under Nero, becoming consul in AD 63 (and in 69 and 97), and a governor of Upper Germany thereafter (from which position he twice turned down offers by his troops to be acclaimed emperor after Nero and then Otho died). Rufus became Younger Pliny’s legal guardian after the Younger’s father died some time in the early 70s. See further below.

· 57 From the polite: Howe, “Encyclopedic Mode,” 574: “No contemporary reader would regard his compilation as a work of literary delight,” to the brutal: Goodyear, “Pliny the Elder,” 174: “an aspirant to style who could hardly frame a coherent sentence,” among his many other far less flattering comments and references. Recent scholarship has become far more flexible in appreciating the idiosyncracies and purposes of the Elder’s style. See Wallace-Hadrill, “Unnatural History,” 80–81; Healy, Science and Technology, 79–99.

· 58 Howe, “Encyclopedic Mode,” 573–75.

· 59 Howe, “Encyclopedic Mode,” 570; Healy, Science and Technology, 29–30; Carey, Pliny’s Catalogue, 23–25; Wallace-Hadrill, “Unnatural History,” 92–96.

· 60 The Younger uses a euphemism, novissimis annis, “during the most recent years,” (Ep. 3.5.5) to describe the second half of Nero’s reign. See Howe, “Encyclopedic Mode,” 566; Isager, Art and Society, 63, 125, 215–16, 224–29; Baldwin, “Composition,” 73, 75; Baldwin, “Roman Emperors,” 67, 72–75.

· 61 Healy, Science and Technology, 7–8; see Reynolds, “Elder Pliny,” 8; Syme, “Pliny the Procurator,” 208–36; Münzer, “Die Quelle,” 103–11.

· 62 Syme, “Pliny the Procurator,” 224–26, who is more positivistic about multiple procuratorial posts than Healy, Science and Technology, 11–17, 22, who admits only Africa as a possibility besides Spain.

· 63 Healy, Science and Technology, 7–22.

· 64 See Gibson, High Empire, ch. 4, for the Plinys in Campania; Keenan-Jones, “Large-Scale,” 242, figures ca. 10,000 sailors at the base; Miniero, “Miseno,” 177, suggests 6,000. Carro, Quadriremi, 35–48 estimates 100 ships. see also Giuliani, Viabilità antica, 137–99. A second imperial fleet was headquartered at Ravenna (Figure 1.1).

· 65 Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 371, citing Starr, Imperial Navy, 32, and Tacitus, Histories 1.87 (a freedman named Moschus commands the fleet) and 2.100 (Lucilius Bassus, an equestrian, is in charge). The main administrative office may have been in Rome.

· 66 Healy, Science and Technology, 22–23, claims that the fleet had no military purpose at this time, but fulfilled transport and policing functions. See also Saddington, “Evolution,” 208–13; Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 371.

· 67 Baldwin, “Composition,” makes a strong argument for a long and painstaking process in compiling the HN. That the Elder could keep written projects secret—perhaps working on ambitious projects under Nero, despite the Younger’s comment in Epistula 3.5.5 that the Elder only tackled bland topics of grammar and oratory at that time—is evident from praef. 20, re: his History of Our Times.

· 68 Angelo Poliziano, also known as Politian (1454–94) and Erasmus (1466–1536); see Chesney, Rabelais Encyclopedia, 66–67, and Carey, Pliny’s Catalogue, 17. For Poliziano’s involvement in the manuscript tradition of the Natural History, see Davies, “Pliny in the Quattrocento,” 252–57. The editio princeps, or first printed edition, of the Natural History was published in Venice in 1469 by Johannes de Spira.

· 69 Doody, “Enkuklios Paideia,” 4–17, e.g. 4: “If Pliny’s Natural History is an encyclopedia, it is not because of authorial intention, and its first audience could not have recognized it as part of an encyclopedic genre of texts that included the Ad Filium, the Disciplinae, and the Artes. If any of these texts are encyclopedias, it is because of their reception history, rather than because they belong to a shared ancient category of writing.”

· 70 Key manuscripts with an include the 12th-century a (Vienna 9–10), e (Paris Latinus 6796A), d (Paris Latinus 6797), and q (Paris Latinus 7701). Mss. a, e and E (9th-c. Paris Latinus 6795) all have a common ancestor; d and q are separate. The 1469 edition of de Spira reads an. Sillig (Naturalis Historiae, vol. 1, 8), finding an in mss. bdTPΔηλ, nevertheless prefers iam, which appears in the 14th–15th c. Prague 2425 and its relatives, and in the veteres editores (i.e., Bussis in 1470 and thereafter, including the influential Harduinus, Caii Plinii Secundi, 6). Mayhoff’s ante appears in the 15th-c. Madrid Nac. 10443, Paris lat. 6804, and Vatican Barb. lat. 143. Thanks to M. Reeve (pers. comm.) for these references, and see Reeve, “Editing,” for all details about the manuscript tradition. He is not to blame for any of my misinterpretations. Like Doody, “Enkuklios Paideia,” 16–17, I wonder about the editorial emendations and their implications for understanding the paragraph. Unlike Doody, I suggest reversion from the general acceptance of ante or iam to an. Perhaps scholars have considered it so obvious that the Natural History was an encyclopedia (in the terminological sense) that they did not consider the sentence working as a rhetorical question that removed the Greek phrase from defining the Elder’s framing of his own work; the etymological link was just too strong to resist. See also Mayhoff, Naturalis Historiae, vol. 1, xiv, 5; Reynolds, Texts and Transmission, 307–16.

· 71 Doody, “Enkuklios Paideia,” 11–17 also tries to avoid it, but without reverting the text.

· 72 For the general phenomenon of Roman “encyclopedism,” see: König and Woolf, “Encyclopaedism.” For the Elder Pliny, see: Doody, “Enkuklios Paideia”; Murphy, Empire in the Encyclopedia, 1–25; Naas, Le Projet encyclopédique; Carey, Pliny’s Catalogue, 17–40; Healy, Science and Technology, 46–47, 71–78; Beagon, Roman Nature, 11–17; Conte, Latin Literature, 499–501; Grimal, “Encyclopédies antiques.” On Cato’s Ad Filium (though the encyclopedaic nature of his work has been questioned by Murphy, Empire in the Encyclopedia, 13 and Astin, Cato the Censor, 183, 332–40), see also Lemoine, “Parental Gifts,” 343–47. On Varro’s Antiquitates and Disciplinae: Volk, “Disorder of Things”; on analagous questions of organizing information in Varro’s De lingua latina: Glinister, “Constructing,” 12–23. On Celsus and his De artibus: von Albrecht, History of Roman Literature, 577–78, 1239–40; Köckerling et al., “Cornelius Celsus.”

· 73 Doody, “Enkuklios Paideia,” 10, 17–21; Doody, Pliny’s Encyclopedia.

· 74 The promotion of empire in and by the HN: treated extensively by Murphy, Empire in the Encyclopedia. Also Doody, “Enkuklios Paideia,” 10, 17–21; Carey, Pliny’s Catalogue, 25; Howe, “Encyclopedic Mode,” 570–72; Beagon, “Labores pro bono.”

· 75 Carey, Pliny’s Catalogue, 31; Locher, “The Structure.”

· 76 Pliny’s index, or summarium, as an information retrieval device: Doody, “Finding Facts.”

· 77 Henderson, “Nature of Man,” 140–41, 150.

· 78 Henderson, “Knowing Someone,” 264–71; Howe, “Encyclopedic Mode,” 563–64. This does not deny the Elder’s self-professed devotion to his official duties; Healy, Science and Technology, 25–29.

· 79 Howe, “Encyclopedic Mode,” 562: “He writes with the sense of a man who knows that his work does not accord with contemporary taste. ... his work would not immediately command widespread readership and respect.”

· 80 Gibson, “Elder and Better,” 193–205; Doody, “Enkuklios Paideia,” 17–21; Doody, Pliny’s Encyclopedia; Borst, Plinius und seine Leser.

· 81 Beagon, “Curious Eye,” 85–86, notes in Natural History 17.30 that the Elder realizes that change may be inevitable, even in knowledge considered secure.

· 82 Beagon, “Curious Eye,” contrasts Pliny’s postively valued and sharpened itch to investigate with the more suspicious views of philosophers who often considered inquiry into mundane matters as either trivial or morally questionable.

· 83 Beagon, “Curious Eye,” 81–84.

· 84 Respectively: Mommsen, ed., CIL 5.5262–64 (pp. 568–69; 5.5262 = Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, 2927), 5279 (p. 572, = Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, 6728), 5667 (p. 608); Bormann and Henzen, eds., CIL 6.1552 (p. 340; this text records the same inscription as Bormann, ed., CIL 11.5272 [p. 770]); Pais, Supplementa Italica, 745–46 (p. 100; = Chastagnol et al., L’Année 1983, 117–18, nos. 443a–b); Vidman, Fasti Ostienses, 45; Gagé et al., L’Année 1972, 68, no. 212. For the latest reconstructions of the inscriptions (used here), see Alföldy, Städte, Eliten, 221–44 (though Vervaet, “Reappearance,” 129–32, does not agree with all of Alföldy’s readings); Krieckhaus, Senatorische Familien, 215–17. See also: Shelton, Selected Letters, 193–99; Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 732–33; Radice, Letters, 549–53; Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 270–73; Birley, Onomasticon, 5–16, Gonzalès, Pline le Jeune, 15–17. For inscriptions related to Pliny’s friends and family, see McDermott, “Pliny the Younger and Inscriptions,” and see Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 9–35, for the strategy of using the Letters as a biographical source for Pliny. Dunn, Shadow, and Winsbury, A Life, are lively biographical studies of the Younger Pliny. Surveys of research on Pliny’s Letters, esp. Ep. 6.16, 6.20: Häger, “Das Briefcorpus”; Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters; Berry, “Advocate”; Cova, “Problemi”; Gigante, Il Fungo; Aubrion, “Correspondance.”

· 85 Champlin, “Pliny’s Other Country,” 119–20; Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 228–31. Excavation reports: Braconi and Uroz Sáez, “La villa”; Braconi and Uroz, La villa; Braconi, “Paysage.” A stamped brick with this inscription was first described in 1888 by Bormann but not at that time identified with Pliny: Bormann, ed., CIL 11.6689, no. 43 (p. 1034). The same villa was surely owned by the Elder Pliny, given the existence of other brickstamps found with his initials: C P S.

· 86 Catanaeus, Epistolarum libri novem; Ciapponi, “Plinius Caecilius Secundus,” 86. See also Ch. 2. The most succinct summary of the Younger’s life is the timeline provided by Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 265–69; also the Prosopographia Imperii Romani entry: Groag et al., P0490.

· 87 As such, these inscriptions do not, per se, represent a cursus honorum (sequence of offices whose primary function was to record a person’s career achievements), even though they provide snapshots of Pliny’s public accomplishments when each inscription was made. Also Eck, “cursus honorum Inscriptions,” esp. 85–88.

· 88 Text: Sartori, Iscrizioni romane, 37 (Po10); also Lazzarini, “Le magistrature,” 10. Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, 6728; Büchler, Carmina Latina Epigraphica 1.150 (p. 80). It is recorded and drawn in Alciato, Monumentorum, vol. 2, foglio 93 (541–42 in the combined digitized manuscript).

· 89 HS, either with or without a strikethrough (), symbolizes the currency unit sestertius. Roman numerals capped by a horizontal line are multiplied by 1000: Shelton, Selected Letters, 197, n.13. For the worth of a sestertius in the first century AD, and prices of goods, services, and wages, see Scheidel, “Real Wages,” 444–46; Duncan-Jones, Economy; Temin, Roman Market Economy. Scheidel and Friesen, “Size of the Economy,” also considers the wealth thresholds for an individual to qualify for a town council, the equestrian order, and the senatorial order.

· 90 Gonzalès, Pline le Jeune, 17, n.13; Sartori, Iscrizioni romane, 37; Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 70. Father?—see Gibson, High Empire, 36–39.

· 91 For the reponsibilities and powers of a quattuorvir with aedile’s powers, see Gil, “Quattuorviri,” 138–47; Lazzarini, “Le magistrature,” 9. This system was normal for a town with municipium status. See Keppie, Understanding Roman Inscriptions, 52–53.

· 92 See Büchler, Carmina Latina Epigraphica 1.151 for examples from Gaul and Africa.

· 93 E.g., Büchler, Carmina Latina Epigraphica 1.145–49. See also Thompson, “Taedium vitae,” 11–12.

· 94 Texts of 745 and 746 from Alföldy, Städte, Eliten, 211–19; also Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 108–10; Gibson, High Empire, 37–39; Krieckhaus, Senatorische Familien, 40, 215; Sartori, Iscrizioni romane, 34–35 (Po06), “Curiosità”; Lazzarini, “Le magistrature,” 7–10. Chastagnol et al., L’Année 1983, 117–18, nos. 443a–b, for the date of the inscription (and the building complex it describes), which must broadly fall after AD 69 (since the particular cult did not exist until Vespasian took power) and before the death of Elder Pliny in 79; Sartori would date it between AD 73–79; Alföldy, 215–16, prefers AD 77–79, as Younger Pliny would have to have taken the toga virilis, the costume of adulthood, before acting as the dedicator of a public building. Accent marks (apices) above vowels indicate that they are long; see Keppie, Understanding Roman Inscriptions, 21.

· 95 Taylor and Linderski, Voting Districts, 55–56, 123–31, 273, 370–71, map: with p. 47, map: Italia Tributim Discripta Section 1, C; Crawford, “Tribus,” 1128, 1134.

· 96 The oldest manuscripts show that his letters start simply with C. Plinius. See Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 109.

· 97 Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 108–10; Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 70; Salomies, Nomenclature, 26–28.

· 98 Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 109: Pliny only mentions his natural father in Ep. 2.1.8 and 7.11.5.

· 99 Text filled out from Vidman, Fasti Ostienses, 45 (fragment Fl). That fragment, listing consuls from the year AD 100, was found by Fausto Zevi in February–March 1969 at Ostia, near the so-called altar in the Forum of Porta Marina (IV.8.1), broken into four pieces and reused as marble revetment (Ostia Soprintendenza nuovi magazzini inv. no. 11695). For photos of the fragment, see Zevi, “Fotografie,” 403, Figure 2; Bargagli and Grosso, “I Fasti,” 30; and Association Internationale d’Épigraphique Grecque et Latine, “Epigraphic Database Roma,” no. EDR121567. See also Zevi, “Nuovi frammenti,” 438, no. 7; Zevi, “I consoli,” 125; Zevi, “Rinvenimento”; Vidman, Fasti Ostienses, 15, 25, 45, 94–95; Gibson, High Empire, 26, n.23.

· 100 Syme, “Early Career,” 551.

· 101 E.g. Titus Plautius Silvanus Aelianus, consul in AD 74 (Vidman, Fasti Ostienses, 43).

· 102 Text: Gagé et al., L’Année 1972, 68, no. 212. Luraschi, “Como romana,” 188, 209, suggests that this inscription was carved in the year of Pliny’s consulship (AD 100); see also Marinoni, “Una nuova dedica”; Susini, “Nuova iscrizione”; Sartori, Iscrizioni romane, 36 (Po09); Gibson, High Empire, 178–79.

· 103 Salomies, Nomenclature, 6, 11–12, 26–28, 44, 59–60 for consideration of Pliny’s birth and adopted names.

· 104 Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 107. For a definition and study of “Pliny Country” around Comum, a local circle of political and literary connections, and the nature of regional sociopolitical networks: Syme, “People in Pliny,” 135–37; Champlin, “Pliny’s Other Country,” 107–9; Roncaglia, “Pliny Country Revisited.”

· 105 AD 87 according to Syme, Tacitus, 75; Syme, “Less Successful,” 362; Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 267; others have argued for 89 (Birley, Onomasticon, 9).

· 106 Shackleton Bailey, “Nobiles,” 258–60; Wiseman, New Men, 1–12.

· 107 Morris, “Leges Annales,” 328, for a partial consular list that designates new men (“NH”).

· 70.2: Radice, 108 Panegyricus Letters, vol. 59, 489.

· 109 Gibson, High Empire, 179; Krieckhaus, Senatorische Familien, 41–42, 217 (1.6).

· 110 Text corrected from Shelton, Selected Letters, 198–99; the estimate of a date is based on the offices listed (see Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 269; Noreña, “Pliny’s Correspondence,” 241; Birley, Onomasticon, 16; Gibson, High Empire, 100). The inscription is not missing any large sections; it is unlikely that Pliny’s provincial assignment would have been omitted. Recorded and drawn in Alciato, Monumentorum, vol. 2, foglio 42 (437–38 in the combined digitized manuscript).

· 111 On the priesthood: McDermott, “Pliniana,” 329–31.

· 112 McDermott’s suggestion (“Pliniana,” 331) that hatred for Domitian extended to suppressing mention of his brother’s cult seems unlikely. This inscription remains relatively understudied. One should not undervalue Vercellae; Tacitus (Hist. 1.70) calls it one of the strongest of Traspadane towns: firmissima transpadanae regionis municipia. DeLight gives it a territory (and therefore population) similar to Comum’s: De Ligt, “Cisalpine Gaul,” 141, 169, 171.

· 113 Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 35, 268.

· 114 Ciapponi, “Plinius Caecilius Secundus,” 118; Mommsen, CIL 5.5263 (p. 569).

· 115 Text from Shelton, Selected Letters, 198. There is a break in the stone below the last line, but as there is no subject or main verb to indicate who made the dedication to Pliny, there must have been additional lines, which could have included Pliny’s provincial command. CIL 5.5264 is similar; it is built into St. Ambrose in Milan but is far more fragmentary: INIO . . . CAECI ... IDO. See also Gibson, High Empire, 112–13.

· 116 Eck, “cursus honorum Inscriptions,” 87–88, assumes it was a temple, on analogy with one he says he erected in Tifernum Tiberinum (the town below his Tuscan villa), in Ep. 4.1.

· 117 Alföldy, Städte, Eliten, 223–24.

· 118 Text from Shelton, Selected Letters, 199, after Alföldy, Städte, Eliten, 224–32, 243; also given in Eck, “cursus honorum Inscriptions,” 88, n.35. The text was first recorded by Aldus Manutius the Younger in 1567 (in codex Vaticanus 5241, p. 353), and included from that source in CIL 6 before the actual stone was recognized in Spello and rerecorded in CIL 11. For the Manutius codex, see these indices auctorum: Mommsen, ed., CIL 3, p. XXIX, no. XLII; Bormann, ed., CIL 6, p. LI, no. XLII. See also Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 272, esp. n.16; Gibson, High Empire, 141.

· 119 Alföldy, Städte, Eliten, 222–44; Birley, Onomasticon, 5; Eck, “Die große Pliniusinscrift,” 300–1; Noreña, “Pliny’s Correspondence,” 243. Vervaet, “Reappearance,” 129–32, disagrees.

· 120 Eck, “Die große Pliniusinscrift,” 306–7.

· 121 Eck, “Die große Pliniusinscrift,” 307–10, argues strenuously that the inscription was not placed at Pliny’s tomb (e.g., Winsbury, A Life, 15), but at a locus celeberrimus, “a place that everyone knows,” such as his library (suitable for recognizing his literary contributions) or baths (more public, visited, and visible). For Pliny possibly funding a phase of the Viale Lecco baths: Luraschi, “Como romana,” 186–88; Jorio, ed., Le terme. See also Gibson, High Empire, 253–54.

· 122 Alföldy, Städte, Eliten, 222 and Mommsen, CIL 5.5262 (p. 568), for the history of the inscription.

· 123 Text from Alföldy’s reconstruction in “Die Inschriften” and Alföldy, Städte, Eliten, 243, Taf. VI 1–2 (also in Krieckhaus, in Senatorische Familien, 44–47, 216 and Eck, “Die große Pliniusinscrift,” 302–3), modified slightly in the reconstructed portions of lines 5, 12–14, based on the display at the Museo Civico Archeologico “P. Giovio” in Como. Translation modified from Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 271, itself an adaptation of Radice, Letters, vol. 59, 551. Andrea Alciato (1492–550), while a precocious adolescent scholar, drew in a notebook (in an oddly compiled way) text from the four panels still extant in 1508: Monumentorum, vol. 1, foglio 10 (38–39 in the combined digitized manuscript). On Alciato, see Stenhouse, Reading Inscriptions, 28–30, 173, with references. Alciato never published his manuscript of Milanese inscriptions, though it was copied many times by others. A partial, erroneous, and partly reconstructed text of the inscription, based on Alciato, was published by Catanaeus in epistolae cum panagyrico (1518), on the back of the frontispiece. For the chain of transmission, see Mommsen, ed., CIL 5.5262 (pp. 563–68); also Ciapponi, “Plinius Caecilius Secundus,” 88, 107; Birley, Onomasticon, 5–6; Shelton, Selected Letters, 193–97 (including text, translation, and explanatory notes); Gibson, High Empire, 162–66.

· 124 Roman numerals capped by a horizontal line are multiplied by 1000; numerals enclosed by vertical lines and capped by a horizontal line are multiplied by 100,000. See Shelton, Selected Letters, 197, n.13.

· 125 Eck, “Die große Pliniusinscrift,” 306: “Kein wirklich vergleichbarer Text is aus Italien erhalten, aber auch aus den Provinzen kennen wir nichts.”

· 126 Hoffer, Anxieties, 229–33, briefly treats the issue of propegation amonst the Roman elite. See Riggsby, “Self and Community,” for how Pliny notionalized his relationship with society at large: virtue was constructed under and by the gaze of the community (77).

· 127 Eck, “Die große Pliniusinscrift,” 307–9 suggests this inscription may privately echo Augustus’ very public res gestae, a propagandistic autobiography displayed on bronze tablets outside his mausoleum in Rome and copied and distributed at least across central Asia Minor. See Cooley, Res Gestae.

· 128 The following life is based primarily on Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 265–70; Birley, Onomasticon, 5–16; Whitton, “Pliny’s Progress”; Syme, “Early Career”; Syme, Tacitus, 75–85; Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 20–41, 69–82, 763–71; Sherwin-White, “Pliny, The Man”; Trisoglio, ed., Opere, 9–18, 24–41, 45–47; Whitton, Epistles Book II, 1–20; Guillemin, Pline, v–xxvi; Aubrion, “Correspondance”; Gibson, High Empire. Note also Winsbury, A Life; Dunn, Shadow. The ancestors of all modern biographical studies of Pliny are Mommsen, “Lebensgeschichte,” and Masson, Vita. Ludolph, Epistolographie, advises caution about using letter contents to derive the character of their author; his work reoriented Plinian studies toward a more nuanced analysis of Pliny’s self-presentation. See also Häger, “Das Briefcorpus,” 569–71.

· 129 We know his approximate birth year from letter 6.20.5 (Ch. 5), where Pliny says he was in his eighteenth year at the time of the AD 79 eruption, by Roman inclusive counting (meaning he was seventeen). See Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 379; Birley, Onomasticon, 1; Griffin, “Pliny and Tacitus,” 376–77. For his name(s), see commentary above on these inscriptions: Pais, Supplementa Italica 745–46 and Gagé et al., L’Année 1972, no. 212. Boyhood: Gibson, High Empire, 34–39.

· 130 See the commentary on Pais, Supplementa Italica 745–46, above.

· 131 So his father died before Pliny reached age fourteen: Gibson, High Empire, 67; N.F. Jones, “Vesuvius Letters,” 33; Nicholas, Introduction to Roman Law, 90–93. The legal sources include: Tituli ex corpore Ulpiani 2.1.28 (early third century AD) and Gaius, Institutes (mid-second century AD) 1.144–45 (re: puberty), 1.196 (puberty ending at age fourteen). Because guardianship was ultimately about protecting familial inheritance, it was no longer necessary once a young man was able to have children of his own (these laws were far more restrictive of girls’ and women’s autonomy).

· 132 Verginius would eventually hold a third consulship in 97, the year of his death. See Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 70, 141–46, 761. Pliny, Ep. 2.1 describes Verginius’ funeral, at which Tacitus, when he was consul, gave the oration. Verginius also appears in Ep. 5.3, 6.10, and 9.19. See Marchesi, Art of Pliny’s Letters, 189–206; Gibson, “Not Dark Yet,” 199–201; Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 126–35; Bernstein, “Father,” 205–7; Syme, “Verginius Rufus.” For Cova, “Contro Plinio il Vecchio,” 65–66, Verginius Rufus was a truer model than his own uncle, and Vestricius Spurinna (Ep. 3.1) lived the ideal life (cf. also Henderson, “Knowing Someone”; Winsbury, A Life, 49; Dunn, Shadow, 36–37). Quintus Corellius Rufus, senator, served as an additional, informal mentor and father figure.

· 133 Pliny Ep. 6.6.3: ...solebat tamen vixdum adulescentulo mihi pater eius cum magna laude monstrari. ...ac prope cotidie ad audiendos, quos tunc ego frequentabam, Quintilianum Niceten Sacerdotem ventitabat..., “...for his [Julius Naso’s] father was often being pointed out to me with great praise while I was barely a young man. ...and nearly every day he kept coming to hear those from whom I was then regularly learning: Quintilian and Nicetes Sacerdos.” Latin text: Mynors, Epistularum, 166. For the term adulescentulus: Levick, “Cicero,” 172; Baldwin, Suetonius, 3–10, esp. 6: “Few things are more irritating about the Romans than their vague and inconsistent terminologies regarding age.” Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 267, suggest ca. AD 77. Pliny’s rhetorical training and contributions: Connolly, “Pliny the Younger.”

· 134 López, “Quintilian”; Bonner, Education, 97–111, 189–327; Jones, “Sophistic Roman”; Mastrorosa, “La pratica”; Craig, “Quintillian,” 260; von Albrecht, History of Roman Literature, 580–82, 1254–64. Pliny refers to Quintilian in Ep. 2.14.9 and 6.6.3, but subtle and varied literary intertextuality is evident in many of his letters; see Whitton, “Quintilian, Pliny,” 37–38, 49–62. (Ep. 6.32 is not addressed to this same Quintilianus; see Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 398.). Also Zehnacker, “Esthétique,” 442–43; Cova, “Contro Quintiliano.”

· 135 We know little of Nicetes Saerdos beyond Ep. 6.6.3 (see above): Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 362; Birley, Onomasticon, 7.

· 136 See above, Ep. 5.8.4; Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 70; N.F. Jones, “Vesuvius Letters,” 33.

· 137 Winsbury, A Life, 48–49.

· 138 Pliny mentions both a mother-in-law (socrus mea) and his nascent legal career in Ep. 1.18.3. Pliny was married either thrice or twice; evidence is not conclusive. In recent scholarship, Shelton, Women of Pliny’s Letters, 96–97 and Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 128, 559–60 argue for three; Carlon, ’s Women, 104–5, and Raepsaet-Charlier, Prosopographie, nos. 117, 626, 869, prefer two. See Birley, Onomasticon, 2–3; Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 267, push the first marriage to ca. AD 84, after his return to Rome from Syria.

· 139 Bablitz, Actors and Audience, 61–70; Dominik, “Tacitus and Pliny,” 334–37; Winsbury, A Life, 37–56, describes its judicial operations and “street theater” atmosphere.

· 5.8.8: 140 Ep. Unodevicensimo aetatis anno dicere in foro coepi, “In my nineteenth year I began to speak in the forum.” For Roman inclusive counting, see Ch. 5, 6.20.5.

· 1.18.4: 141 Ep. atque adeo illa actio mihi aures hominum, illa ianuam famae patefecit; Pliny the Younger would himself become an amicus principis to Trajan; see below. Mayer, “Gloria dicendi,” on Pliny’s oratorical activities.

· 142 Gibson, “Suetonius,” 199–200, 227–29. Birley, Onomasticon, 7 (after Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 72), suggests that the emperor Titus would have granted Pliny the right to wear the latus clavus, a broad vertical band of reddish-purple color down the front of a tunic that indicated senatorial status, or was the mark of imperial favor to the son of a high-ranking equestrian (such as the Elder Pliny) bound for senatorial promotion. For a recent study of social study and power for senators and equestrians, see Duncan-Jones, Power and Privilege.

· 143 Whitton, “Pliny’s Progress,” 11, n.55. Birley, Onomasticon, 7, perfers 80/81, followed by Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 267.

· 144 Birley, Onomasticon, 7; Gagliardi, Decemviri; Winsbury, A Life, 48; Bablitz, “Judging Ovid,” 33–34; Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 73. For the vigintiviri, see Duncan-Jones, Power and Privilege, 5–22, 154–61; Steiner, “The Vigintivirate.”

· 145 Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 267. Pliny’s patronage of Tifernum Tiberinum and construction of a temple there, adorned with a collection of imperial portraits, is recounted in Ep. 3.4.2, 4.1.5 and 10.8. In 4.1.4, Pliny says the town made him a patronus when he was paene adhuc puerum, “barely still a lad,” but this must be rhetorical exaggeration, as it could only have happened after the Younger inherited the property after the Elder’s death, as an expression of the town’s hope for its main landowner to remain beneficent. Accordingly, and confusingly, Pliny equates the age terms adulescentulus adhuc and paene adhuc puerum. For the archaeology of the villa and its brickstamps, see Braconi’s works cited above; for recent considerations of Ep. 5.6 and its property, see Champlin, “Pliny’s Other Country”; Marchesi, “Uncluttered Spaces”; Chinn, “Before Your Very Eyes”; Bergmann, “Visualizing.” For additional bibliography, see Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 306–7.

· 146 Atilius Rufus died either in 83 (Birley, Onomasticon, 7; Birley, Roman Government, 93–94, 97, on the basis of Tacitus, Agricola 40.1) or 84 Syme, Tacitus, 75, n.2). The linkage with Atilius Rufus is speculation. It is true that Pliny himself later recommended military tribunates for a young eques from Transpadana, Cornelius Minicianus (Ep. 7.22), as he did for C. Suetonius Tranquillus, the historian (Ep. 3.8), continuing the same client–patron system, sometimes tinged with local favoritism, by which he himself ascended, but there is no proof for this specific favor from Atilius Rufus. For the Atilii, see Syme, “Correspondents,” 342.

· 147 Gilliver, “Augustan Reform,” 190, suggests equestrian holders were older than 20, though Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 72–73, states that a military tribunate usually happened between ages 18–20. Doutless the timing was not absolute. Southern, Roman Army, 124–29, 331–32; Le Bohec, Roman Army, 24–25.

· 148 This post appears on the inscriptions CIL 5.667, 11.5272=6.1552, 5.5262, and also in Ep. 1.10.2, 3.11.5, 7.4.3, 7.16.1, 7.31.2, and 10.87.1 (Birley, Onomasticon 7–8).

· 149 Whitton, “Pliny’s Progress,” 11, n.55, simply posits “89 at the lastest.” Birley, Onomasticon 8, prefers AD 84. There is much uncertainty for this period.

· 150 Taylor, “Seviri equitum,” 158–68; Duncan-Jones, Power and Privilege, 93–94. For visual representations of this procession, see Veyne, “Iconographie.” From Como, contemporary with the Younger Pliny (late first/early second-century AD) is a relief in Luna marble thought to belong to a tomb monument, the “rilievo dei cavalieri,” showing riders in what appears to be the transvectio. Museo Civico “P. Giovio” di Como, L495. See Cadario, “La scultura,” 200, 204–5; Maggi, “Analisi”; Ghislanzoni, “Il rilievo.”

· 151 For the date of the quaestor imperatoris: Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 73–74 and Whitton, “Pliny’s Progress,” 9–13, 20, who prefer a date of 89 (Whitton would consider 90); but Birley, Onomasticon 8–9, 14 and Syme, “Early Career,” 563 argue for 87.

· 152 Described in Ep. 7.16.2; see Whitton, “Pliny’s Progress,” 9; Sherwin-White, “Letters of Pliny,” 420; Morris, “Leges Annales,” 317.

· 153 Duncan-Jones, Power and Privilege, 22.

· 154 Eck, Tra epigrafia, 88, suggests four may have been selected by the emperor (Birley, Onomasticon 9, n.23).

· 155 Talbert, Senate, 17, 163–84; Harries, “Imperial Quaestor,” 153.

· 156 Whitton, “Pliny’s Progress,” 6, n.23; Birley, Onomasticon 8.

· 5.667, 11.5272=6.1552, 5.5262; 157 CIL Ep. 7.16.2 and 2.9.1, where Pliny admits he did not have to run for election to the post.

· 158 For the importance of the office, see Duncan-Jones, Power and Privilege, 26–43, with data (32): “being quaestor of the Emperor gave quite a strong chance of being consul.” See Whitton, “Pliny’s Progress,” for a summary of scholarship on Pliny’s honesty.

· 1.23; the office also appears in 159 Ep. CIL 11.5272=6.1552, 5.5262; 7.16.2; Panegyricus 95.1. Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 267, lines up with most standard arguments for AD 91, as per Whitton, “Pliny’s Progress,” 9–13, 20. Contrarily, Birley dates the office to 88/89 (Onomasticon, 9–10, 14).

· 160 Talbert, Senate, 20, 54–66; being praetor could be an expensive proposition, even with state subsidies, given the duty to stage public sporting and theatrical festivals. Pliny, Ep. 7.11.3–4, discusses games he put on; Ep. 3.11.2–3, 7.16.2, and Panegyricus 95.1 also mention the praetorship; see Birley, Onomasticon, 10–11.

· 161 Whitton, “Pliny’s Progress,” 3–15, 20 (tracing back through Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 763–71; Syme, Tacitus, 76; Mommsen, “Lebensgeschichte,” 79–88; and Masson, Vita, 59–66). However, Birley, Onomasticon, 9–16 (latching onto Harte, “The Praetorship”), disagrees, arguing for AD 91, followed by Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 265, 267.

· 162 Ep. 1.7, 3.11, 4.24, 7.27, 7.33; Whitton, “Pliny’s Progress,” 13–15; Birley, Onomasticon, 11. In Ep. 7.33, Pliny asks that Tacitus include (in the Histories) his role in these events: Edwards, “Pliny’s Tacitus,” 74–75; Strunk, “Lightning Bolts,” 95–99, 104; Berry, “Advocate,” 6–7; Ash, “Pliny the Historian,” 218; Syme, Tacitus, 119–120.

· 163 See also Panegyricus 90.5: et in proximum iacto fulmine, “and with lightning thrown in our vicinity.” For the treason trials and the question of whether Pliny was really in danger, see Whitton, “Pliny’s Progress,” 13–15; Birley, Onomasticon, 10–15; Strunk, “Lightning Bolts”; Syme, “Early Career”; Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 75, 239–45. Suetonius, Domitian 10.2–4, names ten consular senators that Domitian had killed. Illias-Zarifopol, “Pragmatic Hero,” 152–58, suggests that Pliny’s retrospective self-portrait under stress in Ep. 6.20, inspired then by his uncle’s and his mother’s Stoic behavior, helps explain his ability later to survive Domitian’s capricious tyranny. Also Bromberg, “Telemacheia,” 68–69.

· 164 Strunk, “Lightning Bolts,” 92, 98–99, 104–9; Winsbury, A Life, 52–71.

· 165 Rutledge, Imperial Inquisitions, 9–16, reviews the difficulty of defining this term; see also Robinson, “Role of Delators”; Whitton, “Tread Our Path,” 353–55; Pliny’s bitter rival was the delator–lawyer Regulus; see: Ash, “Drip-Feed Invective.”

· 166 Recent scholarship has reassessed and to some extent rehabilitated delatores; see Rowe, “Review,” of Rutledge, Imperial Inquisitions, Rivière, Les délateurs, and Cogitore, La légitimé dynastique.

· 167 Gibson and Morello (Reading the Letters, 268) give the traditional range of 94–96, as do Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 75, 767–68, and Syme, “Early Career,” 564–65. Strunk, “Lightning Bolts,” 99–103, prefers AD 96–97 (as does also Birley, Onomasticon, 14–16). Whitton, “Pliny’s Progress,” 16–20, is comfortable either way.

· 5.5667, 11.5272=6.1552 (reconstructed); 5.5262.168 CIL

· 169 The position is reconstructed for CIL 11.5272=6.1552, and it appears on the monument set up for Pliny by the people of Vercellae (CIL 5.667). Syme, “Early Career,” 563–65 and Tacitus, 77, 82, accused Pliny of dishonesty. Strunk, “Lightning Bolts,” 99–103, argues that Pliny is not engaged in deception, and Whitton, “Pliny’s Progress,” 19–20 would catch Pliny as carefully hedging, rather than lying. See also Whitton, “Tread Our Path,” 353–62.

· 170 Whitton, “Pliny’s Progress,” 18.

· 171 See Günther, “Taxation,” for a clear state of current knowledge. Also: García Morcillo, “Auctions,” 263–70; Günther, Vectigalia. Corbier, L’Aerarium, 705, remarks that senators who held treasury positions were those who did not stand out for their military capabilities, which seems to describe the Younger Pliny.

· 172 Collins, “Palace Revolution,” for the full story and sources.

· 173 Collins, “Palace Revolution,” 99.

· 174 Shelton, Women of Pliny’s Letters, 96–97; Birley, Onomasticon, 2–3.

· 175 Strunk, “Lightning Bolts,” 105–9; Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 491–99; Birley, Onomasticon, 84. Syme, “Early Career,” 565, saw the accusation as a career move to get Publicius’ job. See Ep. 1.5 for post-assassination tensions and machinations.

· 176 Bodel, “Publication,” 42–57, 67–71, 105–9; Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 27–28, 41. Baraz, “Epistolary Dreams,” describes how Pliny used devices of dreams, visions and ghosts in his letters to present the “truth” about his past under Domitian, in order to safeguard his present position and reputation.

· 177 Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 268; Whitton, “Pliny’s Progress,” 17–18; Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 75–78; Millar, “Aerarium”; Corbier, L’Aerarium, 131–43, 648–64, 671–99. This office appears in CIL 5.5667, 11.5272=6.1552 (reconstructed), and 5.5262, as well as Ep. 1.10.9–10, 10.3, 10.8, and 10.9.

· 178 Günther, “Taxation”; Millar, “Aerarium.”

· 179 He also complains/brags in Panegyricus 91.1 (which dates this work) that it was officio laboriosissimo et maximo, “an extremely taxing but important office.” In Ep. 10.9, the emperor Trajan agrees that Pliny’s treasury job is destrictum, “uncompromising,” and so agrees to let him take leave to build a temple in Tifernum Tiberinum and organize affairs at his villa there (referred to above). Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 109–10.

· 180 The office also appears in the following inscriptions: Gagé et al., L’Année 1972, no. 212; CIL 5.5667, 5.5263, 11.5272=6.1552 (reconstructed), and 5.5262 (reconstructed). Also, Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 78. Whitton, “Pliny’s Progress,” 19, describes his progress as “remarkably fast,” citing Syme, “Early Career,” 561–63 and Morris, “Leges Annales,” 331–36.

· 181 For recent studies and bibligraphy, see Roche, “Pliny and Suetonius”; Roche, ed., Pliny’s Praise; Braund, “Praise and Proteptic,” 55, 58–68; Morford, “Iubes esse liberos.”

· 182 Birley, Onomasticon, 16, citing Schumacher, Prosopographische, 297. See also Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 79–80; Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 268–69. The office appears in these inscriptions: CIL 5.5667, 5.5263, 11.5272=6.1552 (reconstructed), and 5.5262.

· 4.8 revels in this office in (after Pliny had just received it); also 10.13 (in which Pliny asks Trajan for a priesthood (noting that positions were available), and preferences the augurship. Gibson and Morello, 183 Ep. Reading the Letters, 89–91, treats that letter; they stress the exemplum of Pliny’s predecessor, Julius Frontinus (patron and friend) and a certain competitive intertextuality with Cicero, another novus homo who had joined that most elite club when he himself became augur.

· 184 Rüpke, “Public priests,” 29, 34 discusses the process of becoming a member of a priesthood in the Empire.

· 185 Recorded in CIL 5.5667, 5.5263, 11.5272=6.1552, 5.5262. See Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 79.

· 186 Aldrete, Floods of the Tiber, 26–28.

· 187 Bodel, “Publication,” esp. 63–74, 105–8, for a comprehensive treatment of the chronology of the Letters’ composition and dissemination. Also Aubrion, “Correspondance,” 315–23; Murgia, “Chronology”; Beck, “Petis ut,” 17–25.

· 188 Crook, Consilium Principis, 23–28, 179; Pliny refers to his role on the council in Ep. 4.22, 6.22, and 6.31, which roughly cover the years AD 104–7. For an autumn date (the often-torrential rains of October), see Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 467–68. Cicero, Epistulae ad Quintum Fratrem 3.7, describes a serious October/November 54 BC flood in Rome, corroborated by Cassius Dio 39.61.1–2; Aldrete, Floods of the Tiber, 20–21.

· 189 Latin text: Mynors, Epistularum, 246–47. Watt, “Notes on Pliny,” 85, suggests vaste lateque in 8.17.4 as a more sensible reading for varie lateque, though such a variant does not appear in the manuscripts. See also Rocchi, “Brief 8,17.” Rebecca Kerns’ translation was inspirational to this effort.

· 190 Gibson, “Not Dark Yet,” 212–15 describes the symmetrical positioning of both letters, being seven letters from the beginning and end of the book, respectively, and the theme of the human struggle to control the flowing forces of nature (a metaphor for imperial accomplishment but also, subtely, hubris. See also Morello, “Pliny Book 8,” 171–72, who links the destruction and fear of the flood to a narrative of Trajan’s Dacian war, and notes the emotional pendulum that Pliny sets up in this letter between grief and fear.

· 191 N.F. Jones, “Vesuvius Letters,” 43–44. See Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 468, for literary echoes, also Hajduk, “Narration,” 64–65; Gigante, Il Fungo, 63–64.

· 192 Aldrete, Floods of the Tiber, 154–60 for psychological responses to flood disasters. See Chs 4–5 for further discussion.

· 193 This position appears in Pliny’s final and most monumental extant inscriptions (erected certainly from testamentary funds): CIL 11.5272=6.1552 and 5.5262. Alfoldy’s (Städte, Eliten, 222–44) reconstruction of the Great Comum Inscription (5.5262) to read that Pliny had proconsular authority rather than consular authority in the province has become scholarly consensus (e.g., Birley, Onomasticon, 5; Eck, “Die große Pliniusinscrift,” 300–1; Cotton, “Cassius Dio,” 233–34), though Vervaet, “Reappearance,” 129–32, protests.

· 194 Noreña, “Pliny’s Correspondence,” 243.

· 195 Birley, Onomasticon, 16, citing Ep. 10.17a.2, 10.17b.1, 10.35, 10.52, 10.88, 10.100, 10.102, and 10.118. See also Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 80–82.

· 196 Bodel, “Publication,” 102–3, argues that Pliny departed in the summer of 110, following Syme, “Acme of Transpadana,” 640. Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 269, suggest 109–11 or 110–12 for his tenure; Sherwin-White Letters of Pliny, 80–81, perferred 109–11. His governorship has to include AD 111 or 112, as Ep. 10.42 references Calpurnius Macer as governor of Moesia Inferior (Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 80).

· 197 i Olivé, “Una nota,” offers an opposing view, that the lack of later letters to Trajan in Epistulae Book 10 should not be taken as evidence he had passed away, and that Pliny could well have died a few years later. Stadter, “Ideology,” 69–70, 75 is also skeptical.

· 198 See Bodel, “Publication,” 20–21, n.20, 103, n.235; Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 251–63; Woolf, “Poetics of Empire”; Woolf, “Pliny’s Province,” 456–57; Stadter, “Ideology,” Noreña, “Pliny’s Correspondence.” Most recently, Lavan, “Epistles 10”; attempts to shift the perspective of the debate from the writer/editor to the reader.

· 199 Birley, Onomasticon, 1. The definitive treatment of Plinia is in Shelton, Women of Pliny’s Letters, 188–99, who pointedly lists all the things we do not know about her, as Gibson, “Pliny’s Women,” 471–72, observed. She was deceased by Ep. 4.19.7 (Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 296, 372).

· 200 Syme, “People in Pliny,” 137, declares “it would be expedient to have a list of all persons receiving missives from Pliny or mentioned in them, classified by identity, status, and origin.”

· 201 Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 379.

· 202 Shelton, Women of Pliny’s Letters, 194–98.

· 203 Shelton, Women of Pliny’s Letters, 190.

· 204 Shelton, Women of Pliny’s Letters, 192–93.

· 205 See Libatique, “Voice of Gender,” 7–21; F. Jones, “Naming,” 163–67.

· 206 Rectina and Rectus are not common as cognomina; see Syme, “Spanish Pomponii,” 251. Rectina appears four times in Spanish inscriptions, five times in Italy, and one elsewhere (Silvestrini, “Nobilitas,” 272–82). For Spain: Hübner, CIL 2.1099 (Alcala del Rio, Seville), 2168 (Montoro, Cordoba), 3216 (Iniesta, Cuenca), 3866 (Sagunto, Valencia), an epitaph to a Popillia Rectina, who died in her eighteenth year, who was married to Gaius Licinius Marinus Voconius Romanus, a friend of Younger Pliny (Ep. 2.13), and who may have been related to our Rectina; see Shelton, Women of Pliny’s Letters, 155–57; Álvarez Melero, “Secundae Nuptiae,” 309. Outside Spain and Italy: Mommsen, CIL 3.2431 (Split, Croatia).

· 207 Italy: Silvestrini, “Nobilitas,” 280; Chelotti, “L’Élite,” 287–88; Carro, Quadriremi, 65–66; Mommsen, CIL 9.322 (Cannae, Canosa), 725 (Larinum); Mommsen, CIL 10.725 (Santa Maria di Calapiano, Molise). Compare: Guadagno, “Il viaggio,” 64, 71–72, nn. 21–22; van Buren, “Saggi,” 83–84. Gibson, High Empire, 58–59, prefers her from Spain, along with Pomponianus and the friend in Ep. 6.20. Also Gibson, Book 6.

· 208 Starting with Winckelmann, Letter and Report, 70–71. See Camardo, “Herculaneum,” 324–25; Guadagno, “Il viaggio,” 71, n. 21; Zappia, “Pretesa.”

· 209 Goold, “Review,” 326–27; F. Jones, “Naming,” 166; Ep. 3.9.17, 3.16.9, 6.32.1 and 9.13.16 also include the genitive of a man’s name. See also Trisoglio, ed., Opere, 126; N.F. Jones, “Vesuvius Letters,” 38.

· 210 Thirteen mss. from the γ family also read ccasci, the doubled c being a medieval scribal alternative for t (see Ch. 2), therefore tasci.

· 211 Choosing Cascus, which could possibly refer to a Cnaeus Pedius Cascus, suffect consul in AD 71: the 1927 Budé edition by Guillemin, Hanslik’s revised 1958 Teubner edition, and Trisoglio’s 1973 text (see the Online Inventory for these); Sogliano, “Rectina Tasci”; Syme, “Spanish Pomponii,” 251; D’Arms, Bay of Naples, 222; see also Syme, “People in Pliny,” 140; Jones, “New Commentary,” 127. Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 373, whose suggestion that Rectina and Pomponianus were married has justly been rejected: Gibson, Book 6; Keeline, “Model,” 187–89; Beck, “Petis ut,” 7–8; Gigante, Il Fungo, 30–31.

· 212 Olshausen, “Mit der Katastrophen leben,” 454–55.

· 213 Offered by Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 373 and picked up by Healy, Science and Technology, 23. Syme, “People in Pliny,” 150, flatly disagrees, and C.P. Jones, “New Commentary,” 127, and N.F. Jones, “Vesuvius Letters,” 38, seem skeptically neutral. Denso, in the foreword to his 1765 German translation of the Natural History, suggested only that the two were “closely related.” See also Syme, “Spanish Pomponii,” 251; D’Arms, Bay of Naples, 222–23; Gibson, High Empire, 58–59, 66; Gibson, Book 6; 6.16.12 (Ch. 4).

· 214 The friend had not suddenly just arrived from Spain, contra Bromberg, “Telemacheia,” 55.

· 215 For Gibson, High Empire, 66, the lack of a name shows Pliny’s enduring dispproval.

· 216 Healy, Science and Technology, 8–11; Syme, “Pliny the Procurator,” 215–18; Alföldy, Fasti Hispanienses 70–71; Syme, “People in Pliny,” 149.

· 217 Syme, “Pliny the Procurator,” 230, suggests as much; also 228–36, Gibson, Book 6 and Gibson, High Empire.

· 218 Birley, “Life and Death,” is now the standard short biography, and, along with Griffin, “Pliny and Tacitus,” is the principal source for this summary (those two sources seldom concur on dates). It is possible that Tacitus’ praenomen might have been Caius, and that he might have had additional names, as suggested by Alföldy, “Bricht,” who identified the likely fragments of Tacitus’ monumental funerary inscription in Rome, originally recorded in Bormann and Henzen, eds., CIL 6.1574 (p. 342).

· 219 The literature on Tacitus is vast. A starter list of recent work in English might include, with special regard to the relationship between Tacitus and Pliny: Whitton, “Quintilian, Pliny”; Geisthardt, Zwischen Princeps; Dominik, “Tacitus and Pliny”; Edwards, “Pliny’s Tacitus”; Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 161–68; Whitton, “Tread Our Path”; Marchesi, Art of Pliny’s Letters, 97–206; Jones, “Sophistic Roman”; Griffin, “Pliny and Tacitus.” For Tacitus in general: Ash, ed., Tacitus; Pagan, ed., Companion to Tacitus; Woodman, ed., Cambridge Companion; Sailor, Writing and Empire; Luce and Woodman, eds., Tacitean Tradition; Sherwin-White Letters of Pliny; Syme, Tacitus, esp. 59–131; Syme, Ten Studies; Mendell, Man and His Work. For life and literary summaries of Tacitus: Mehl, Roman Historiography, 136–51; Conte, Latin Literature, 530–45; Mellor, “Tacitus”; von Albrecht, History of Roman Literature, 1096–145.

· 220 Parke, Sibyls; Satterfield, “Rome’s own Sibyl.”

· 221 As Tacitus himself (Ann. 11.11) describes, giving us the date for both priesthood and praetorship; see Grunow Sobocinski, “Visualizing Ceremony,” 583; Rantala, Ludi Saeculares, 41–62; Zecchini, “Feste e identità,” 203.

· 222 Whitton, “Tread Our Path,” 351–52; Edwards, “Pliny’s Tacitus,” 69, on Tacitus’ and Pliny’s back-and-forth over the reputation of Verginius; also: Marchesi, Art of Pliny’s Letters, 189–206; Gibson, “Not Dark Yet,” 199–201; Bernstein, “Father,” 205–7. Pliny twice provides the text of Verginius’ funerary inscription, in Ep. 6.10.4 and 9.19.1.

· 2.11; see Whitton, 223 Ep. stles Book II, 154–92.

· 224 Birley, “Life and Death,” 237–41.

· 225 Starter essays: Sailor, “Agricola”; Rives, “Germania”; Rutledge, “Tacitus’ Dialogus”; Johnson, Readers, 63–73.

· 226 Master, “The Histories”; Benario, “The Annals”; Birley, “Life and Death,” 241–47; Woodman, “Contemporary Scene,” 31.

· 227 Addressed to Tacitus: Ep. 1.6, 1.20, 4.13, 6.9, 6.16, 6.20, 7.20, 7.33, 8.7, 9.10, 9.14; passages that mention Tacitus: 2.1.6, 2.11.2, 2.11.17, 2.11.19, 4.15.1, 9.23.2–3, and perhaps 9.27 (Gibson, “Suetonius,” 23; Birley, Onomasticon, 53; Whitton, “Tread Our Path,” 362–64; Gibson, “Not Dark Yet,” 201–2; also Augoustakis, “Nequaquam historia digna”; Birley, Onomasticon, 17–18; Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 304–5; Griffin, “Pliny and Tacitus,” 358; Schönberger, “Vesuv-Briefe,” 530–31.

· 228 Compare, e.g., Ep. 7.20.5, the boldly playful: Quo magis gaudeo, quod si quis de studiis sermo, una nominamur, “All the more am I pleased, whenever there is some discussion about scholarship, that we are mentioned in the same breath,” with the ironically playful 8.7: atque ... probare eum esse me qui non modo magister tuus, sed ne discipulus quidem debeam dici? “and ... prove not only that I am one who ought not be called your master, but not even your student?” For the tangled syntax and messages of 8.7: Marchesi, Art of Pliny’s Letters, 102–17. Also Whitton, “Tread Our Path,” 346–47; Zehnacker, “Esthétique,” 448–49; Nolte, “Plinius minor.”

· 229 Griffin, “Pliny and Tacitus,” 364–67; Shewin-White, Letters of Pliny 100; though Tacitus never receives a “vocabulary of special intimacy”: Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 161, 164.

· 230 Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 163, 165–67: “this letter puts him [Pliny] ahead of Tacitus in the recognition stakes.” Also Edwards, “Pliny’s Tacitus,” 77. See Gibson, “Not Dark Yet”; for the sense of darkness and disillusionment that grows in the later books of the collection.

· 231 Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 166: “Pliny celebrates the readjustment of knowledge in which names belong only to literature and not to the men themselves.”

· 232 Griffin, “Pliny and Tacitus,” 366, who then proceeds to cover the similitaries and contrasts of the two authors’ social and political attitudes. Griffin notes (367) the important difference between their respective genres of writing (history and letter writing)—which is treated in Chs 4 and 5—but see Whitton, “Tread Our Path,” 347–49, on the elision of genres and the drawbacks of separating historiography and epistolography too absolutely.

· 233 Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, 100; but Gibson and Morello, Reading the Letters, 161–63 argues that a tone of familiar playfulness is strongest in the first published letter to Tacitus, Ep. 1.6.

· 234 Whitton, “Quintilian, Pliny,” 57–62, a relationship he terms “intimate, muscular, and ludic.” Whitton shows (58) that Pliny, opening the very next letter after the Vesuvian pair (6.21), plays off a passage from Tacitus’ Dialogus, a sign that Pliny can incorporate the historian’s sentiments into his own work in the way he surely hopes Tacitus will do with the Vesuvian information in his Histories.

· 235 Whitton, “Tread Our Path,” 345–47, noting the clever reference in the last line of the poem: silentio, as a pun on Tacito.

· 236 Gibson, High Empire, 1–3; Dunn, Shadow, 17–19.

· 237 Williams, “Tertullian.” The main sources on this problem: Cameron, “Fate”; Ciapponi, “Plinius Caecilius Secundus”; Gibson and Rees, “Introduction”; Stout, “Two Plinys”; Merrill, “Eight-Book Tradition”; Johnson, “The Manuscripts of Pliny’s Letters.”

· 238 Cameron, “Fate,” 465–67. A key phrase for Christians living under persecution was Trajan’s: conquirendi non sunt, “they (Christians) are not to be sought out,” (Ep. 10.97.1), which spoke to a certain policy of tolerance.

· 239 The problematic late fourth–early fifth century AD Historia Augusta, “Gordian,” 18.2, mentions the library; Champlin, “Serenus Sammonicus,” calls the scholar “exceptionally silly” (194). After taking power, Caracalla executed him in late AD 211 or early 212. See also Conte, Latin Literature, 613. His medical work contains the earliest known use of “ABRACADABRA” as a magical medical instruction.

· 240 Text from Kaster, trans., Saturnalia, Loeb vol. 511, 110–13.

· 241 From the context of the Sammonicus quote, it seems clear that Macrobius was confused too (or didn’t care to check), as Stout, “Two Plinys,” 250–52, argued—a rare and minor point on which I disagree with Cameron, “Fate,” 464–65, who otherwise has it right. See also Gibson and Rees, “Introduction,” 150.

· 242 Jerome, Epistulae 40.18 (ref. Pliny, Ep. 3.7.13), 53.1–2 (ref. Pliny, Ep. 2.3), 73.10 (ref. Pliny, Ep. 4.7.3); Contra Iohannem Hierosolymitanum 5 (ref. Pliny, Ep. 7.6.11); a late (AD 414) reference to his Epistulae, 22, De virginitata servanda (ref. Pliny, Ep. 9.27.2); and De viris illustribus (ref. Pliny, Ep. 9.2.2). See Cameron, “Fate,” 464–66, 470–74 for a full treatment, refuting Reeve, “Vita Plinii,” 208–10.

· 243 Cameron, “Fate,” 464; for the text: Adrien and Morin, eds., Commentariorum in Esaiam, 611. See Glorie, ed., Commentariorum in Hiezechielem, 394 on Ezekiel ch. 28, verse 13, where Jerome again mentions the 37th book of Plinius Secundus’ Natural History as a lapidary authority. The Ezekiel reference appears in Cameron’s identically titled article in The Classical Quarterly, n.s. 15.2 (1965): 290. Cameron’s 2016 version was substantially rewritten.

· 244 Cameron, “Fate,” 464. For the text: Helm, Die Chronik, 195.

· 245 Cameron, “Fate,” 466; Helm, Die Chronik, 194.

· 246 This suggestion is tentative, given first, that Jerome is translating Eusebius, and second, that Eusebius is not necessarily cribbing Cassius Dio, but consider: 66.22.4, 23.3: πῦρ πολὺ ... ὥστε ... | ... καὶ τέφρα ἀμύθητος ἀνεφυσήθη ... καὶ ἀνθρώποις καὶ χώραις ... ἐλυμήνατο ... καὶ πόλεις δύο ὅλας ... κατέχωσε, “so much fire ... that ... | ... an inconceivable quantity of ashes was blown out ... It wrought much injury ... to men and countryside ... it buried ... two entire cities.” See Ch. 3 for Cassius Dio’s full account, at least as epitomized much later by Xiphilinus.

· 247 Cameron, “Fate,” 467–79, for details.

· 248 Cameron, “Fate,” 469.

· 249 Roberts and Skeat, Birth of the Codex, 38–61; McCormick, “Birth of the Codex”; Botha, “Greco-Roman Book,” 5–12, 18–19; Hurtado, Earliest Christian Artifacts, 43–93. According to the sample of surviving texts (see Hurtado), during the 1st c. AD, 1.5% were in codex format, 77.5% in roll format; 2nd c.: 4.9% codex, 73.8% roll; 3rd c.: 21% codex, 56% roll; 4th c.: 56.3% codex, 15.2% roll. By the 5th c. AD, rolls were nearly extinct. See also Buringh, Medieval Manuscript Production.

· 250 Cameron, “Fate,” 463–65, 479–81, contra Stout, “Two Plinys,” 254–55.

· 251 Gibson and Rees, “Introduction,” 150.

· 252 Helm, Die Chronik, xiv–xvii, 195; Cameron, “Fate,” 464;

· 253 Merrill, “The Tradition,” 16; Merrill, “Eight-Book Tradition,” 179–81.

· 254 For the date of the composition: Merrill, “Eight-Book Tradition,” 176–78; Merrill, “The Tradition,” 19; Stout, “Two Plinys,” 255. At the same time however, Mansionarius aggravated another problem: the claim that the Elder Pliny was a native of Verona (see also Chs 2–3). Also, Binski and Zutshi, Illuminated Manuscripts, 416. In the last three pages of “Eight-Book Tradition,” Merrill provided the first critical treatment of Mansionarius’ treatise, but M. Reeve has now treated the question and provided an edition, with apparatus, in Transmission, 1–2, 354–66. For Mansionarius himself, see Richards, “Making Sense,” 145–49.

· 255 Tomlinson, “Anecdote,” 30–34; Thevet also misplaced the Elder’s death in Sicily.