Books: The Letters of Pliny the Younger

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Pliny was thrice married, twice under Domitian, but his second wife died
in 97, and the lady who figures in the letters is his third wife
Calpurnia, grand-daughter of Calpurnius Fabatus, and niece of a lady
named Hispulla. We get a charming picture of their mutual happiness in
a letter written by Pliny to Hispulla, who had had charge of his wife's
education when she was a girl. He praises her intelligence, her
economy, her love for him, and the interest she takes in his career.
When he is pleading in the courts she has messengers to bring her word
of the success of the speech and the result of the trial; when he is
giving a reading to his friends, Calpurnia sits behind a curtain and
greedily drinks in the praises they bestow. She sets his verses to
music, and Hispulla, who made the match, is neatly rewarded at the
conclusion of the letter by Pliny saying that both he and his wife vie
with one another in seeing who can thank her the more. When Calpurnia
was obliged to leave her husband and go to Campania for her health, we
find Pliny writing her tender love-letters, describing his anxiety on
her behalf, telling her how he conjures up the very things he most
dreads, how he reads and re-reads her letters, which are his only
comfort, and begging her to write him certainly once, and if possible,
twice a day. Then in the prettiest passage of all, he tells her how, at
the hours when he used to visit her, he finds his feet carrying him to
the door of her chamber and turns away from the threshold of the empty
room, sad as a lover who finds the door closed against him. The
glimpses which Roman literature affords us of the conjugal happiness of
man and wife are comparatively few. Cicero, indeed, wrote in a similar
strain to his wife Terentia, and used even tenderer diminutives than
Pliny, but the sequel was that he soon afterwards divorced her and
married a rich ward. We do not know the sequel in the case of Pliny.
All we know is that he nearly lost his wife in a dangerous illness
brought on by a miscarriage, and that she accompanied him to Bithynia
during his governorship. Whether she bore him the child which he so
ardently desired is not stated, but the probabilities are against it, as
there is no mention of such an event in the letters. His correspondence
clearly proves that for all his ambition he was essentially a family
man. Nothing could be finer than his description of the heroic devotion
of Arria to her husband, and the pathos with which he describes the
conduct of Fannia, who concealed the death of her dearly loved son from
her sick husband Paetus, telling him the boy was well and resting
quietly, and controlling her motherly tears until she could keep them
back no longer, and rushed from the room to give them free course.
Then, "Satiata siccis oculis composito vultu redibat, tanquam orbitatem
foris reliquisset." No one could have written that beautiful sentence
but a man of tender heart and sympathies.

Pliny's tastes were catholic. He writes with delight, but without
pretending to be a connoisseur, of an antique statuette which he had
purchased out of a legacy. Some rich men in Rome had the mania for
antiques--Corinthian bronzes were the rage in Pliny's day--as badly as
those who haunt our modern sale-rooms. Pliny's hobby, if he had been
living in our time, would probably have been books. He is one of the
most bookish men of antiquity. Wherever he went his books went with
him; in his carriage, in his gardens they never left his side. He
betrays, moreover, a taste for the beauties of nature which is
distinctly un-Roman. Even the Roman poets were almost utterly oblivious
to the charms of scenery. When Horace points out of the window to the
snow lying deep on Soracte, it is not to emphasise the beauty of the
scene, but a preliminary to telling the boy to pile the logs of Algidus
upon the fire. Even Virgil, who occasionally paints a bit of landscape
or seascape in the Aeneid, does so in a half-hearted fashion, as a mere
preface to the incident which is to follow, not from a poet's love of
beauty. In Pliny, on the other hand, we find the modern love for a
beautiful view. Me nihil aeque ac natura opera delectant. When he
describes his Tuscan villa he uses language with which we feel in
complete harmony. He specifies the places from which the best views may
be obtained; and if the garden seems to our taste to have been laid out
in rather a formal way, with its box-trees cut into different shapes of
animals and birds, he was in that respect only following the fashion of
his day, and his delight in the unadorned beauties of the surrounding
country has a genuine ring in it. In another curious respect Pliny was
ahead of his times. He had no taste for the Circensian games and the
brutalities of the gladiatorial shows. Writing to Sempronius Rufus (iv.
22), he bluntly declares that he wishes they could be abolished in Rome,
inasmuch as they degrade the character and morals of the whole world.
In another passage (ix. 6) he says that the Circensian games have not
the smallest attraction for him--ne levissime quidem teneor. He cannot
understand why so many thousands of grown-up people take such a childish
pleasure in watching horses running races. It is not the speed of the
horses or the skill of the drivers which is the attraction,--if it were,
there might be some reason for their enthusiasm,--what they go to see is
the victory of their pet racing colours, the triumph of the reds, blues,
or greens. Favent panno, pannum amant.

We find him writing on all manner of subjects. He asks his scientific
friends to explain to him the mystery of a spring whose waters ebb and
flow, of a lake which contained floating islands, and in one letter he
tells a fascinating ghost story of quite the conventional type, about a
haunted house, which drove any unwary tenant crazy, and the ghost of a
murdered man which walked with clanking chains. Pliny was no cut and
dried philosopher. Like his master Cicero he was an eclectic, and
pinned his faith to no single creed. Whatever was human interested him,
and on whatever interested him he put pen to paper. It need scarcely be
said how valuable these letters are in filling up the gaps of Roman
history. We have to thank Pliny for our knowledge of the great eruption
of Vesuvius which overwhelmed Pompeii and Herculaneum, and it was
probably only due to the accident that the elder Pliny was one of the
victims that we possess the two striking letters in which the disaster
is described. In another letter our author describes how the Emperor
Trajan sent for him and others to his country seat at Centum Cellae, to
help him to try certain important cases, and then he tells us of the
modest, simple living of Trajan--Suavitas simplicitasque convictus--and
the presents he gave them on their departure. The debates in the
Senate, the trials in the Court of the Hundred, the public readings in
the city, which--first introduced by Asinius Pollio in the time of
Augustus--were then the fashion,--of all these Pliny gives us a clear
presentment. His charity is hardly ever at fault. Only when he writes
of Regulus and Pallas does he dip his pen in gall. But Regulus had been
his bitter enemy and an informer, and the memory of Pallas was justly
execrated.

A few words may be added respecting the letters which form the Tenth
Book of his correspondence, and which show us Pliny acting as Governor
of the province of Pontus and Bithynia. He had been sent there because
the finances of many of the cities had been allowed to fall into a
shocking state, and because the Emperor wanted a man whom he could
thoroughly trust to put them straight. No doubt Pliny, while flattered
at this proof of Trajan's regard, felt the severance from his friends
and ordinary pursuits which this term of absence necessitated. But
compare his attitude with that of Cicero as Governor of Cilicia! Cicero
crawled on the outward journey, and when he reached his destination he
counted the days to his return like a bullied school-boy counts the days
to the end of the term. He writes to his friends in the capital,
begging and praying of them that they will prevent his being obliged to
stay for a second year. All his thoughts are of Rome and how to return
there. The wretched provincials bore him to distraction; he yearns for
the wider arena of the capital in which to play the swelling part to
which he aspires. There is, in short, not a trace in Cicero's letters
from his province to show that he took the slightest interest in his new
surroundings. Pliny displays a far different spirit. He reminds us
more of the Colonial Governor of our own day. He is interested in the
past history and traditions of the country, he is anxious that the
cities shall have good water supplies, good baths, good theatres, good
gymnasia. He is for ever suggesting to the Emperor that he should send
architects to consult with him on some important public work. And these
letters disclose to us what a wonderful system of organised government
the Roman Empire possessed. Pliny even writes to Trajan to ask
permission that an evil-smelling sewer may be covered over in a town
called Amastria. If all the governors of the provinces wrote home for
orders on such points, the Emperor must indeed have been busy, and some
of his replies to Pliny show that Trajan hinted very plainly that a
governor ought to have some initiative of his own. None the less, the
tenour of this correspondence proves that Trajan held the threads of
government very jealously in his own hands. When Pliny suggested the
establishment of a small fire-brigade in Nicomedia, where the citizens
had stood enjoying the aesthetic beauty of a disastrous fire which
destroyed whole streets, instead of putting it out, Trajan sharply
vetoed the suggestion, on the ground that the Greeks were factious
people and would turn even a fire-brigade to illicit and seditious
purposes.

There is, of course, one letter to Trajan which has achieved world-wide
fame, that in which he asks the Emperor how he wishes him to deal with
the Christians who were brought before him and refused to worship the
statues of the Emperor and the gods. So much has been written upon this
subject that it is almost superfluous to add more. Yet it may be
pointed out that the letter only confirms our estimate of the kindliness
and scrupulous justice of Pliny. He acquits the Christians of all
criminal practices; he bears testimony to the purity of their lives and
their principles. What baffles and vexes him is their "pertinacity and
inflexible obstinacy"--Neque enim dubitabam, qualecunque esset quod
fateretur, pertinaciam certe et inflexibilem obstinationem debere
puniri. He could not understand, in other words, why, when the theory
of the Roman religion was so tolerant, the Christians should be so
intolerantly narrow-minded and bigoted. As we have said, Pliny was an
eclectic, and an eclectic is the last person to understand the frame of
mind which glories in martyrdom. Such was Pliny's attitude towards the
purely religious side of the question, but that, after all, was not the
main issue. With him, as the representative of the Roman Emperor, the
crime of the Christians lay not so much in their refusal to worship the
statues of Jupiter and the heavenly host of the Pagan mythology, as in
their refusal to worship the statue of the Emperor. Church and State
have never been so closely identified in any form of government as in
that of the early Roman Empire. The genius of the Emperor was the
genius of the Empire; to refuse to sprinkle a few grains of incense on
the ara of Trajan was an act of gross political treason to the best of
rulers. No wonder, therefore, that Pliny felt constrained to punish
these harmless members of a sect which he could not understand.
Trajan's reply is equally clear and distinct. He discountenanced all
inquisition and persecution. The Christians are not to be hunted down,
no notice is to be taken of anonymous accusations, and if any suspected
person renounces his error and offers prayers publicly to the gods of
Rome, no further action is to be taken against him. On the other hand,
if the case is proved and the accused still remains obstinate,
punishment must follow and the law be maintained. Pliny evidently
thought that if the Christians were given a chance of renouncing their
past folly the growth of the new religion would be checked. He speaks
of a certain revival of the old religion, of the temples once more being
thronged by worshippers, and the sacrificial victims again finding
buyers, though almost in the same sentence he describes "the contagion
of the Christian superstition" as having spread not only in the towns
but into the villages and rural districts. He did not foresee that in
process of time a Roman Emperor would himself embrace the new faith and
persecute the upholders of the old with the same vigour as was in his
day applied to the repression of the new.

J.B. FIRTH.

THE LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY.

BOOK I.

1.I.--TO SEPTICIUS.

You have constantly urged me to collect and publish the more highly
finished of the letters that I may have written. I have made such a
collection, but without preserving the order in which they were
composed, as I was not writing a historical narrative. So I have taken
them as they happened to come to hand. I can only hope that you will
not have cause to regret the advice you gave, and that I shall not
repent having followed it; for I shall set to work to recover such
letters as have up to now been tossed on one side, and I shall not keep
back any that I may write in the future. Farewell.

1.II.--TO ARRIANUS.

As I see that your arrival is likely to be later than I expected, I
forward you the speech which I promised in an earlier letter. I beg
that you will read and revise it as you have done with other
compositions of mine, because I think none of my previous works is
written in quite the same style. I have tried to imitate, at least in
manner and turns of phrase, your old favourite, Demosthenes, and Calvus,
to whom I have recently taken a great fancy; for to catch the fire and
power of such acknowledged stylists is only given to the heaven-inspired
few. I hope you will not think me conceited if I say that the subject-
matter was not unworthy of such imitation, for throughout the whole
argument I found something that kept rousing me from my sleepy and
confirmed indolence, that is to say, as far as a person of my
temperament can be roused. Not that I abjured altogether the pigments
of our master Cicero; when an opportunity arose for a pleasant little
excursion from the main path of my argument I availed myself of it, as
my object was to be terse without being unnecessarily dry. Nor must you
think that I am apologising for these few passages. For just to make
your eye for faults the keener, I will confess that both my friends here
and myself have no fear of publishing the speech, if you will but set
your mark of approval against the passages that possibly show my folly.
I must publish something, and I only hope that the best thing for the
purpose may be this volume which is ready finished. That is the prayer
of a lazy man, is it not? but there are several reasons why I must
publish, and the strongest is that the various copies I have lent out
are said to still find readers, though by this time they have lost the
charm of novelty. Of course, it may be that the booksellers say this to
flatter me. Well, let them flatter, so long as fibs of this kind
encourage me to study the harder. Farewell.

1.III.--TO CANINIUS RUFUS.

How is Comum looking, your darling spot and mine? And that most
charming villa of yours, what of it, and its portico where it is always
spring, its shady clumps of plane trees, its fresh crystal canal, and
the lake below that gives such a charming view? How is the exercise
ground, so soft yet firm to the foot; how goes the bath that gets the
sun's rays so plentifully as he journeys round it? What too of the big
banqueting halls and the little rooms just for a few, and the retiring
rooms for night and day? Have they full possession of you, and do they
share your company in turn? or are you, as usual, continually being
called away to attend to private family business? You are indeed a
lucky man if you can spend all your leisure there; if you cannot, your
case is that of most of us. But really it is time that you passed on
your unimportant and petty duties for others to look after, and buried
yourself among your books in that secluded yet beautiful retreat. Make
this at once the business and the leisure of your life, your occupation
and your rest; let your waking hours be spent among your books, and your
hours of sleep as well. Mould something, hammer out something that
shall be known as yours for all time. Your other property will find a
succession of heirs when you are gone; what I speak of will continue
yours for ever--if once it begins to be. I know the capacity and
inventive wit that I am spurring on. You have only to think of yourself
as the able man others will think you when you have realised your
ability. Farewell.

1.IV.--TO POMPEIA CELERINA.

What treasures you have in your villas at Ocriculum, at Narnia, at
Carsola and Perusia! Even a bathing place at Narnia! My letters--for
now there is no need for you to write--will have shown you how pleased I
am, or rather the short letter will which I wrote long ago. The fact
is, that some of my own property is scarcely so completely mine as is
some of yours; the only difference being that I get more thoroughly and
attentively looked after by your servants than I do by my own. You will
very likely find the same thing yourself when you come to stay in one of
my villas. I hope you will, in the first place that you may get as much
pleasure out of what belongs to me as I have from what belongs to you,
and in the second that my people may be roused a little to a sense of
their duties. I find them rather remiss in their behaviour and almost
careless. But that is their way; if they have a considerate master,
their fear of him grows less and less as they get to know him, while a
new face sharpens their attention and they study to gain their master's
good opinion, not by looking after his wants but those of his guests.
Farewell.

1.V.--TO VOCONIUS ROMANUS.

Did you ever see a man more abject and fawning than Marcus Regulus has
been since the death of Domitian? His misdeeds were better concealed
during that prince's reign, but they were every bit as bad as they were
in the time of Nero. He began to be afraid that I was angry with him
and he was not mistaken, for I certainly was annoyed. After doing what
he could to help those who were compassing the ruin of Rusticus
Arulenus, he had openly exulted at his death, and went so far as to
publicly read and then publish a pamphlet in which he violently attacks
Rusticus and even calls him "the Stoics' ape," adding that "he is marked
with the brand of Vitellius." You recognise, of course, the Regulian
style! He tears to pieces Herennius Senecio so savagely that Metius
Carus said to him, "What have you to do with my dead men? Did I ever
worry your Crassus or Camerinus?"--these being some of Regulus's victims
in the days of Nero. Regulus thought I bore him malice for this, and so
he did not invite me when he read his pamphlet. Besides, he remembered
that he once mortally attacked me in the Court of the Centumviri.

I was a witness on behalf of Arionilla, the wife of Timon, at the
request of Rusticus Arulenus, and Regulus was conducting the
prosecution. We on our side were relying for part of the defence on a
decision of Metius Modestus, an excellent man who had been banished by
Domitian and was at that moment in exile. This was Regulus's
opportunity. "Tell me, Secundus," said he, "what you think of
Modestus." You see in what peril I should have placed myself if I had
answered that I thought highly of him, and how disgraceful it would have
been if I had said that I thought ill of him. I fancy it must have been
the gods who came to my rescue. "I will tell you what I think of him,"
I said, "when the Court has to give a decision on the point." He
returned to the charge: "My question is, what do you think of
Modestus?" Again I replied: "Witnesses used to be interrogated about
persons in the dock, not about those who are already convicted." A
third time he asked: "Well, I won't ask you now what you think of
Modestus, but what you think of his loyalty." "You ask me," said I,
"for my opinion. But I do not think it is in order for you to ask an
opinion on what the Court has already passed judgment." He was
silenced, while I was congratulated and praised for not having smirched
my reputation by giving an answer that might have been discreet but
would certainly have been dishonest, and for not having entangled myself
in the meshes of such a crafty question.

Well, now the fellow is conscience-stricken, and buttonholes first
Caecilius Celer and then implores Fabius Justsus to reconcile me to him.
Not content with that, he makes his way in to see Spurinna, and begs and
prays of him--you know what an abject coward he is when he is
frightened--as follows. "Do go," says he, "and call on Pliny in the
morning--early in the morning, for my suspense is unbearable--and do
what you can to remove his anger against me." I was early awake that
day, when a message came from Spurinna, "I am coming to see you." I
sent back word, "I will come and see you." We met at the portico of
Livia, just as we were each of us on the way to see the other. He
explained his commission from Regulus and added his own entreaties, but
did not press the point too strongly, as became a worthy gentleman
asking a favour for a worthless acquaintance. This was my answer:
"Well, you must see for yourself what message you think best to take
back to Regulus; I should not like you to be under any misapprehension.
I am waiting till Mauricus returns"--he had not yet returned from exile-
-"and so I cannot give you an answer either way, for I shall do just
what he thinks best. It is he who is principally interested in this
matter, I am only secondarily concerned." A few days afterwards Regulus
himself met me when I was paying my respects to the new praetor. He
followed me thither and asked for a private conversation. He said he
was afraid that something he once said in the Court of the Centumviri
rankled in my memory, when, in replying to Satrius Rufus and myself, he
remarked, "Satrius Rufus, who is quite content with the eloquence of our
days, and does not seek to rival Cicero." I told him that as I had his
own confession for it I could now see that the remark was a spiteful
one, but that it was quite possible to put a complimentary construction
upon it. "For," said I, "I do try to rival Cicero, and I am not content
with the eloquence of our own time. I think it is very stupid not to
take as models the very best masters. But how is it that you remember
this case and forget the other one in which you asked me what I thought
of the loyalty of Metius Modestus?" As you know, he is always pale, but
he grew perceptibly paler at this thrust. Then he stammered out, "I put
the question not to damage you but Modestus." Observe the man's
malignant nature who does not mind acknowledging that he wished to do an
injury to an exile. Then he went on to make this fine excuse; "He wrote
in a letter which was read aloud in Domitian's presence, 'Regulus is the
vilest creature that walks on two legs.'" Modestus never wrote a truer
word.

That practically closed the conversation. I did not wish it to go any
further, so that I might not commit myself until Mauricus arrived.
Moreover, I am quite aware that Regulus is a difficult bird to net. He
is rich, he is a shrewd intriguer, he has no inconsiderable body of
followers and a still larger circle of those who fear him, and fear is
often a more powerful factor than affection. But, after all, these are
bonds that may be shattered and weakened, for a bad man's influence is
as little to be relied upon as is the man himself. Moreover, let me
repeat that I am waiting for Mauricus. He is a man of sound judgment
and sagacity, which he has learned by experience, and he can gauge what
is likely to happen in the future from what has occurred in the past. I
shall be guided by him, and either strike a blow or put by my weapons
just as he thinks best. I have written you this letter because it is
only right, considering our regard for one another, that you should be
acquainted not only with what I have said and done, but also with my
plans for the future. Farewell.

1.VI.--TO CORNELIUS TACITUS.

You will laugh, and I give you leave to. You know what sort of
sportsman I am, but I, even I, have bagged three boars, each one of them
a perfect beauty. "What!" you will say, "YOU!" Yes, I, and that too
without any violent departure from my usual lazy ways. I was sitting by
the nets; I had by my side not a hunting spear and a dart, but my pen
and writing tablets. I was engaged in some composition and jotting down
notes, so that I might have full tablets to take home with me, even
though my hands were empty. You need not shrug your shoulders at study
under such conditions. It is really surprising how the mind is
stimulated by bodily movement and exercise. I find the most powerful
incentive to thought in having the woods all about me, in the solitude
and the silence which is observed in hunting. So when next you go
hunting, take my advice and carry your writing tablets with you as well
as your luncheon basket and your flask. You will find that Minerva
loves to wander on the mountains quite as much as Diana. Farewell.

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