Life of Pliny
By L. Huxley, appended to the third edition of Selected Letters of Pliny with notes for the use of schools, edited by Constantine E. Prichard and Edward R. Bernard (Clarendon Press, 1887), pp. 1–12. References to the letters by the numbering in Prichard and Bernard’s edition have been changed to standard references by Book and Letter number. Ep. = Episotola.
C. Plinius Caecilius Secundus, son of L. Caecilius Cilo and his wife Plinia, was born at Novum Comum in the latter half of 61 or the beginning of 62 A.D. Both the Caecilii and the Plinii were families of good position; both belonged to the municipal nobility, and the elder Pliny at least was of equestrian rank. Cilo himself died too young to reach any higher eminence than the municipal aedileship; but the family had been established so long in Como that young Pliny could not be described as a parvenu on entering public life at Rome. Catullus (35) mentions the Caecilii as established at Como in Caesar's time, and Pliny himself (Ep. viii. 10. 3) speaks of leaving to the son he hoped for non subitas imagines.
On his father's death in 76, Pliny, still a minor, was left to the care of his uncle, after whom he had been named Secundus, and of Verginius Rufus. Though Pliny was impressed by the simple kindness and indefatigable activity of his uncle (Ep. ix. 7), the richer and more varied nature of Verginius stirred him with the warmest love and veneration, and it was doubtless to Verginius that Pliny owed the full development of the gentler side of his nature. In the year 79, however, the elder Pliny perished in the eruption of Vesuvius which overwhelmed Pompeii, and by his will adopted his nephew as his son and heir. It is to this testamentary adoption that the younger Pliny owes his name as we know it. From P. Caecilius L. f. Secundus he became C. Plinius L. f. Caecilius Secundus, not, as in republican times, C. Plinius C. 1. Caecilianus Secundus. The usage at this period, when the strict gentile system of society was breaking up, stood half way between that of the republic and that of the later empire, when the adoptive father's names were added bodily to the heir’s.
The addition of his uncle's fortune to the estates inherited from his father and mother near Lake Larius or Como, and at Tifernum, made Pliny a man of great wealth. His Etrurian estates alone brought him in 400,000 HS. (x. 8. 5). Accordingly he resolved to pursue the regular high road to fortune and ambition, the senatorial career. With a natural gift of speech, and trained in oratory by Nicetes Sacerdos and the famous Quintilian (viii. 14. 4) he began speaking at the bar in his nineteenth year (v. 8. 8), not without success (i. 18). Before entering the senate as quaestor, he held various minor offices, such as decemvir stlitibus iudicandis, tribunus militum of the Legio III Gallica, and sevir of the Roman knights. The same course, it may be remembered, was followed fifteen years later by Hadrian, who also was not of senatorial rank.
As to Pliny's military career, a formal period of service, six months, or a year at most, was still required of a candidate for public life, but it was generally service without campaigning. The tribunus militum honores petiturus was almost a supernumerary, and was usually very young; Hadrian held the position for the second time when only twenty-one, while Pliny describes himself as adulescentulus (i. 10) and found time to attend the lectures of the leading philosophers in Syria, where his legion was quartered, and to live in the closest intercourse with Euphrates and Artemidorus, the son-in-law of a more famous philosopher, Musonius (iii. 2).
Pliny was elected quaestor in 89, tribune 91, and praetor 93. As quaestor his financial power gained him the favour of Domitian, and he was named quaestor imperatoris. Possibly the 'pessimus imperator' hoped to gain another willing agent in the easy and unassuming young Italian. The latter, however, was of steady principle, and indeed still clung with a certain youthful affectation to the last shadows of republican usage. While tribune, he abstained from pleading in the centumviral court, for fear that the sacred dignity of his office might be impaired in the collisions and rebuffs of legal practice (i. 23). The chief act of his praetorship was the prosecution of Baebius Massa for extortion in Baetica. According to his account in vii. 33 Pliny and his colleague Senecio distinguished themselves by the courage with which they continued their attack on this creature of Domitian’s, though Senecio paid for it with his life before the year was out (iii. 11), and Pliny himself was finally denounced by the informer Carus, and only saved by the timely death of Domitian, in whose desk the signed information was afterwards found (vii. 27). As praetor, too, he celebrated public games, but with the same modestia (Pan. 95) which had marked the games given by Agricola (Tac. Agr. 6).
Up to this point his advancement had been very rapid. He had been made tribune as soon after his quaestorship as the leges annales permitted; then a year of the legal interval between the tribunate and praetorship was remitted by the Emperor (vii. 16), as if he were qualified by Augustus' ius liberorum, whereby a year of the necessary age was remitted for each child. Thus Pliny laid down the tribunate on Dec. 10th, 92, and assumed the praetorship 1st Jan. 93.
After this his advancement was slower. He could not be consul before 95 at least, and considering the number of candidates, it would be no slight to be passed over for two or three years further. As far as imperial favour went, he might have intrigued for advancement extra ordinem, but this would have been to place himself on a level with such men as Carus and Messalinus: he chose rather to wait.
In the interval he was appointed one of the three praefecti aerarii militaris in 94 or 95, for the usual term of three years, and here showed such financial skill, that in 98, soon after Nerva's accession, he was promoted to the State Treasury, as praefectus aerarii Saturni. This is the only case known in which one man held both offices in succession. He had cleared the way for this advancement by prosecuting Publicius Certus, one of the last holders of the office, at the end of 97, with the result that Certus was removed from the Treasury and passed over in the list of consuls for the next year (ix. 13). According to custom his colleague, Vettius Proculus, left the Treasury at the same time; the two places were filled by Pliny and Cornutus for the succeeding term of four years, including therefore the year of their joint consulate, 100.
At this period the consulate was no longer confined to two colleagues, for the year. Office was held for two or four months only, and pairs of suffecti were appointed during the rest of the year. Thus Pliny was consul suffectus in Sept. and Oct. 100, and his instalment in office was the occasion on which he delivered the Panegyric, an account of his own career and an ornate glorification of Trajan, his intimate friend as well as his emperor.
He was made augur in 103 or 104, and curator alvei Tiberis et riparum et cloacarum urbis from 105 to 107, a post always given to a consular as that of praefectus aerarii was always given to a praetorian. The Emperor also often summoned him to assist at his private council (i. 20). His last and most important post was that of legate to the province of Pontus and Bithynia, in 111–12, or 112–13. This was a consular and senatorial province, into which, as so often happened, various abuses had crept. The proconsuls, chosen from the senate by lot, were generally inefficient or oppressive. Their tenure of office was too short, their responsibility too slight, for good administration. Government by legates selected by the Emperor, and directly responsible to him, was so far preferable that provincials sometimes went so far as to petition for an exchange to the latter.
It was a high mark of confidence in Pliny that he was chosen as the Emperor's representative in such a matter. Trajan writes (x. 117. 1) ego ideo prudentiam tuam elegi ut formandis istius provinciae moribus ipse moderareris et ea constitueres quae ad perpetuam eius provinciae quietem essent profutura.
To invest the reforming legate with a dignity equal in name to that of the senatorial governors, he was given the somewhat contradictory title of legatus propraetore consulari potestate. (Mommsen compares with this the Emperor's election as consul when he already possessed the proconsular power.) Among the abuses which needed reform were the doings of the clubs and secret societies, which included the meetings of the Christians, the relaxation of administrative control due to the yearly change of governors, and the consequent disorder of the municipal government and the treasury. Yet it may be inferred from the tone of the many administrative questions with which he plies the Emperor in his correspondence, that Pliny was not so well skilled in civil law as in finance. The misgovernment of the province seems to have continued after Pliny’s departure, for Cornutus appears to have occupied the same post later, and a third legate was sent out by Hadrian. Finally Pontus was made an imperial province in exchange for Lycia and Pamphylia.
As to Pliny's return from Bithynia, the Letters contain no mention even of preparation for it. His death must have taken place abroad or very soon after his return, probably in 114.
In addition to his imperial offices, Pliny was flamen divi Titi Augusti, just as his connection Fabatus was flamen divi Augusti. This was probably a priesthood at Como, for the corresponding priest at Rome, as Mommsen points out, was called flamen Augustalis. But this was not the only way in which he kept up his connection with Como. His great wealth enabled him to display on a magnificent scale all an Italian’s love for his native town. The importance of universal education was beginning to be felt. Vespasian had endowed public professors; Domitian stimulated literature by the prizes of the Alban and Capitoline games, and now even private individuals began to endow education (iv. 3. 5). One of the most munificent of these was Pliny. In the lifetime of Domitian (v. 7) he presented Como with a library worth a million sesterces and a fund of as much more to maintain and to enlarge it. He contributed one third of the support of a school, when the people of Como were compelled to send their children to Milan for education (iv. 13). Again in vii. 18 he speaks of having given half a million sesterces to the bringing up of boys and girls at Como, and explains to a friend who has similar intentions his method of securing the income by a perpetual rent-charge upon an estate. This clear-sighted arrangement, which provided against loss of income by bad management of the lands, is another testimony to Pliny’s financial powers.
Besides these benefactions during his lifetime, Pliny provided by will for the building and maintenance of public baths or thermae, while another legacy of a million and three quarters was devoted to the support of a hundred of his freedmen. After their death, it was to provide an annual feast for the people of Como in commemoration of their benefactor.
We read also of a temple with statues of the divi which Pliny erected at Tifernum, a town which had chosen him as patron (iv. 1). Ep. ix. 39 tells how he enlarged this with a portico, and Ep. iii. 26 how he gave a valuable statue to another temple at Como rather than keep it in his own house.
But Pliny's generosity was not reserved for public actions. His kindness and equity to dependents (Epp. iv. 10, v. 19, viii. 2, viii. 16, ix. 21), his interest in his friends (Epp. i. 14, ii. 10, ii. 13, v. 5, v. 14, v. 16), even when his own life was endangered by the aid he offered, for example, to Artemidorus in Domitian's persecution of the philosophers (Ep. iii. 11), his appreciation of what is best in every character (Epp. i. 10, i. 22, ii. 1, iii. 1), his loyalty to old friendships (Ep. iv. 17), his generous dealings (Ep. vi. 4 and viii. 2), his deep affection for his wife (Epp. iv. 19, vi. 4, vi. 7), all unite in showing a very fine and loveable side of his character. So far does this mollitia animi (iv. 21) carry him, that, with two exceptions only, he never fails to speak well of every one still living and not in exile. The two exceptions are Iavolenus and Regulus: the one for a breach of good manners towards an old friend of Pliny's, the other for his infamous success in delation, against which Pliny could not restrain his indignation. This excess of graciousness may be explained by the exigencies of publication during the life of the correspondents; but even Pliny’s friends found him too catholic in his indulgence, and in Ep. vii. 28 he has to defend himself against the charge of praising his own circle in season and out of season. No doubt there was a good deal of 'log-rolling' in the literary coteries of the day, and Pliny himself was slightly touched by it, for all that he declares (Ep. 1. 13) that he attends recitations solely for the advantage of literature. Such mutual admiration was common to all but the strongest characters, and Pliny’s was weakened by a certain vanity of aspiration, and a too easy self-complacence in success. Yet he was firm enough to resist the advances of Domitian and his courtiers; he came of the pure and upright stock of North Italy (Ep. i. 14) and filled with reverence for the life and teaching of such men as Verginius and Euphrates, could honestly write mihi autem egregium in primis videtur, ut foris ita domi, ut in magnis ita in parvis, ut in alienis ita in suis, agitare iustitiam (Ep. viii. 2. 2).
Pliny has often been compared to Cicero. With smaller gifts and fewer opportunities, he was more fortunate, but less eminent. The influences of the time even conspired to accentuate his like failing. The moral oppression and instability of fortune under the worst emperors tended to exaggerate the importance of every struggle for right and freedom, and to make every action an appeal from the wrongs of the present to the judgment of the future. Men of position, debarred from influence in the State, turned to oratory and literature for an occupation and a pastime, seeking piquancy of expression rather than real solidity. A wide-spread growth of self-consciousness and the feeling of the worthlessness of the present are to a great extent responsible for the feverish desire so often met with in the Letters to survive oblivion in the remembrance of posterity (Epp. ii. 10, ii. 7, fin.). Pliny puts the alternative of life very shortly in Ep. ix. 3: men should either consider, he says, the immortality of fame, and work for it, or the shortness of life, and enjoy it. And so, comforted by the reflection that the name of Pliny is known wherever the love of letters exists (Ep. i. 13), he is able to moralise over the cheap diversions and unprofitable pursuits of the many (Epp. i. 9, ix. 6).
A similar restless tone is perceptible in the correspondence with Trajan, which contrasts with the business-like simplicity of the Emperor's replies. Indeed Pliny lays himself open to a general indictment of posing before the public. The letters were arranged by himself and published in his lifetime. We have seen what effect this had on his praise of others: it had no less on the praise of himself. All the letters appear to have been written with a view to publication and immortality. A selection from these could not fail to be a most partial autobiography; while the elaboration bestowed on the letters has often been at the cost of their spontaneity and simplicity. Yet even here he unmasks himself. His vanity is too simple and harmless to conceal itself, too free from any touch of that saving humour which perceives its own incongruities and disproportions. He naively tells us it was to bring himself into notice that he prosecuted Certus, and to enhance his own impartiality that he waited until the first wave of indignation against the lesser crowd of informers had spent itself (Ep. ix. 13). He praises himself that his friend may have the same pleasure as he himself had felt in his good deed (Ep. v. 1). Tacitus may have the laugh of him for waiting by the coverts, a spear in one hand, a pencil in the other, ready to secure the flying game or a fugitive thought; still, these trifles go to the making of immortality (Ep. i. 6). We are offended by his adulation of Trajan; but must remember the contrast between Trajan and Domitian. If Pliny is fond of celebrating his own praise, he is still modest enough not merely to tell of his own modesty, for example, that he keeps no precious bronzes at home (Ep. iii. 6), but openly to admit his inferiority to Tacitus as a writer of prose, to Arrius as a writer of verse (Epp. viii. 7, v. 15). He is unfeignedly pleased at being coupled with Tacitus as a leader of literature (Ep. ix. 23).
A collection of letters is always peculiarly valuable for the intimate views it gives of social life. Pliny, with his wholesome and gentle life, was not stirred to pour unmeasured satire on the worst excesses of his time. His nature led him to look on the brighter side of society, to move in the purest atmosphere he could find. His letters, reflecting what was best in Roman life, are therefore a necessary corrective to the writings of the great satirists. Those times could not be utterly bad in which we meet with the record of such a circle as Pliny's; so much fortitude under suffering, such devotion to right among its earlier members; such delicacy of feeling, such generous affection, such wide humanity seeming natural to those who survived to enjoy the repose of Trajan's reign. If the life of action had narrowed, the life of sentiment had vastly widened. It was not to unresponsive listeners that Pliny spoke of the beauties of nature (Ep. viii. 8), or called his slaves not servi but sui (Epp. v. 19, ix. 21), or told the unselfish delight he took in the pleasures of others (Ep. i. 10, fin.). We see that his was a happy life; the vein of serious purpose that sometimes made itself ridiculous in seeking an opportunity for self-improvement in the most incongruous circumstances, preserved him from all ruinous excess or extravagance, and in the industrious leisure of the country (Ep. ix. 36), to which he retreats from the busy idleness of the town (Ep. i. ix), he was able to devote himself to those works which should preserve his fame to posterity. His greatest grief was, that though, after Trajan's accession, he married a second, perhaps a third wife, in Calpurnia no children survived to bear his name.
Pliny’s claim to literary eminence now rests upon the Letters and the Panegyric; more correctly, perhaps, upon the Letters. His other writings, published speeches and verses, have not come down to us. Like most other Romans, Pliny began his career by oratory (cp. what is said of Tacitus, Ep. ii. 1). His especial arena (Ep. vi. 22) was the Centumviral Court (Ep. i. 18), where he delivered, for instance, the speeches in favour of Attia Viriola (Ep. vi. 33) and of Corellia (Ep. iv. 17); but his fame as an orator rested chiefly upon the five great causes he undertook at the request of the Senate (Ep. vi. 29). Those against Baebius Massa and Julius Bassus are described in Epp. vii. 33 and iv. 13 respectively. Pliny attached great value to these speeches; he composed them with care, and still more carefully revised and enlarged them before publication (Ep. ix. 15). Egi magnas et graves causas; has . . . destino retractare, ne tantus ille labor meus—mecum pariter intercidat (Ep. v. 8. 6). In Ep. vi. 33 he writes of revising his speech for Attia Viriola, which he considers his masterpiece; in Ep. ii. 18 he has enlarged the Panegyric to such an extent that two days did not suffice for its recitation to a select body of friends before it was given to the world. But it was not only thus that speeches were arranged for mere literary effect. The very pleadings of the lawyers were intended for nothing but display, and the law-court became the scene of a fashionable recitation (Ep. ii. 14). If such serious matters were profaned by the dilettanti, it is no wonder that every aspirant to fame was bound to try his hand at poetry of all kinds. Magnum proventum poetarum annus hic attulit, writes Pliny in Ep. i. 13. 1. Who can wonder that their recitations were sparsely attended? Pliny himself had done as others did: Variis me studiorum generibus, nulli satis confisus, experior (Ep. ix. 29. 1), and in
the spirit of a youth
That means to be of note, began betimes
with a Greek tragedy (!) at the age of fourteen (Ep. vii. 4).
We hear of elegiacs on the Island of Icaria while he was weather-bound on his way back from Syria, of Latin iambics, in which he says he was facilitate corruptus; later he published a collection of hendecasyllables, which achieved some popularity (Ep. iv. 24); 'lusus et ineptiae' hardly fitting the ideal senator, for they appear to have been of the usual personal and abusive character. In Epp. iv. 18 and v. 15 he speaks of translating three Greek epigrams by Arrius Antoninus, and these translations are perhaps preserved in the Anthologia Latina 710 R.
But though his verses were a failure and his orations laboured, Pliny possessed enough sympathy and discernment to be, not a poet or a historian, but a letter-writer. His sensibilities were easily moved by humanity or by nature; he instinctively saw the brighter side of men and things, and writing of them was picturesque without malice and sympathetic without mawkishness. His own nature reproduces itself in his way of looking at the world, grouping things too often as harmless vanity directed, yet requiring no little of its own sympathy and honour from all its circle. The affectations in the Letters belong to the training of the age; rhetorical trappings weighing down the subject-matter; endless metaphors, due to the wide study of epic and lyric poetry, diversifying the whole language, as in modern times.
The collection of letters displays much skill in its arrangement. With rare exceptions, each letter gains in artistic completeness by treating of one subject alone; while the reader finds a pleasant variety of theme in the succession of felicitation and condolence, anecdote and description, sketches of men and things, and slight essays suggested by passing events. They were probably intended from the first for publication; no less care is spent over the diction than over the arrangement: witness the choice mentioned in the dedicatory letter (Ep. i. 1) of 'epistulas si quas paulo curatius scripsissem,' and the advice to a friend in Ep. vii. 9, 'volo epistulam diligentius scribas . . . pressus sermo purusque ex epistulis petitur.' Thus it comes that so many of them but for the address, seem to be no more than models of style for any given subject.
Like the works of Martial and Statius, the histories of Tacitus and the biographies of Fannius (Ep. v. 5), Pliny's letters appear to have been published in successive volumes, one or possibly three books at a time. As far as the dates can be verified, the letters in the first three books range from the year 97 to 104, the first possible date, therefore, of publication: i. 7 and i. 17 belonging probably to 101, and ii. 13 to 104 at earliest. Nothing, then, was published during Domitian's reign, though ii. 20, with its stories about Regulus the fortune-hunter, was written then. Book IV contains letters of 103 to 106, with a few of earlier date, while Book V., though belonging chiefly to 106, has one letter which cannot be dated before 108, if, as is likely, Julius and Junius Avitus (Epp. v. 21 and viii. 23) are to be identified: and Book VI. belongs to 106 and 107. While a fairly long interval separates the publication of Book III from the next book or group of books, we know from a reference in ix. 19 that vi. 10 was already published, thus making it not unlikely, from the quick succession of the later books, that all the nine books were published in groups of three, Book VII affording dates of 107, VIII of 108, and IX of 109.
Pliny's statement in his dedicatory letter (Ep. i. 1) that the letters are not in strict chronological order, and that some older ones might find a place in later books, is borne out by the fact that Book II contains the earliest letter of all, and others, such as IV and V contain letters written before the publication of the preceding group.
The correspondence with Trajan constitutes a tenth book. It consists of enquiries from Pliny upon questions of law and administration connected with his province, and Trajan's replies to these. The care and judgment of the emperor are as conspicuous as Pliny's conscientious desire to administer the law with perfect equity. These letters, dictated by necessity, show perhaps somewhat more spontaneity on Pliny's part than do the rest; the emperor, seeing clearly what he wishes to have done and with no fear of publication before his eyes, is delightfully lucid and direct. Two excellent examples of the contrast between the emperor and his legate are given in this selection, the question of dealing with the foundlings (Epp. x. 65 and 66) and with the Christians (Epp. x. 96 and 97), both interesting as throwing light on provincial life.