Pliny the Younger (0061–0113)

Pliny had the great fortune to live during the time of Emperor Trajan, when the Roman Empire was at its very peak and only near the start of its Five Good Emperors period. Like Pepys' diary, Pliny's letters have added value for their describing important events and people of his time, such as the eruption of Mount Vesuvius (which killed his uncle, the elder Pliny) and persecution of the Christianity cult. We also get to know the author himself. Pliny's letters are a pleasure to read, expressing his creativity and wisdom, and they vary in tone according to whom he writes. He takes great pride in his writing skill, proved not only in what he says about his poetry, his speeches and other prose but also in the careful text of the letters themselves. He puts the greatest care into his letters for Trajan and for Tacitus with his desire to impress.

Pliny's times are orderly under Trajan's rule, but he has not forgotten the difficulties and chaos under the former reigns of Nero and Domitian. Pliny played his cards right and was always able to duck sanction in those darker periods, but many of his more outspoken friends could not. In the letters we see his generous feelings and financial support, including for families he knows were hard done by as he makes a kind of restitution for his survivor's guilt. Besides the evidence of these acts and observations on others' writings and his own, he often brings up unexpected topics which include a description of ghosts, and a story he's heard about an especially friendly dolphin. As the Penguin edition's introduction states, the personae of ancient Greeks are a mystery to us but many Romans have left us letters, and Pliny's are the best of all.… (more)

"I'm really enjoying reading Pliny. It's strange, but I really identify with him. He's just this guy, he's got his job to do, but what he really cares about is literature, reading it, writing a bit of it, talking about it with his friends."
"Okay."
"I've been imagining myself as Pliny when I write emails. Will this go down in posterity? How can I be a little wittier? Should I redraft this?"
"You know he owned half of Italy, right? And you have a part time job at a liberal arts college?"

That really happened. Trust my wife to bring me down a peg. Anyway, I stand by what I said, even though Pliny was massively rich and hob-nobbed with emperors. These letters are really interesting, provided you can get into at least two of the categories:

i) Literary criticism
ii) Legal affairs
iii) Bureaucratic wheedling
iv) Personal lives of Roman aristocrats
v) Gossip with famous historians
vi) Minutiae of governing a province

I enjoyed them all to begin with. The legal affairs got pretty dull pretty quickly, though they're great history, I'm sure; long discussions of cases Pliny presented or witnessed. The wheedling was pleasant, since it's nice to see office politics on a truly grand scale, but palls soon enough. The minutiae is, again, good for historians, but fairly dull reading (dear emperor, should I let these people build a swimming pool? Yours, Pliny). The literary criticism was, of course, my favorite for some time; it's thrilling to read someone's letters about Martial. They're also interesting because of the weight put on style. We could learn something there; Pliny even makes the argument that writing works with vapid content is more challenging, because the style has to be so much more rigorous (rather than, e.g., not writing things with vapid content). The personal lives stuff was okay for a while, but there are only so many grand performance eulogies you can read before they blend into one another. Gossip between Pliny, Tacitus, and Suetonius, however, was always fascinating, just because of who they are.

The point of all this is: the book offers diminishing returns. Books VIII and IX in particular, are deadly boring. But well worth flicking through the rest.… (more)