Pliny the Younger

Pliny the Younger—to be distinguished from Pliny the Elder, his maternal uncle and the author of the encyclopedic Natural History—was born in Comum (modern Como) in Transpadane Italy c. 62 ce. His uncle adopted him, probably in his will. Pliny and his mother were living with him at Misenum when Vesuvius erupted in 79 ce. When his uncle went to investigate, Pliny stayed behind reading Livy, but his two eyewitness accounts of the event several decades later are among the most celebrated writings to have survived from Antiquity. As an adult, he led the busy life of a senator, landowner, and married man, dividing his time between the courts and Senate House in Rome and his estates in the country, which included villas at Comum, on the upper Tiber in Umbria, and on the coast of Latium south of Rome. He was highly educated and a dedicated member of intellectual circles in the city, attending recitations and writing risqué verse in his spare time. He advanced through the cursus honorum (series of public offices) to the consulship of 100. His effusive gratiarum actio (speech of thanks) to Trajan on his assumption of this office, which he polished up afterward in repeated drafts, has survived at the head of a collection of twelve Latin panegyrics and is known as the Panegyricus. Apart from the Apologia of Apuleius, which was probably delivered in 158/9 ce, it is the only Latin speech surviving intact between the last invective against Antony by Cicero—Pliny’s hero and model—in 43 bce and a panegyric celebrating the emperor Maximian’s birthday in 289 ce, and is therefore precious testimony to the development of Latin oratory under the empire. Yet it may not be representative of the many other speeches that Pliny composed and circulated, none of which has survived, and it may therefore skew our perceptions of his rhetorical skills. In the second decade of the 2nd century, Pliny’s career culminated in an appointment to govern the eastern province of Pontus-Bithynia as a special emissary of Trajan. A total of 107 letters exchanged between them while he was abroad constitute the tenth book of his Epistulae, prefaced by fourteen more addressed to Trajan earlier in Pliny’s career. Many of his vast circle of associates are visible elsewhere among the rich literary and epigraphic sources surviving for the Flavian and Trajanic periods, and in the nine books of private letters that he selected for publication, his skill as a raconteur and consummate stylist bring the kaleidoscope of contemporary society to life with unparalleled vividness of detail and elegance of expression. As a letter-writer and an orator, he has earned the posterity that—he frankly admits—he so ardently desired.