Letters of Pliny
suffer the same punishment as would have been inflicted upon the person
unjustly accused if the crime had been proved. M.]
109 (return) [ Trajan.]
110 (return) [ Unction was much esteemed and prescribed by the ancients.
Celsus expressly recommends it in the remission of acute distempers:
"ungi leniterque pertractari corpus, etiam in acutic et recentibus
niorbis opartet; us rernissione fumen," &c. Celsi Med. ed. Aliucloveen,
p. 88. M.]
111 (return) [ His wife.]
112 (return) [ See book V. letter XX.]
113 (return) [ Trajan.]
114 (return) [ One of the Bithynians employed to manage the trial. M.]
115 (return) [ About $28,000.]
116 (return) [ About $26,000.]
117 (return) [ There is a kind of witticism in this expression, which
will be lost to the mere English reader unless he be informed that the
Romans had a privilege, confirmed to them by several laws which passed
in the earlier ages of the republic, of appealing from the decisions of
the magistrates to the general assembly of the people: and they did so
in the form of words which Pomponius here applies to a different
purpose. M.]
118 (return) [ The priests, as well as other magistrates, exhibited
public games to the people when they entered upon their office. M.]
119 (return) [ A famous lawyer who flourished in the reign of the
emperor Claudius: those who followed his opinions were said to be
Cassians, or of the school of Cassius. M.]
120 (return) [ A Stoic philosopher and native of Tarsus. He was tutor
for some time to Octavius, afterwards Augustus, Cæsar.]
121 (return) [ Balzac very prettily observes: "Il y a des riviere: qui
ne font jamais tact de bien que quand elles se dibordent; de eneme,
l'amitie n'a mealleur quo l'exces." M.]
122 (return) [ Persons of rank and literature among the Romans retained
in their families a domestic whose sole business was to read to them.
M.]
123 (return) [ It was a doctrine maintained by the Stoics that all
crimes are equal M.]
124 (return) [ About $400.]
125 (return) [ About $600.]
126 (return) [ About $93.]
127 (return) [ Hom. II. lib. IX. V. 319.]
128 (return) [ Those of Nero and Domitian. M.]
129 (return) [ When Nerva and Trajan received the empire. M.]
130 (return) [ A slave could acquire no property, and consequently was
incapable bylaw of making a will. M.]
131 (return) [ Now called Amelia, a town in Ombria. M.]
132 (return) [ Now Laghetto di Bassano. M.]
133 (return) [ A province in Anatolia, or Asia Minor. M.]
134 (return) [ The performers at these games were divided into
companies, distinguished by the particular colour of their habits; the
principal of which were the white, the red, the blue, and the green.
Accordingly the spectators favoured one or the other colour, as humour
and caprice inclined them. In the reign of Justinian a tumult arose in
Constantinople, occasioned merely by a contention among the partisans of
these several colours, wherein no less than 30,000 men lost their lives.
M.]
135 (return) [ Now called Castello di Baia, in Terra di Lavoro. It was
the place the Romans chose for their winter retreat; and which they
frequented upon account of its warm baths. Some few ruins of the
beautiful villas that once covered this delightful coast still remain;
and nothing can give one a higher idea of the prodigious expense and
magnificence of the Romans in their private buildings than the manner in
which some of these were situated. It appears from this letter, as well
as from several other passages in the classic writers, that they
actually projected into the sea, being erected upon vast piles, sunk for
that purpose.]
136 (return) [ The buskin was a kind of high shoe worn upon the stage by
the actors of tragedy, in order to give them a more heroical elevation
of stature; as the sock was something between a shoe and stocking, it
was appropriated to the comic players. M.]
137 (return) [ Lyons.]
138 (return) [ He was accused of treason, under pretence that in a
dramatic piece which he composed he had, in the characters of Paris and
Oenone, reflected upon Domitian for divorcing his wife Domitia. Suet, in
Vit. Domit. C. 10. M.]
139 (return) [ Helvidius.]
140 (return) [ Upon the accession of Nerva to the empire, after the
death of Domitian. M.]
142 (return) [ Our authors first wife; of whom we have no particular
account. After her death, he married his favourite Calpurnia. M.]
143 (return) [ It is very remarkable that, when any senator was asked
his opinion in the house, he had the privilege of speaking as long as he
pleased upon any other affair before he came to the point in question.
Aul. Gell. IV. C. 10. M.]
144 (return) [ Aeneid, LIB. VI. V. 105.]
145 (return) [ Arria and Fannia.]
146 (return) [ The appellation by which the senate was addressed. M.]
147 (return) [ The tribunes were magistrates chosen at first out of the
body of the commons, for the defence of their liberties, and to
interpose in all grievances offered by their superiors. Their authority
extended even to the deliberations of the senate. M.]
148 (return) [ Diomed's speech to Nestor, advising him to retire from
the field of battle. Iliad, VIII. 302. Pope. M.]
149 (return) [ Nerva.]
150 (return) [ Domitian; by whom he had been appointed consul elect,
though he had not yet entered upon that office. M.]
151 (return) [ These persons were introduced at most of the tables of
the great, for the purposes of mirth and gaiety, and constituted an
essential part in all polite entertainments among the Romans. It is
surprising how soon this great people fell off from their original
severity of manners, and were tainted with the stale refinements of
foreign luxury. Livy dates the rise of this and other unmanly delicacies
from the conquest of Scipio Asiaticus over Antiochus; that is when the
Roman name had scarce subsisted above a hundred and threescore years.
"Luxuriae peregrinae origio," says he, "exercitu Asiatico in urbem
invecta est." This triumphant army caught, it seems, the contagious
softness of the people it subdued; and, on its return to Rome, spread an
infection among their countrymen, which worked by slow degrees, till it
effected their total destruction. Thus did Eastern luxury revenge itself
on Roman arms. It may be wondered that Pliny should keep his own temper,
and check the indignation of his friends at a scene which was fit only
for the dissolute revels of the infamous Trimalchio. But it will not,
perhaps, be doing justice to our author to take an estimate of his real
sentiments upon this point from the letter before us. Genitor, it seems,
was a man of strict, but rather of too austere morals for the free turn
of the age: "emendatus et gravis: paulo etiam horridior et durior ut in
hac licentia teniporuni" (Ep. III. 1. 3). But as there is a certain
seasonable accommodation to the manners of the times, not only extremely
Consistent with, but highly conducive to, the interests of virtue,
Pliny, probably, may affect a greater latitude than he in general
approved, in order to draw off his friend from that stiffness and
unyielding disposition which might prejudice those of a gayer turn
against him, and consequently lessen the beneficial influence of his
virtues upon the world. M.]
152 (return) [ See letter CIII.]
153 (return) [ Iliad, XXI. 387. Pope. M.]
154 (return) [ Iliad, V. 356, speaking of Mars. M.; Iliad, IV. 452.
Pope.]
155 (return) [ The design of Pliny in this letter is to justify the
figurative expressions he had employed, probably, in same oration, by
instances of the same warmth of colouring from those great masters of
eloquence, Demosthenes and his rival Aesehines. But the force of the
passages which he produces from those orators must necessarily be
greatly weakened to a mere modern reader, some of them being only hinted
at, as generally well known; and the metaphors in several of the others
have either lost much of their original spirit and boldness, by being
introduced and received in Common language, or cannot, perhaps, he
preserved in an English translation. M.]
156 (return) [ See 1st Philippic.]
157 (return) [ See Demosthenes' speech in defence of Cteisphon.]
158 (return) [ See end Olynthiac.]
159 (return) [ See Aesehines' speech against Ctesiphon.]
160 (return) [ It was a religious ceremony practised by the ancients to
pour precious ointments upon the statues of their gods: Avitus, it is
probable, imagined this dolphin was some sea-divinity, and therefore
expressed his veneration of him by the solemnity of a sacred unction.
M.]
161 (return) [ The overflowing humanity of Pliny's temper breaks out
upon all occasions, but he discovers it in nothing more strongly than by
the impression which this little story appears to have made upon him.
True benevolence, indeed, extends itself through the whole compass of
existence, and sympathises with the distress of every creature of
sensation. Little minds may be apt to consider a compassion of this
inferior kind as an instance of weakness; but it is undoubtedly the
evidence of a noble nature. Homer thought it not unbecoming the
character even of a hero to melt into tears at a distress of this sort,
and has given us a most amiable and affecting picture of Ulysses weeping
over his faithful dog Argus, when he expires at his feet:
"Soft pity touch'd the mighty master's soul; Adown his cheek the tear
unbidden stole, Stole unperceived; he turn'd his head and dry'd The drop
humane.". (Odyss. XVII. Pope.) M.]
162 (return) [ By the regimen which Pliny here follows, one would
imagine, if he had not told us who were his physicians, that the
celebrated Celsus was in the number. That author expressly recommends
reading aloud, and afterwards walking, as beneficial in disorders of the
stomach: "Si quis stomacho laborat, leqere clare debet; post lectionem
ambulare," &c. Celsi Medic. 1. I. C. 8. M.]
CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE EMPEROR TRAJAN
I -- TO THE EMPEROR TRAJAN[1001]
THE pious affection you bore, most sacred Emperor, to your august father
induced you to wish it might be late ere you succeeded him. But the
immortal gods thought proper to hasten the advancement of those virtues
to the helm of the commonwealth which had already shared in the
steerage.[1002] May you then, and the world through your means, enjoy
every prosperity worthy of your reign: to which let me add my wishes,
most excellent Emperor, upon a private as well as public account, that
your health and spirits may be preserved firm and unbroken.
II -- To THE EMPEROR TRAJAN
You have occasioned me, Sir, an inexpressible pleasure in deeming me
worthy of enjoying the privilege which the laws confer on those who have
three children. For although it was from an indulgence to the request of
the excellent Julius Servianus, your own most devoted servant, that you
granted this favour, yet I have the satisfaction to find by the words of
your rescript that you complied the more willingly as his application
was in my behalf. I cannot but look upon myself as in possession of my
utmost wish, after having thus received, at the beginning of your most
auspicious reign, so distinguishing a mark of your peculiar favour; at
the same time that it considerably heightens my desire of leaving a
family behind me. I was not entirely without this desire even in the
late most unhappy times: as my two marriages will induce you to believe.
But the gods decreed it better, by reserving every valuable privilege to
the bounty of your generous dispensations. And indeed the pleasure of
being a father will be so much more acceptable to me now, that I can
enjoy it in full security and happiness.