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Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo (61/63 - ca. 113), better known as Pliny the Younger, was a lawyer, author, and natural philosopher of Ancient Rome. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate him and they were both witnesses to the eruption of Vesuvius on August 24, 79 AD.
in Novum Comum (Como, Northern Italy), the son of Lucius Caecilius Cilo, born there, and wife Plinia Marcella, a sister of Pliny the Elder, and paternal grandson of Senator and landowner Gaius Caecilius, born in Como around 1 AD.
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Timeline
Quotations
An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.
Book II, letter 15
He (Pliny the Elder) used to say that no book was so bad but that some good might be got out of it.
Book III, letter 5
His only fault is that he has no fault.
Book IX, letter 26
That indolent but agreeable condition of doing nothing.
Book VIII, letter 9
Objects which are usually the motives of our travels by land and sea are often overlooked and neglected if they lie under our eye...We put off from time to time going and seeing what we know we have an opportunity of seeing when we please.
Book VIII, letter 20
Encyclopedia
Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo (61/63 - ca. 113), better known as Pliny the Younger, was a lawyer, author, and natural philosopher of Ancient Rome. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate him and they were both witnesses to the eruption of Vesuvius on August 24, 79 AD.
Background
Born in Novum Comum (Como, Northern Italy), the son of Lucius Caecilius Cilo, born there, and wife Plinia Marcella, a sister of Pliny the Elder, and paternal grandson of Senator and landowner Gaius Caecilius, born in Como around 1 AD. He revered his uncle, Pliny the Elder, and provides sketches of how his uncle worked on the Naturalis Historia.
Pliny's father died at an early age when his son was still young; as a result, Pliny probably lived with his mother. His guardian and preceptor in charge of his education is known to have been Lucius Verginius Rufus, famed for quelling a revolt against Nero in 68. After being first tutored at home, Pliny travelled to Rome where he furthered his education and was taught rhetoric by the great teacher and author Quintilian and Nicetes Sacerdos of Smyrna. It was at this time that Pliny became closer to his uncle Pliny the Elder, and when the elder Pliny died during the Vesuvian eruption, the terms of the will passed his estate to his young nephew. In the same document he was adopted by his uncle. As a result, he changed his name from Gaius Caecilius (or Gaius Caecilius Cilo) to Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus.
Pliny was considered an honest and moderate man and rose through a series of Imperial civil and military offices, the cursus honorum (see below). He was a friend of the historian Tacitus and employed the biographer Suetonius in his staff. Pliny also came into contact with many other well-known men of the period, including the philosophers Artemidorus and Euphrates during his time in Syria.
He married three times, firstly when he was very young, about eighteen, to a stepdaughter of Veccius Proculus, of whom he became a widower at age 37, secondly to the daughter of Pompeia Celerina, at an unknown date and thirdly to Calpurnia, daughter of Calpurnius and granddaughter of Calpurnus Fabatus of Comum. Letters survive in which Pliny records this latter marriage taking place, as well as his attachment to Calpurnia and his sadness when they were unable to have children.
Pliny is thought to have died suddenly during his appointment in Bithynia-Pontus, around 112 AD, since no events referred to in his letters date later than that.
Career
Pliny was by birth of equestrian rank i.e. member of the noble order of equites (knights), the lower (beneath the senatorial order) of the two Roman aristocratic orders that monopolised senior civil and military offices during the early Empire. His career began at the age of eighteen and initially followed a normal equestrian route . But, unlike most equestrians, he achieved entry into the upper order by being elected Quaestor in his late twenties. (See Career summary below).
Pliny was active in the Roman legal system, especially in the sphere of the Roman centumviral court, which dealt with inheritance cases. Later, he was well-known for prosecuting (and defending) at the trials of a series of provincial governors, including Baebius Massa, governor of Baetica, Marius Priscus, the governor of Africa, Gaius Caecilius Classicus, governor of Baetica and most ironically in light of his later appointment to this province, Gaius Julius Bassus and Varenus Rufus, both governors of Bithynia-Pontus.
Pliny's career is commonly considered as a summary of the main Roman public charges and is the best-documented example from this period, offering proof for many aspects of imperial culture. Effectively, Pliny crossed all the principal fields of the organization of the early Roman Empire. It is no mean achievement for a man to have not only survived the reigns of several disparate emperors, especially the much-detested Domitian, but also to have risen in rank throughout.
Career summary
| c. 81 | One of the presiding judges in the centumviral court (decemvir litibus iudicandis) | | c. 81 | Tribunus militum (staff officer) of Legio III Gallica in Syria, probably for six months | | 80s | Officer of the noble order of knights (sevir equitum Romanorum) | | Later 80s | Entered the Senate | | 88 or 89 | Quaestor attached to the Emperor's staff (quaestor imperatoris) | | 91 | Tribune of the People (tribunus plebis) | | 93 | Praetor | | 94-96 | Prefect of the military treasury (praefectus aerari militaris) | | 98-100 | Prefect of the treasury of Saturn (praefectus aerari Saturni) | | 100 | Consul with Cornutus Tertullus | | 103 | Propraetor of Bithynia | | 103-104 | Publicly-elected Augur | | 104-106 | Superintendent for the banks of the Tiber (curator alvei Tiberis) | | 104-107 | Three times a member of Trajan's judicial council. | | 110 | The imperial governor (legatus Augusti) of Bithynia-Pontus province |
Writings
As a litterateur, Pliny started writing at the age of fourteen, penning a tragedy in Greek. In the course of his life he wrote a quantity of poetry, most of which was lost despite the great affection he had for it. Also known as a notable orator, he professed himself a follower of Cicero, but his prose was certainly more magniloquent and less direct than Cicero's. The only oration that now survives is the Panegyricus Traiani. This was pronounced in the Senate in 100 and is a description of Trajan's figure and actions in an adulatory and emphatic form, especially contrasting him with the Emperor Domitian. It is, however, a relevant document that allows us to know many details about the Emperor's actions in several fields of his administrative power such as taxes, justice, military discipline, and commerce. Pliny defined it as an essay about the optimus princeps (best leader).
Epistulae
The largest body of Pliny's work which survives is his Epistulae (Letters), a series of personal missives directed to his friends and associates. These letters are a unique testimony of Roman administrative history and everyday life in the 1st century. The style is very different from that in the Panegyricus and some commentators affirm that Pliny was the initiator of a new particular genre: the letter written for publication. Especially noteworthy among the letters are two in which he describes the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in August 79 during which his uncle Pliny the Elder died (Epistulae VI.16, VI.20), and one in which he asks the Emperor for instructions regarding official policy concerning Christians (Epistulae X.96). Pliny's attention to detail in the letters about Vesuvius is so keen that modern vulcanologists describe that type of eruption as Plinian.
Manuscripts
In France Giovanni Giocondo discovered a manuscript of Pliny the Younger's letters containing his correspondence with Trajan. He published it in Paris dedicating the work to Louis XII. Two Italian editions of Pliny's Epistles were published by Giocondo, one printed in Bologna in 1498 and one from the press of Aldus Manutius in 1508.
Plinys villa
Pliny had his main estate in the north of Umbria under the passes of Bocca Trabaria and Bocca Serriola where people cut woods for Roman ships and sent it to Rome by the Tiber. This place was a very important place because in that area Roman armies stayed controlling the passes on the Appenines.
See also
Bibliography
Further reading
- Albert A. Bell, Jr., "A Note on Revision and Authenticity in Pliny's Letters," American Journal of Philology 1989, pp. 460-466.
- Albert A. Bell, Jr., "Pliny the Younger: The Kinder, Gentler Roman," Classical Bulletin 1990, pp. 37-41.
- Albert A. Bell, Jr., All Roads Lead to Murder: A Case from the Notebooks of Pliny the Younger. Ingalls Publishing Group, 2002. A novel featuring Pliny and Tacitus as sleuths.
- Manuel Dejante Pinto de Magalhães Arnao Metello and João Carlos Metello de Nápoles, "Metellos de Portugal, Brasil e Roma", Torres Novas, 1998.
- E. S. Dobson, "Pliny the Younger's Depiction of Women," Classical Bulletin 1982, pp. 81-85.
- Betty Radice, "Pliny and the Panegyricus," Greece & Rome 1968, 166-172.
- A. N. Sherwin-White, The Letters of Pliny: A Social and Historical Commentary, Oxford, 1966.
- A. N. Sherwin-White, "Pliny, the Man and his Letters," Greece & Rome 1969, pp. 76-89.
- Ronald Syme, "People in Pliny," Journal of Roman Studies 1968, pp. 135-151.
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