The Letters of the Younger Pliny, First Series – Volume 1
Text3.X.—TO VESTRICIUS SPURINNA AND HIS WIFE COTTIA
When I was last at your house I did not tell you that I had composed some verses about your son. I refrained from so doing, first, because I had not written them simply for the sake of reciting them, but in order to relieve my feelings of love and sorrow; and, in the second place, Spurinna, I thought that when you were told that I had given a recitation—as you mentioned to me—you had also heard its subject. Moreover, I was afraid of troubling you in your happiness by recalling to your remembrance your bitter sorrow. Even now I have been hesitating somewhat as to whether I should send you at your request only the verses that I actually read, or whether I should also send those which I am thinking of reserving for another volume. For my love for him was such that I find it impossible to do justice to the memory of one who was so dear and precious to me in a single volume, and his fame will be best consulted if it is husbanded and carefully expressed. But though, as I say, I am doubtful whether to show you all that I have composed on the subject, or whether I should still keep back a part, it has seemed to me that frankness and our friendship demand that I should let you have the whole, especially as you promise that you will keep them strictly entre nous until I decide to publish them. The only other request I make is that you will be equally candid with me and tell me if you think any additions, alterations, or omissions should be made. It is difficult to focus the mind on such subjects when one is in trouble, but in spite of that I want you to deal with me as you would with a sculptor or a painter who was making a model or portrait of your son. In such a case, you would advise him as to the points he should bring out and alter, and similarly I hope you will guide and direct me, for I am essaying a likeness, neither frail nor perishable, but one, as you think, which will last for ever. It will be the more durable, according to its trueness to life and correctness of detail. Farewell.
3.XI.—TO JULIUS GENITOR
Our friend Artemidorus has so much goodness of heart that he always exaggerates the services his friends render him, and hence, in my case, though it is true that I have done him a good turn, he speaks of it in far too glowing language. When the philosophers were banished from the city I was staying with him in his suburban residence, and the visit was the more talked about and the more dangerous to me, because I was praetor at the time. Moreover, as he stood in need of a considerable sum of money to discharge some debts which he had incurred for the most honourable of reasons, I borrowed the sum and gave it to him as a free gift, when certain of his powerful and rich friends held aloof. I did so in spite of the fact that seven of my friends had been put to death or banished; Senecio, Rusticus, and Helvidius having suffered the former, and Mauricus, Gratilla, Arria, and Fannia the latter punishment. With all these thunderbolts falling round me, I felt scorched, and there were certain clear indications that a like fate was hanging over my head, but I do not on that account think I deserve the splendid credit which Artemidorus assigns me—I only claim to have avoided the disgrace of deserting my friends. For I loved and admired his father-in-law, Caius Musonius, as far as the difference in our ages would permit, while as for Artemidorus himself, even when I was on active service as tribune in Syria, I was on terms of close intimacy with him, and the first sign I gave of possessing any brains at all was that I appeared to appreciate a man who was either the absolute sage, or the nearest possible approximation to such a character. For, of all those who nowadays call themselves philosophers, you will hardly find another to match him in the qualities of sincerity and truth. I say nothing of the physical fortitude with which he bears the extremes both of summer and winter, or of the way in which he never shrinks from work, never indulges himself in the pleasures of eating and drinking, and keeps constant restraint over his appetites and desires. In another man these would appear great virtues, but in Artemidorus they appear mere trifles compared with his other noble qualities, which obtained for him the distinction of being chosen by Caius Musonius as his son-in-law amid a crowd of disciples belonging to all ranks of society. As I think of all these things it is pleasant to know that he sings my praises so loudly, not only to others but also to you, but I am afraid he overdoes them, for—to go back again to the point whence I started—he is so good-hearted that he is given to exaggeration. It is one of his faults—an honourable one, no doubt, but still a fault—that, though he is otherwise most level-headed, he entertains a higher opinion of his friends than they deserve. Farewell.
3.XII.—TO CATILIUS SEVERUS
Yes, I will come to dinner, but even now I must stipulate that the meal be short and frugal, and brimming over only with Socratic talk. Nay, even in this respect there must be a limit fixed, for there will be crowds of people going to make calls before day breaks, and even Cato did not escape when he fell in with them, though Caius Caesar, in telling the story, blames him in such a way that it redounds to his praise. For he says that when those who met him drunk uncovered his head and saw who it was, they blushed at the sight, and he adds: "You would think it was not they who had caught Cato, but Cato who had caught them." What greater testimony could there be to Cato's character than that men respected him even when he was in liquor? But for our dinner let us agree not only to have a modest and inexpensive feast but to break up in good time, for we are not Catos that our enemies cannot censure us without praising us in the same breath. Farewell.
3.XII.—TO VOCONIUS ROMANUS
I am sending you, at your request, the speech in which I lately thanked our best of emperors for my nomination as Consul, and I should have sent it to you even though you had not asked for it. I hope you will take into consideration both the beauty and the difficulty of the theme. For in other speeches the attention of the reader is kept fixed by the novelty of the subject, but in this case every detail is familiar, a matter of common knowledge, and has been said before. Consequently the reader will be lazy and careless and will only pay attention to the diction, and when merely the diction is attended to, it is not easy to give satisfaction. I wish that people would pay equal regard to the arrangement of the speech, to its transitions, and the figures of speech employed. For even the unlearned sometimes manage to get a noble inspiration and express it in powerful language, but skilful arrangement and variety of metaphor are only attained by the scholarly. Besides, one must not for ever keep at the same high and lofty level. For, just as in painting there is nothing like shadow to bring out the effect of light, so in a speech it is as important on occasions to reduce the treatment to an ordinary level as to raise it to a high one. But why do I talk of first principles to a man of your accomplishments? What I do wish to insist upon is to ask you to mark the passages which you think should be corrected. For I shall think that you are all the better pleased with the remainder if I find that there are certain portions that you do not like. Farewell.
3.XIV.—TO ACILIUS
A shocking affair, worthy of more publicity than a letter can bestow, has befallen Largius Macedo, a man of praetorian rank, at the hands of his own slaves. He was known to be an overbearing and cruel master, and one who forgot—or rather remembered to keenly—that his own father had been a slave. He was bathing at his villa near Formiae, when he was suddenly surrounded by his slaves. One seized him by the throat, another struck him on the forehead, and others smote him in the chest, belly, and even—I am shocked to say—in the private parts. When they thought the breath had left his body they flung him on to the hot tiled floor to see if he was still alive. Whether he was insensible, or merely pretended to be so, he certainly did not move, and lying there at full length, he made them think that he was actually dead. At length they carried him out as though he had been overcome by the heat and handed him over to his more trusty servants, while his mistresses ran shrieking and wailing to his side. Aroused by their cries and restored by the coolness of the room where he lay, he opened his eyes and moved his limbs, betraying thereby that he was still alive, as it was then safe to do so. His slaves took to flight; most of them have been captured, but some are still being hunted for. Thanks to the attentions he received, Macedo was kept alive for a few days and had the satisfaction of full vengeance before he died, for he exacted the same punishment while he still lived as is usually taken when the victim of a murder dies. You see the dangers, the affronts and insults we are exposed to, and no one can feel at all secure because he is an easy and mild-tempered master, for villainy not deliberation murders masters.
But enough of that subject! Have I any other news to tell you? Let me see! No, there is nothing. If there were, I would tell you, for I have room enough on this sheet, and, as to-day is a holiday, I should have plenty of time to write more. But I will just add an incident which I chance to recall that happened to the same Macedo. When he was in one of the public baths in Rome, a curious and—the event has shown—an ominous accident happened to him. Macedo's servant lightly tapped a Roman knight with his hand to induce him to make room for them to pass, and the knight turned round and struck, not the slave who had touched him but Macedo himself, such a heavy blow with his fist that he almost felled him. So one may say that the bath has been by certain stages the scene first of humiliation to him and then of death. Farewell.
3.XV.—TO SILIUS PROCULUS
You ask me to read your poems while I am in the country, and see whether I think they are worth publishing; you even add entreaties, and quote an authority for the request; for you beg me to take a few holiday hours from my own studies and spend them on your efforts, and you say that Marcus Tullius showed wonderful good nature in encouraging the talent of poets. Well, there was no need to beg and pray of me to do such a thing, for I have the most profound regard for the poetic art and I have a very strong affection for you, so I will comply with your request and give them a careful and willing reading. But even now I think I am justified in writing and telling you that your work is charming and should on no account be kept from publication, as far as I could judge from the pieces that you read aloud in my hearing—unless, indeed, your delivery took me in, for you read with great charm and skill. But I feel pretty sure that I am not so completely led away by the mere pleasures of the ear that my critical powers are wholly disarmed by the pleasure of listening—they might be blunted possibly and have their edge turned somewhat, but they certainly could not be subverted or destroyed. Consequently, I am not rash in pronouncing a general verdict on the whole even now, but in order to judge of them in detail, I must read them through. Farewell.
3.XVI.—TO NEPOS
I have often observed that the greatest words and deeds, both of men and women, are not always the most famous, and my opinion has been confirmed by a talk I had with Fannia yesterday. She is a granddaughter of the Arria who comforted her husband in his dying moments and showed him how to die. She told me many stories of her grandmother, just as heroic but not so well known as the manner of her death, and I think they will seem to you as you read them quite as remarkable as they did to me as I listened to them.
Her husband, Caecina Paetus, was lying ill, and so too was their son, both, it was thought, without chance of recovery. The son died. He was a strikingly handsome lad, modest as he was handsome, and endeared to his parents for his other virtues quite as much as because he was their son. Arria made all the arrangements for the funeral and attended it in person, without her husband knowing anything of it. When she entered his room she pretended that the boy was still alive and even much better, and when her husband constantly asked how the lad was getting on, she replied: "He has had a good sleep, and has taken food with a good appetite." Then when the tears, which she had long forced back, overcame her and burst their way out, she would leave the room, and not till then give grief its course, returning when the flood of tears was over, with dry eyes and composed look, as though she had left her bereavement at the door of the chamber. It was indeed a splendid deed of hers to unsheath the sword, to plunge it into her breast, then to draw it out and offer it to her husband, with the words which will live for ever and seem to have been more than mortal, "Paetus, it does not hurt." But at that moment, while speaking and acting thus, there was fame and immortality before her eyes, and I think it an even nobler deed for her without looking for any reward of glory or immortality to force back her tears, to hide her grief, and, even when her son was lost to her, to continue to act a mother's part.
When Scribonianus had started a rebellion in Illyricum against Claudius, Paetus joined his party, and, on the death of Scribonianus, he was brought prisoner to Rome. As he was about to embark, Arria implored the soldiers to take her on board with him. "For," she pleaded, "as he is of consular rank, you will assign him some servants to serve his meals, to valet him and put on his shoes. I will perform all these offices for him." When they refused her, she hired a fishing-boat and in that tiny vessel followed the big ship. Again, in the presence of Claudius she said to the wife of Scribonianus, when that woman was voluntarily giving evidence of the rebellion, "What, shall I listen to you in whose bosom Scribonianus was killed and yet you still live?" Those words showed that her resolve to die gloriously was due to no sudden impulse. Moreover, when her son-in-law Thrasea sought to dissuade her from carrying out her purpose, and urged among his other entreaties the following argument: "If I had to die, would you wish your daughter to die with me?" she replied, "If she had lived as long and as happily with you as I have lived with Paetus, yes." This answer increased the anxiety of her friends, and she was watched with greater care. Noticing this, she said, "Your endeavours are vain. You can make me die hard, but you cannot prevent me from dying." As she spoke she jumped from her chair and dashed her head with great force against the wall of the chamber, and fell to the ground. When she came to herself again, she said, "I told you that I should find a difficult way of dying if you denied me an easy one."
Do not sentences like these seem to you more noble than the "Paetus, it does not hurt," to which they gradually led up? Yet, while that saying is famous all over the world, the others are unknown. But they confirm what I said at the outset, that the noblest words and deeds are not always the most famous. Farewell.
3.XVII.—TO JULIUS SERVIANUS
Is everything quite well with you, that I have not had a letter from you for so long? Or if all is well, are you busy? Or if you are not busy, is it that you rarely get a chance of writing, or never a chance at all? Relieve my anxiety, which is altogether too much for me, and do so even if you have to send a special messenger. I will pay the travelling expenses and give him a present for himself, provided only he brings me the news I wish to hear. I am in good health if being in good health is to live in a state of constant anxiety, expecting and fearing every hour to hear that my dearest friend has met with any one of the dreadful accidents to which men are liable. Farewell.
3.XVIII.—TO CURIUS SEVERUS
As Consul, it naturally devolved upon me to thank the Emperor in the name of the State. After doing so in the Senate in the usual way and in a speech befitting the place and the occasion, I thought that it would highly become me, as a good citizen, to cover the same ground in greater detail and much more fully in a book. In the first place, I desired that the Emperor might be encouraged by well-deserved praise of his virtues; and, secondly, that future Emperors might be shown how best to attain similar glory by having such an example before them, rather than by any precepts of a teacher. For though it is a very proper thing to point out to an Emperor the virtues he ought to display, it involves a heavy responsibility to do so and it has rather a presumptuous look, whereas to eulogise an excellent ruler and so hold up a beacon to his successors by which they may steer their path, is not only an act of public service but involves no assumption of superiority.
But I have been more than a little pleased to find that when I proposed to give a public reading of this speech, my friends, whom I invited not by letters and personal notes, but in general terms, such as "if you find it convenient," or "if you have plenty of time"—for no one has ever plenty of time at Rome, nor is it ever convenient to listen to a recital—attended two days running, in spite of shockingly bad weather, and when my modesty would have brought the recital to an end, they forced me to continue it for another day. Am I to take this as a compliment to myself or to learning? I should prefer to think to the latter, for learning, after having almost drooped to death, is now reviving a little. Yet consider the subject which occasioned all this enthusiasm! Why, in the Senate, when we had to listen to these panegyrics we used to be bored to death after the first moment; yet now there are people to be found who are willing to read and listen to the readings for three days, not because the subject is dealt with more eloquently than before, but because it is treated with greater freedom, and therefore the work is more willingly undertaken. This will be another feather in the cap of our Emperor, that those speeches which used to be as odious as they were unreal are now as popular as they are true to facts.
But I especially noticed with pleasure both the attention and the critical faculties of the audience, for I remarked that they seemed most pleased with the passages which were least adorned. I do not forget that I have read only to a few what I have written for all the reading public, yet none the less I take for granted that the multitude will pass a similar judgment, and I am delighted with their taste for simple passages. Just as the audience in the theatres made the musicians cultivate a false taste in playing, so now I am encouraged to hope that they will encourage the players to cultivate a good taste. For all who write to please will write in the style which they see is popular. As for myself, I hope that with such a subject a luxuriant style may pass muster, inasmuch as the passages which are closely reasoned and stripped of all ornament are more likely to seem forced and far-fetched than those treated in a more buoyant and, as it were, more exultant strain. Nevertheless, I am just as anxious for the day to come (I hope it has come already!) when mere charming and honeyed word