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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Pliny the Younger Biography PLINY the Younger. A nephew of Pliny the Elder (q.v.) and son of Gaius Cęcilius. He was born at Novum Comum (Como) 62 a.d. He was still young when he lost his father and was adopted by his uncle, under whose care and that of his mother, Plinia, and his tutor, Virginius Rufus, his education was conducted. Passionately devoted to literature, he wrote a Greek tragedy at the age of 13. He studied eloquence under Quintilian (q.v.) and became so famous for his literary accomplishments that he acquired the reputation of being one of the most learned men of his age. His oratorical powers were also considerable; in his nineteenth year he began to speak in the Forum, and his services as an advocate before the court of the centumviri (q.v.) and the Roman Senate were in frequent request. He held numerous official appointments; served, while a young man, as tribunus militum in Syria, where he listened to the teaching of Euphrates the Stoic and Artemidorus; was afterward qustor Csaris; was prętor about 93 and consul in 100, when he wrote his Panegyricus, a eulogy of the Emperor Trajan. He was appointed, in 103, proprętor of the Provincia Pontica or Bithynia, an office which he vacated in less than two years; and he also discharged the function of curator of the banks and channel of the Tiber. He was twice married, his second wife being Calpurnia, granddaughter of Calpurnius Fabatus. Our knowledge of Pliny the Younger is mainly derived from his letters or Epistul, of which there are 10 books. He collected them himself and pŕobably wrote many of them with a view to publication. They hold a high place in epistolary literature and give us many interesting glimpses into the life of their author and his contemporaries. Pliny himself appears in them to considerable advantage, as a genial and philanthropic man, enamored of literary studies and fond of improving his estates by architectural adornment. His ample fortune was liberally bestowed, and his slaves always found in him an indulgent master. He never enjoyed robust health; but of the time or cause of his death we know nothing. Of his letters, one of the most interesting is the one to the Emperor Trajan (x, 97), written while Pliny was Governor of Bithynia and asking for instruction in regard to the policy to be pursued against the Christians; this is one of the earliest notices of the Christians in Roman writers. The best editions of the text of Pliny's Panegyricus and Epistul together are those of Schaefer (Leipzig, 1805), Keil (ib., 1892), Müller (ib., 1913), and E. T. Merrill (ib., 1914). Annotated editions of Selected Letters were published by Church and Brodribb (London, 1871) and E. T. Merrill (ib., 1903). Of English translations, there are the Panegyricus by Bond (London, 1724) and the Epistul by Melmoth (ib., 1746; 10th ed., 1805), Lord Orrery (ib., 1752), and J. D. Lewis (ib., 1879). An excellent sketch of Pliny's life by Rendall is printed in Mayor's edition of book iii of the Epistul (ib., 1880) and in Merrill's edition of Selected Letters. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XVIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 734. |