Reading The Letters Of Pliny The Younger

Situates Pliny's Letters within the letter-writing tradition, offers new readings of favourite letters, and emphasises the importance of understanding letters within the context of original books or informal 'cycles'. For advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars interested in the study of ancient letters and imperial Latin literature.

This is the first general introduction to Pliny's Letters published in any language, combining close readings with broader context and adopting a fresh and innovative approach to reading the letters as an artistically structured collection. Chapter 1 traces Pliny's autobiographical narrative throughout the Letters; Chapter 2 undertakes detailed study of Book 6 as an artistic entity; while Chapter 3 sets Pliny's letters within a Roman epistolographical tradition dominated by Cicero and Seneca. Chapters 4 to 7 study thematic letter cycles within the collection, including those on Pliny's famous country villas and his relationships with Pliny the Elder and Tacitus. The final chapter focuses on the 'grand design' which unifies and structures the collection. Four detailed appendices give invaluable historical and scholarly context, including a helpful timeline for Pliny's life and career, detailed bibliographical help on over 30 popular topics in Pliny's letters and a summary of the main characters mentioned in the Letters.

"In the introduction to his new translation, P.G. Walsh examines the background to these often intimate and enthralling letters."--Jacket.

A prominent lawyer and administrator, Pliny (c. AD 61-113) was also a prolific letter-writer, who numbered among his correspondents such eminent figures as Tacitus, Suetonius and the Emperor Trajan, as well as a wide circle of friends and family. His lively and very personal letters address an astonishing range of topics, from a deeply moving account of his uncle's death in the eruption that engulfed Pompeii, to observations on the early Christians - 'a desperate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths' - from descriptions of everyday life in Rome, with its scandals and court cases, to Pliny's life in the country.

The first modern literary commentary on Pliny the Younger's Epistles II, essential reading for students and scholars of Roman literature.

Barry Moser's extraordinarily detailed and evocative relief engravings decorate this translation of Pliny the Younger's two famous letters to Tacitus about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79 and the death of his uncle, Pliny the Elder. Printed in black and white, the engravings are works of art that illustrate various descriptions in the letters. The text includes a brief description of the eruption of the volcano, concise biographies of Tacitus and of both Plinys, and a summary of how the texts of the two letters have survived until today.

Pliny the Younger (c. 60-112 C.E.)--senator and consul in the Rome of emperors Domitian and Trajan, eyewitness to the eruption of Vesuvius in 79, and early 'persecutor' of Christians on the Black Sea--remains Rome's best documented private individual between Cicero and Augustine. No Roman writer, not even Vergil, ties his identity to the regions of Italy more successfully than Pliny. His individuality can be captured by focusing on the range of locales in which he lived: from his hometown of Comum (Como) at the foot of the Italian Alps, down through the villa and farms he owned in Umbria, to the senate and courtrooms of Rome and the magnificent residence he owned on the coast near the capital. Organized geographically, Man of High Empire is the first full-scale biography devoted solely to the Younger Pliny. Reserved, punctilious, occasionally patronizing, and perhaps inclined to overvalue his achievements, Pliny has seemed to some the ancient equivalent of Mr. Collins, the unctuous vicar of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Roy K. Gibson reveals a man more complex than this unfair comparison suggests. An innovating landowner in Umbria and a deeply generous benefactor in Comum, Pliny is also a consul who plays with words in Rome and dispenses summary justice in the provinces. A solicitous, if rather traditional, husband in northern Italy, Pliny is also a literary modernist in Rome, and--more surprisingly--a secret pessimist about Trajan, the 'best' of emperors. Pliny's life is a window on to the Empire at its zenith. The book concludes with an archaeological tour guide of the sites associated with Pliny.