Complete letters PDF
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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6 DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © P. G. Walsh 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Pliny, the Younger. [Correspondence. English] Complete letters / Pliny the younger; translated with an introduction and notes by P. G. Walsh. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Pliny, the Younger—Correspondence. I. Walsh, P. G. (Patrick Gerard) II. Title. PA6639.E5W3513 2006 876’.01—dc22 2006011797 Typeset in Ehrhardt by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd., St Ives plc ISBN 0–19–280658–0 978–0–19–280658–1 1 OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics have brought readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over 700 titles—from the 4,000-year- old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century’s greatest novels—the series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing. The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading. Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry, religion, philosophy and politics. Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers. OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS Complete Letters PLINY THE YOUNGER Translated with an Introduction and Notes by P. G. WALSH OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS COMPLETE LETTERS PLINY THE YOUNGER (AD 61/2–c.112) was born into an equestrian family at Comum in northern Italy. After the death of his father, his uncle the Elder Pliny and the eminent consular Verginius Rufus became his guardians. After early schooling at Comum, he studied rhetoric under Quintilian at Rome. Following minor offices and brief military service, he became quaestor, plebeian tribune, and praetor under Domitian. After that emperor’s assassination, he became a high civil servant as prefect of the treasury. Under Trajan in AD 100 he advanced to the suffect consulship, and in 103 was appointed curator of the Tiber. His crowning appointment came in 109-10 as governor of Bithynia-Pontus, where he probably died about two years later. The letters, part autobiography and part social history, cast a vivid light on Pliny’s wide-ranging roles as advocate in the courts, as politician in the Senate, as cultivated littérateur, as man of property on his extensive estates, as provincial governor, and as devoted husband. They are also revealing on many aspects of social life in the early Empire, for example on education, on the treatment of slaves, on religion and the rise of Christianity, and on the eruption of Vesuvius. P. G. WALSH is Emeritus Professor of Humanity in the University of Glasgow. This is the sixth of his translations of Latin authors in Oxford World’s Classics, following Apuleius, The Golden Ass, Petronius, Satyricon, Cicero, The Nature of the Gods and On Obligations, and Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy. He has also published extensively on Livy, on the Roman novel, and on patristic and medieval Latin. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS THIS volume makes no claim to scholarly originality. I acknowledge my debt in particular to three predecessors. The first is to Betty Radice’s revised Loeb edition, and in particular to the carefully compiled Index. When I reviewed this edition many years ago, I failed to pay adequate tribute to its solid merits. Secondly, in coping with the problems of Book X, I have profited greatly from the excellent contribution of Wynne Williams in the Aris and Phillips series; his edition of Pliny’s correspondence with Trajan is a model volume for student use. But my greatest debt is to the masterly work of scholarship of A. N. Sherwin- White, to which I have constantly turned for enlightenment. The solid contributions of nineteenth-century continental scholarship are not acknowledged here. But the image of John of Salisbury, ‘We are dwarfs, standing on the shoulders of giants’, should always be in the forefront of our minds as we attempt to transmit that accumulated knowledge to the next generation of readers and students. I owe a great debt of gratitude to Judith Luna, for her encouragement at the early stages, and for her efficiency and courtesy in improving the typescript and guiding it through the press. Thanks, too, to Elizabeth Stratford for meticulously checking, correcting, and improving the typescript. CONTENTS Abbreviations Introduction Note on the Text and Translation Select Bibliography A Chronology of Pliny the Younger COMPLETE LETTERS BOOK ONE BOOK TWO BOOK THREE BOOK FOUR BOOK FIVE BOOK SIX BOOK SEVEN BOOK EIGHT BOOK NINE BOOK TEN Map of Bithynia and Pontus Explanatory Notes Indexes: I. Aspects of Social Life II. Pliny’s Correspondents III. General
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