we find none of the stress and storm which live along the pages of Cicero's correspondence.
It is an everyday life which Pliny depicts with such skill and vivid imagery, the life, after all, which "finds" the majority of men and women.
But it was the bright side of ancient society which Pliny loved to describe. Without his Letters we should have had no notion of the warm and tender friendships—of the simple pleasures—of the loving charities—of the lofty ideals of so many of the élite of Roman society in the second century.
It has been well said that Pliny felt that he lacked the power to write a great history, such as that which Tacitus, with whom he was closely associated, or even his younger friend Suetonius in an inferior degree, have given us. So he chose, fortunately for us, to strike out another line altogether, a perfectly new line, and in his ten Books[1] of Letters he gives us simply a domestic picture of everyday life in his time.
They were no ordinary Letters; we can without any great effort of imagination picture to ourselves the famous Letter-writer touching and retouching his correspondence. Some modern critics in judging his style do not hesitate to place his Latinity on a level with that of Cicero. Renan, no mean judge of style, in words we have already quoted, speaks of "la langue précieuse et raffinée de Pline."
The subjects he loved to dwell on were sometimes literature, at others, the beauties of nature, the quiet charms of country life—"me nihil æque ac naturæ opera delectant," he wrote once. He eloquently describes the Clitumnus fountain, and the villa overlooking the Tiber valley; very elaborate and graceful are his descriptions of scenery; yet more attractive to us are his pictures of the "busy idleness" of the rich and noble of his day.
Curious and interesting are the allusions to and descrip-*
- ↑ It seems most probable that the first nine Books of Pliny's Letters were put out in "book form" for public use at different periods—and subsequently collected in one volume. The "official" correspondence between Pliny and Trajan was apparently "published" somewhat later. But it is evident that in the days of Symmachus (end of fourth century) the whole had been placed together, and thus made up the ten Books we now possess.
