Delphi Complete Works of Pliny the Younger (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) Read online

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  XVII. — TO SPURINNA.

  I know what an interest you take in the liberal arts, and how delighted you are when young men of rank do anything worthy of their ancestry. That is why I am losing no time to tell you that to-day I made one of the audience of Calpurnius Piso. He was reading his poem on the Legends of the Stars, and it was a learned and very excellent composition. It was written in fluent, graceful, and smooth elegiacs, and rose even to lofty heights as occasion demanded. The style was cleverly varied, in some places it soared, in others it was subdued; passing from the grand to the commonplace, from thinness to richness, and from lively to severe, and in each case with consummate skill. The sweetness of his voice lent it an additional charm, and his modesty made even his voice the sweeter, while his blushes and his nervousness, which were very plain to see, still further set off the reading. I don’t know why, but diffidence becomes a man of letters much more than over-confidence. However, to cut the story short, — though I would gladly say more, because such performances are all the more charming when given by a young man, and all the rarer when he is of noble birth, — as soon as the reading was concluded, I embraced the youth with great cordiality, and by showering praises upon him — which are always the best incentive when giving advice — I urged him to go on as he had begun, and hold out to his descendants the light which his own ancestors had held out to him. I congratulated his excellent mother and also his brother, who made one of the audience, and indeed achieved as much reputation for brotherly feeling as his brother Calpurnius did for his eloquence, for while the latter was reading everybody noticed first the nervous look on the brother’s face, and then the expression of joy. I pray Heaven that I may often have such news for you, for I am very partial to the age I live in, and I hope that it may not prove barren and worthless. I am really most anxious that our young men of rank should have some other beautiful objects in their houses besides the busts of their ancestors, and it seems to me that the latter tacitly approve and encourage these two young men, and even recognise them as their true descendants, which is in itself a sufficiently high compliment to both. Farewell.

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  XVIII. — TO CALPURNIUS MACER.

  As all is well with you, all is well with me. You have your wife with you, and your son; you enjoy your sea-view, your fountains, greenery, estate, and your charming villa. I cannot doubt that the latter is most charming, inasmuch as it was the home of the man who was even happier there than when he became the happiest man on earth. I am staying at my Tuscan house; I hunt and I study, sometimes in turns, sometimes both together, and I cannot as yet tell you whether I find it more difficult to catch anything or to compose anything. Farewell.

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  XIX. — TO PAULINUS.

  I notice how kindly you treat your servants, so I will be quite frank with you, and tell you with what indulgence I treat mine. I always bear in mind that phrase in Homer, “like a father mild,” and our own Latin phrase, “father of his family.” Even if I had naturally been of a harsher and less genial disposition, the weakness of my freedman Zosimus would melt my harshness, for one has to show him greater kindness just in proportion as he needs it more at his time of life. He is an honest fellow, devoted to his duties and well-educated, but his chief accomplishment and, so to speak, his particular recommendation is his skill in playing comedy, in which he is really admirable. For his delivery is sharp, intelligent, to the point, and even graceful, and he plays the harp much better than is usually expected from a comedian. He is also so clever in reading speeches, history and poetry, that you would fancy he had never studied anything else. I have gone into all this detail to show you how many services this one man can render me, and how pleasant they are. Moreover, I have long entertained a great regard for him, which has been increased by his serious ill-health, for Nature has so arranged it that nothing fires and stimulates our affection so much as the fear of losing the object of it, and I have on more than one occasion been afraid of losing Zosimus.

  Some years since, while he was reciting with great earnestness and fire, he spat blood, and I sent him on that account to Egypt, from which country he recently returned with his health restored. Then, after severely taxing his voice for days together, he was warned of his old malady by a slight cough, and once more brought up some blood. So I have decided to send him to the farm which you own at Forum Julii, for I have often heard you say that the air there is healthy, and the milk peculiarly beneficial to complaints of this kind. I should be glad, therefore, if you will write to your people to take him in at the house and give him lodging, and accommodate him with anything he may require at his expense. His needs will be very small, for he is so sparing and abstemious that his frugality leads him to deny himself, not only dainties, but even that which is necessary for his weak health. When he sets out, I will give him sufficient travelling money for one who is going to your part of the country. Farewell.

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  XX. — TO URSUS.

  Within a short time of their impeaching Julius Bassus the Bithynians brought a second action, this time against Rufus Varenus, their proconsul, the very man whom, in their action against Bassus, they had received permission, at their own request, to retain as their advocate. On being brought into the Senate they applied for a commission to be appointed to investigate their charges, and Varenus sought leave to be allowed to bring witnesses from the province in his defence. To this the Bithynians objected, and the matter came to a debate. I acted on behalf of Varenus, and my pleading was not without good results. I am justified in saying this, as my written speech will show whether I spoke well or badly. For in delivering a speech chance has a controlling influence on success or failure. A speech either gains or loses a good deal according to the memory, voice, and gesture of the speaker, and even the time taken in delivery, to say nothing of the popularity or unpopularity of the accused; whereas a written speech profits nothing from these advantages, loses nothing by these disadvantages, and is subject neither to lucky nor unlucky accidents.

  Fonteius Magnus, one of the Bithynians, replied to me at great length, but he made very few points. Like most of the Greeks, he mistakes volubility for fulness of treatment, and they pour forth in a single breath a perfect torrent of long-winded and frigid periods. Julius Candidus rather wittily says apropos of this that eloquence is one thing and loquacity another. For there have been only one or two people who can be described as eloquent — not one indeed if Marcus Antonius is to be believed, — but scores of persons possess what Candidus calls loquacity, and loquacity and impudence usually go together. On the following day, Homullus spoke on behalf of Varenus, and delivered a skilful, powerful, and polished speech, while Nigrinus replied with terseness, dignity, and elegance. Acilius Rufus, the consul-designate, proposed that the Commission of Enquiry asked for by the Bithynians should be allowed, and said not a word about the request of Varenus, which was tantamount to proposing that it should be negatived. Cornelius Priscus, the consular, moved that the requests of both the accusers and the accused should be granted, and he carried a majority with him. The point we asked for was not within the four corners of the law and was not quite covered by precedent, but none the less it was entirely reasonable, though why it was reasonable I shall not tell you in this letter, in order to make you ask for a copy of my pleading. For if it be true, as Homer says, that “men always prize the song the most which rings newest in their ears,” I must beware lest by allowing myself to go chattering on in this letter I destroy all the charm of novelty in that little speech of mine, which is the main thing it has to commend itself to you. Farewell.

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  XXI. — TO SATURNINUS.

  Your letter has aroused in me conflicting emotions, for part of the news it contained made me glad, and part made me sorrowfu
l. I was glad to hear that you were detained in town, for though you say it was much against your will, it was not against mine, especially as you promise that you will give a reading as soon as I arrive. So I thank you for waiting my coming. The bad news was that Julius Valens is lying seriously ill, although even this should not sadden us, if we only think of what is best for him, for it will be much better for him to obtain as speedy a release as possible from a disease which is past all cure. No, the real sad news, or rather heartrending news is that Julius Avitus died on ship-board while returning from his quaestorship, miles away from the brother who was devoted to him, and from his mother and sisters. Those are circumstances which do not affect him now that he is dead, but they did affect him on his death-bed, and they are a great trouble to his surviving relatives, especially as he was a young man of such promise and would have reached the highest offices in the State if only his qualities had had time to ripen. And now he has been cut down in the very flower of manhood! What a keen and enthusiastic student he was, how well read, and what a number of essays he had made in writing! Yet all have perished with him and left no fruit for posterity to reap. But it is useless for me to indulge my sorrow, for if once one gives it free play, even the slightest occasions for grief are magnified into crushing blows. I will write no more, and so check the tears which this letter has made to flow. Farewell.

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  BOOK VI.

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  1. — TO TIRO.

  So long as I was on the other side of the Po, and you were in the district of Picenum, I missed you less; since I am in town, while you are still in Picenum, I miss you a great deal more; whether it is that the very spots where we are accustomed to be together bring you more keenly to my remembrance; or else that nothing sharpens one’s longing after absent friends so much as vicinity to them, and so, the nearer you come to the hope of enjoying their society, the more impatient are you at being deprived of it. Whatever be the cause, deliver me from this misery. Come to me, or else I shall return to the place whence I rashly hurried, if only for this purpose, in order to learn by experience whether you, when you first find yourself in Rome without me, will write me such a letter as this.

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  2. — TO ARRIANUS.

  It happens to me not unfrequently, in our law courts, to miss M. Regulus: I would not say, to regret him. Why, then, to miss him? Because he held our profession in honour, and used to be solicitous, and wan with study, and to write out his speeches, though he never could learn them by heart. The very fact that he used to paint round, sometimes his right, sometimes his left eye, the right one if he was going to speak for a plaintiff, and the left if for a defendant; that he used to transfer a white plaster from one eyebrow to another; that he always consulted the soothsayers on the result of his pleadings: all this originated, it is true, in excessive superstition, and yet at the same time in a great regard for the profession. This, to begin with, was particularly pleasant to those who were engaged in the same causes, that he always asked for unlimited time, and got together an audience by invitation; for what can be more pleasant than to speak as long as you like, while the annoyance is laid to another’s charge, and to speak at your ease, yet with an appearance of being surprised by an audience which others have got together. But, however all this may be, Regulus did well to die, and he would have done better if he had died sooner. Now, certainly, he might have lived without injury to the public, under a Prince in whose reign he could have done no mischief. So it is allowable to miss him sometimes. For since his death a custom has extensively and increasingly prevailed of demanding, as well as allotting, two water-clocks per speaker or even one, sometimes as little as half a one; since the bar want to have done with their speeches rather than to speak, and the bench to have finished their business rather than to judge. Such is the negligence, the apathy, and in short the irreverence, with which our profession and its perils are regarded. Pray, are we wiser than our ancestors? Are we more just than the laws themselves, which freely accord so many hours, so many days, so many adjournments? Were those ancestors of ours dullards and beyond measure slow, and do we speak more clearly, understand more rapidly, and decide more conscientiously, because we hurry through our causes with a smaller number of water-clocks than they used to take days to settle them in? O Regulus, you used to obtain from all the judges by your artifices that which extremely few of them accord to integrity! I at all events, whenever I sit as judge (which is my place even more often than at the bar), allow as much water as any one asks for; inasmuch as I deem it an act of temerity to predict the length of a cause still unheard, and to place a limit of time on a matter whose proportions are unknown, particularly since the first thing which a judge owes to the faithful discharge of his duty is patience, which indeed is a large ingredient in justice. But a good deal that is superfluous is spoken! Be it so: yet it is better that even this should be spoken, than that what is essential should be unspoken. Besides you cannot possibly know whether it is superfluous or not, till you have heard what it is. However it will be better to talk of this, and of many other public abuses, when we meet. For you too, with your regard for the common interests, are in general desirous that matters which it would now be difficult to set straight may be at any rate amended.

  Now, let us cast a glance at our households. Pray, is all well in yours? In mine, there is nothing new; and for me, the blessings I enjoy are rendered more grateful by their continuance, while incommodities are lightened by habit.

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  3. — TO VERUS.

  I thank you for undertaking the cultivation of the farm given by me to my nurse. It was worth a hundred thousand sesterces when I gave it her. Subsequently, the returns diminishing, its value fell with them; but now under your management it will recover itself. Only please to bear in mind that I am entrusting to you not trees and soil merely — though I do entrust these as well — but my small present. And that this should be as productive as possible is not of greater interest to her who received than to me who bestowed it.

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  4. — TO CULPURNIA, HIS WIFE.

  I never complained more than now of my occupations, which did not suffer me either to accompany you when you started for Campania for your health’s sake, or to follow close after your departure. For at this time particularly I desired to be with you, in order to judge with my own eyes how far you are recruiting your strength and your dear little body, and, in short, whether you have passed through that delightful retreat and rich country without receiving any hurt. Indeed, if you were quite strong, my longing after you would not be unmingled with anxiety: for to be sometimes without news of an ardently beloved object is fraught with suspense and uneasiness. Now, however, the consideration of your delicate health, as well as your absence, torments me with vague disquietudes of various kinds. I apprehend everything, conjure up everything, and, as the nature of frightened people is, the things which of all others I deprecate are precisely those which I picture to myself. Wherefore, I the more urgently beseech you to have regard for my fears by writing me one, or even two letters a day. For I shall be more comfortable while reading them, and shall straightway fall to fear again, as soon as they are read.

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  5. — TO URSUS.

  I wrote you word that Varenus had obtained leave to compel the attendance of witnesses on his behalf; which seemed to most to be fair, though some were obstinate in thinking it unjust, particularly Licinius Nepos, who, at the next meeting of the Senate, when other matters were before it, discussed the recent decree, thus reopening a cause which had been disposed of. He went so far as to add that the Consuls should be asked to submit a motion (after the precedent of the Bribery Laws) on the subject of that against extortion. “Was it their pleasure that, for the futu
re, an addition should be made to that law to the effect that, as the law in question gave power to accusers to collect materials and to enforce the attendance of witnesses, so a similar power should be given to the accused?” There were some who were displeased by this speech of his, as coming too late, out of season, and in the wrong place; inasmuch as the proper time for speaking against the decree had been neglected, and now fault was found with that which had been settled and which might have been opposed. Indeed Juventius Celsus, the Prætor, reproved him at length and with vigour for setting himself up as a corrector of the Senate. Nepos replied, and Celsus retorted; and neither of them refrained from insults. I don’t choose to record words which I was vexed to hear them utter, so as to make me all the more indignant at some of our order, who were running backwards and forwards from Celsus to Nepos, according as one or the other was speaking, from curiosity to hear; and who by way of egging them on and inflaming them at one time, of reconciling and making it up between them at another, invoked “the approval of Cæsar,” generally on behalf of each singly, but at times in favour of both, as at some spectacle for the public amusement! What to my mind was a most painful feature in all this, was that each had got information of what the other was preparing for him; for Celsus replied to Nepos from a written paper, and Nepos to Celsus from his note-book. Such was the loquacity of their friends that these men, on the point of wrangling, had a mutual knowledge of the event, just as though it had been arranged between them.