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

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  18. — TO CANINIUS.

  You ask my opinion in what way the money which you have offered to our townsfolk for an annual feast may be secured after your decease. While the inquiry does you honour, the decision is not an easy one. Suppose you pay the amount to the municipality? It is to be feared that it may be squandered. Suppose you give land? Being public land, it will be neglected. For my part, I can find nothing better than what I did myself. In lieu of five hundred thousand sesterces, which I had promised for the maintenance of free boys and girls, I made over to the agent of the public property some lands of mine of much greater value; these I had reconveyed to me on condition of paying thirty thousand sesterces annually as a rent-charge. In this way the capital of the municipality was made safe and the income was assured; the land itself, in consequence of there being a large margin over the rent-charge, will always find an owner to cultivate it. I am aware that this cost me something more than the amount of my nominal donation, as the lien of the rent-charge has diminished the selling price of a very handsome property. But one is bound to prefer public to private interests, those that are enduring to those that are mortal, and to be much more careful in securing one’s benefactions than one’s property.

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  19. — TO PRISCUS.

  The illness of Fannia torments me. She contracted it while nursing Junia the vestal virgin, originally of her own accord (indeed they are related), and subsequently being further commissioned to do so by the Pontifices; for the virgins, when compelled by violent disease to remove from the court of Vesta’s temple, are handed over to the care and custody of married ladies. While Fannia was carefully discharging the office in question, she became involved in this peril. The attacks of fever stick to her, her cough grows upon her, she is in the highest degree emaciated and enfeebled. Only her great soul and spirit — in every way worthy of her husband Helvidius and her father Thrasea — retain their vigour; all else is breaking up in such a way as to prostrate me not merely with apprehension, but with grief as well. Indeed, I do grieve that such an illustrious woman should be snatched from the gaze of the country, which may perhaps never look upon her like again. Oh, what purity was hers! what holiness of life! what nobility of character! what intrepidity of soul! Twice she followed her husband into exile, and a third time was herself banished on her husband’s account; for when Senecio was accused of having written certain publications on the life of Helvidius, and had said, in the course of his defence, that he had been requested to do so by Fannia, upon Mettius Cams asking her, in a menacing tone, “whether she had so requested him,” she replied, “I did make the request.”

  “Had she furnished him with memoranda for the composition?”

  “I did furnish him.”

  “Was this with the knowledge of her mother?”

  “Without her knowledge.” In short, not a word did she utter that quailed before the peril. Moreover, she preserved copies of these very publications after the confiscation of her property (though through the exigencies and the terror of that epoch they had been suppressed by a decree of the Senate), kept them, and carried into her exile the cause of her exile.

  At the same time she is so pleasant, she is so friendly, and, in short — the privilege of but few — as lovable as she is venerable. Will there be any woman left whom we may hereafter point out to our wives? Will there be any one from whom we may take an example even of manly fortitude? whom, while we still see her and hear her, we may admire as we do the women one reads about? For my part, it seems to me as though her very house were tottering and about to fall torn from its foundations — and this though she still has descendants. For how great must be their virtues and how great their deeds in order to make it clear that she has not perished the last of her race! And there is this additional cause of affliction and torment for me, that I seem to be losing her mother over again — that mother of such a woman; what more illustrious name can I give her? — whom Fannia, as she resembles and recalls to us, so she will take away with her, afflicting me at one and the same time with a fresh and a re-opened wound. I frequented them both and cherished them both; which of them in a greater degree I know not, nor did they desire that a difference should be made. They had my services in prosperity and they had them in adversity. I was their consoler when they were banished and their avenger when they returned. Yet I did not fully acquit my debt to them, and for this reason am all the more anxious that Fannia should be spared in order that time may be left me for payment. Such are the cares amidst which I have written to you, and if any god shall turn them to joy, I will not complain of my fright.

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  20. — TO TACITUS.

  I have read your book, and have noted with all possible care what I thought ought to be altered and what left out. For not only is it my habit to tell the truth, but it is also yours to hear it willingly. Indeed, there are none who submit more patiently to correction than those who are most deserving of praise. And now, I am expecting from you my book with your notes. What a delightful and charming interchange! How it rejoices me that, should posterity take any heed of us at all, it will be universally related in what concord, with what sincerity and fidelity to each other, we lived. It will be a rare and memorable thing for two men pretty nearly equals in points of age and station, and not altogether without a name in literature (I am compelled, you see, to speak in somewhat scant terms of you as well, inasmuch as I am speaking of myself at the same time), each to have furthered the studies of the other. For my part, when I was but a stripling, while you were already flourishing in renown and glory, I yearned to follow after you — both to be accounted and to be “second to you, though great the space between.” Yet there were in existence many men of brilliant genius; nevertheless you seemed to me, owing to the similarity of our dispositions, to be the one most capable of being imitated, and most worthy of imitation. I the more rejoice then that, whenever the conversation turns on intellectual pursuits, we are named together, that to people speaking about you my name at once presents itself. Not but what there are some who are preferred to both of us. But it does not matter to me what place is assigned us, provided we are thus conjoined; for in my estimation to come next to you is to be before all the rest. Moreover, you must have noticed that in wills (unless a testator should happen to be especially intimate with one or the other of us) we receive the same bequests, and in each other’s company. All which goes to this, that our mutual affection should be the more ardent when so many are the bonds which constrain us by our studies, our characters, our reputations, and, finally, by the last dispositions of mankind.

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  21. — TO CORNUTUS.

  I am all obedience, my dearest colleague, and am attending, as you bid me, to the weakness in my eyes. For I came here in a close carriage, shut in on all sides as in a bedroom, and am abstaining here — with difficulty, but still abstaining — not only from the use of my pen, but even from reading, and study only through my ears. By drawing a curtain, I cause my chamber to be shaded without being darkened. The cloister, too, by covering up the lower part of the windows, enjoys as much shade as sun. In this way I am carefully learning by degrees to bear the light. I take baths because they are of service, and wine because it does me no harm — very sparingly, however; so I have habituated myself, and now there is some one by me to watch me.

  The present of a fowl, as coming from you, was most acceptable; and though still weak of sight, I had eyes sharp enough to see that it was an extremely plump one.

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  22. — TO FALCO.

  You will be less surprised at my having been so persistent in begging you to confer a tribuneship upon a friend of mine when you know who and what he is. For now that you have given me your promise, I am able to tell you his name and to describe
the personage. Cornelius Minicianus is the man, an ornament to my native district both in position and character. Of illustrious birth and ample fortune, he is as much devoted to study as poor men are wont to be. At the same time he is a most upright judge, a most undaunted advocate, and a most faithful friend. You will think that a favour has been conferred on you when you have made more intimate acquaintance with a man who is at any rate equal (for I do not wish to speak too boastfully of one who is himself so modest) to any honours and to any titles.

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  23. — TO FABATUS, HIS WIFE’S GRANDFATHER.

  While I rejoice at your being strong enough to go and meet Tiro at Mediolanum, yet that you may continue to preserve that strength, I would beg you not to impose on yourself so great a fatigue, which is opposed to the consideration of your time of life. Nay, further, I enjoin on you to wait for him at home, and, what is more, inside your house, and even inside your chamber. For truly, since he is cherished by me as a brother, he ought not to exact from one whom I look up to as a father an attention which he would have excused in the case of his own father.

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  24. — TO GEMINUS.

  Ummidia Quadratilla is dead, wanting a little of eighty years, hut hale up to the time of her last illness, and with a compactness and vigour of frame surpassing that of matrons in general. She died leaving a will which reflected great credit on her. She made her grandson heir to two-thirds, and her granddaughter to the remaining third of her fortune. The granddaughter I know hut slightly, the grandson I have the strongest regard for — a youth of singular merit, and one who deserved to be loved as a relation by others besides his blood connections. In the first place, though conspicuous for personal beauty, he escaped the gossip of the malevolent, both in boyhood and youth. In his four-and-twentieth year he was a husband, and, had the gods so willed it, would have become a father. In the society of a grandmother addicted to pleasure he lived a life of extreme steadiness, and yet of compliance with her wishes. She had pantomimists in her employ, and interested herself more warmly in them than became a woman of her high rank. Neither at the theatre nor at home did Quadratus witness the performances of these men, and she did not require him to do so. I have heard her say herself, when commending to me her grandson’s studious pursuits, that being a woman, with that want of occupation which is the lot of the sex, she was in the habit of relieving her mind by a game of draughts, or by watching the performances of her pantomimists; but that whenever she was about to do either of these things she always bade her grandson go off to his studies; and she seemed to me to do this from a sense of what was due to the youth as much as from her love for him.

  You will be astonished, and so was I. At the last sacerdotal games, a contest of pantomimists having been exhibited, as Quadratus and I were leaving the theatre together, said he to me, “Do you know that to-day is the first time I ever saw a freedman of my grandmothers dancing!” Thus the grandson. But, by Hercules, persons who were in no way connected with her, by way of doing honour to Quadratilla — I am ashamed of having said honour — rather by way of discharging their office of toadies — were coursing about the theatre, and jumping and clapping their hands, and admiring and imitating every gesture for the benefit of their patroness, with an accompaniment of sing-song. And now these persons will receive the tiniest of legacies, as a gratuity for enacting the part of claqueurs, from an heir who was never a spectator of these performances.

  I have told you all this, because, when anything fresh turns up, you are in general not indisposed to hear it; next, because it is a pleasure to me to renew any subject of joy by writing about it. And I do joy in the family affection shown by the deceased and in the honour paid to so excellent a young man. I am delighted, too, that the house which formerly belonged to C. Cassius (the man who was the chief and founder of the Cassian school) should be in possession of an owner in no way his inferior. For my friend Quadratus will worthily fill it and become it, and once more restore to it its ancient dignity, celebrity, and glory, since there will issue thence as great an orator as Cassius was a jurisconsult.

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  25. — TO RUFUS.

  What a number of learned men there are whom their own modesty or the stillness of their lives conceals and withdraws from fame! Yet we, when about to speak or read in public, stand in apprehension of those only who advertise their learning, whereas such as hold their tongues show to advantage by their silent reverence for the noblest of pursuits. What I write is written from experience. Terentius Junior, after serving irreproachably in the army, in Equestrian grades, and also as Procurator of the province of Narbonian Gaul, has retired to his estate, preferring the profoundest retirement to the honours which awaited him. Having been invited to his house, I regarded him as a worthy paterfamilias and a diligent farmer, and was prepared to talk to him on subjects with which I supposed him to be conversant. Indeed, I had begun to do so, when he, with the most learned discourse, recalled me to literature. How neatly he always expresses himself! in what Latin, in what Greek! He is so strong in both languages that he seems chiefly to excel in the one he happens to speak at the moment. How great his reading, how great his memory! You would think he lived at Athens, not in a country-house. In short, he has added to my apprehensions by causing me to be nervous in the presence of these secluded and, so to speak, rough countryfolk no less than in that of those whom I know for men of extensive learning. I advise you to the same effect. For just as in camps, so also in this literary arena of ours, there are a good many persons who, though not in uniform, will be found on a close inspection to be girded and armed, and that too with the sharpest of intellects.

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  26. — TO MAXIMUS.

  The illness of a certain friend lately reminded me that we are best while we are sick. For what sick man is tempted either by avarice or lust? Such an one is not the slave of his amours, has no appetite for honours, is neglectful of riches, and holds the smallest portion of them for enough, seeing that he is about to part with it. Then he remembers that there are gods and that he is a man; he envies no one, admires no one, despises no one; not even to malicious gossip will he pay attention or find food in it. His dreams are of baths and fountains. These form the sum of his anxieties, the sum of his aspirations; he proposes to himself an easy and comfortable existence for the future, that is, a harmless and a happy one, if he has the luck to escape. What philosophers strive to teach with a multitude of words, and even in a multitude of volumes, I am able, therefore, to lay down for your benefit and my own thus briefly: in health we should continue to be such as, in sickness, we promise that we shall be.

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  27. — TO SURA.

  Our leisure furnishes me with the opportunity of learning from you, and you with that of instructing me. Accordingly, I particularly wish to know whether you think there exist such things as phantoms, possessing an appearance peculiar to themselves, and a certain supernatural power, or that mere empty delusions receive a shape from our fears. For my part, I am led to believe in their existence, especially by what I hear happened to Curtius Rufus. While still in humble circumstances and obscure, he was a hanger-on in the suite of the governor of Africa. While pacing the colonnade one afternoon, there appeared to him a female form of superhuman size and beauty. She informed the terrified man that she was “Africa,” and had come to foretell future events; for that he would go to Rome, would fill offices of state there, and would even return to that same province with the highest powers, and die in it. All which things were fulfilled. Moreover, as he touched at Carthage, and was disembarking from his ship, the same form is said to have presented itself to him on the shore. It is certain that, being seized with illness, and auguring the future from the past, and misfortune from his previous prosperity, he himself abandoned all hope of li
fe, though none of those about him despaired.

  Is not the following story again still more appalling and not less marvellous? I will relate it as it was received by me: —

  There was at Athens a mansion, spacious and commodious, but of evil repute and dangerous to health. In the dead of night there was a noise as of iron, and, if you listened more closely, a clanking of chains was heard, first of all from a distance, and afterwards hard by. Presently a spectre used to appear, an ancient man sinking with emaciation and squalor, with a long beard and bristly hair, wearing shackles on his legs and fetters on his hands, and shaking them. Hence the inmates, by reason of their fears, passed miserable and horrible nights in sleeplessness. This want of sleep was followed by disease, and, their terrors increasing, by death. For in the daytime as well, though the apparition had departed, yet a reminiscence of it flitted before their eyes, and their dread outlived its cause. The mansion was accordingly deserted, and, condemned to solitude, was entirely abandoned to the dreadful ghost. However, it was advertised, on the chance of some one, ignorant of the fearful curse attached to it, being willing to buy or to rent it. Athenodorus, the philosopher, came to Athens and read the advertisement. When he had been informed of the terms, which were so low as to appear suspicious, he made inquiries, and learnt the whole of the particulars. Yet none the less on that account, nay, all the more readily, did he rent the house. As evening began to draw on, he ordered a sofa to be set for himself in the front part of the house, and called for his note-books, writing implements, and a light. The whole of his servants he dismissed to the interior apartments, and for himself applied his soul, eyes, and hand to composition, that his mind might not, from want of occupation, picture to itself the phantoms of which he had heard, or any empty terrors. At the commencement there was the universal silence of night. Soon the shaking of irons and the clanking of chains was heard, yet he never raised his eyes nor slackened his pen, hut hardened his soul and deadened his ears by its help. The noise grew and approached: now it seemed to be heard at the door, and next inside the door. He looked round, beheld and recognised the figure he had been told of. It was standing and signalling to him with its finder, as though inviting him. He, in reply, made a sign with his hand that it should wait a moment, and applied himself afresh to his tablets and pen. Upon this the figure kept rattling its chains over his head as he wrote. On looking round again, he saw it making the same signal as before, and without delay took up a light and followed it. It moved with a slow step, as though oppressed by its chains, and, after turning into the courtyard of the house, vanished suddenly and left his company. On being thus left to himself, he marked the spot with some grass and leaves which he plucked. Next day he applied to the magistrates, and urged them to have the spot in question dug up. There were found there some bones attached to and intermingled with fetters; the body to which they had belonged, rotted away by time and the soil, had abandoned them thus naked and corroded to the chains. They were collected and interred at the public expense, and the house was ever afterwards free from the spirit, which had obtained due sepulture.