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an augurship vacant on the death of Iulius Frontinus.1 This was an honour which Pliny had long hoped for, and both Verginius Rufus,2 and after his death Frontinus, had regularly placed him among the nominees for the next vacancy. On being released from his duties at the aerarium, Pliny returned to a certain extent to his practice before the centumviri, though he pleaded less frequently, and evidently contemplated complete retirement at some future time.5 He also acted not unfrequently as assessor, either to the court of the 'praefectus urbi,' 7 or to the emperor himself, who on one occasion sent for him to his villa at Centumcellae,9 The last official duties which Pliny undertook at Rome were those of 'curator alvei Tiberis et riparum et cloacarum urbis,' 10 in which office he was considered to be a colleague once more of his old friend Cornutus, who was at the same time 'curator Aemiliae viae.' 11 As we have seen, Pliny had made up his mind never again to face the odium of prosecuting a provincial governor, but his position, as one of the first pleaders of his day, would hardly permit him to stand aside from these important political trials altogether, and accordingly we find him in the next few years engaged in two cases of the sort, though in both of them on the side of the defence. Both these trials had reference to Bithynia. The first, that of Iulius Bassus, was probably in 104 A.D., the other, that of Varenus Rufus, in 106. Both cases seem to have been difficult and complicated, and Pliny did his work thoroughly. In fact, we cannot help suspecting that he threw his whole ability into the cause of his fellowsenators if not with greater thoroughness, at least with greater willingness, than he had shown in behalf of the proconsuls of Africa and Baetica against their governors. Pliny's conduct of these cases probably had an important effect upon his own career. The trials served not only to give him a very extensive and accurate acquaintance with the affairs of Bithynia, but they also convinced the emperor that some thorough reorganisation was needed in that province, and accordingly, some four or five years later, probably in III A.D., he appointed Pliny to the

post of imperial legate of the province, with general instructions to remedy whatever abuses he might discover, and with a special mandate strictly to overhaul the financial affairs of the several communities. How Pliny acquitted himself in this post, and what the various difficulties and questions were which he had to confront, will be seen best from his correspondence with Trajan contained in this volume. How long the appointment lasted we have no certain means of knowing, but as the correspondence breaks off somewhat abruptly, and as we have no traces of Pliny subsequent to it, we may perhaps infer that it was terminated by his premature death. That he died previous to 115 A.D. is rendered almost certain from the fact that in the great inscription put up after his death, Trajan has not got the official title either of 'optimus' or 'Parthicus.'

Such was the public life of Pliny as we can glean it from his letters, and as we see it summed up in the inscription. For anything like statesmanship under the empire there was no real room, and even that scope for administrative ability, which some of the governorships of the large imperial provinces must have offered, was never presented to Pliny, for the peculiar circumstances of Bithynia, never a very important province, compelled him at every step to refer apparently simple and ordinary questions to the emperor. But if Pliny was neither a statesman nor an administrator, he was a very favourable type of the cultivated Roman gentleman, interested in all the literary and social topics of the day, and with perhaps a more than average capacity for the routine duties of an ordinary senatorial career. In distinction from his uncle, he is usually known as Pliny the Consul, but the Pliny whom we know from his letters is much more the generous friend, the enthusiastic man of letters, the amiable patron, and the liberal philanthropist. It has often been noticed with what different eyes Pliny and Juvenal, who were nearly contemporaries, looked upon the social features of their day. This is not, however, altogether wonderful when we contrast their circumstances in life. Both came from Italian municipalities, but while Juvenal was the son of a freedman, had his own way to make at Rome, and was to some extent a disappointed man, Pliny had every advantage on his side. He had, as we have seen, property left him both from his father's and mother's family, adjoining the 'lacus Larius,' in the neigh

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bourhood of his native place Comum.1 His mother's property had suffered to some extent from agricultural depression; 2 but still Northern Italy was less liable to this than Latium or Campania, and if these had been his only estates, with the two villas he called 'Tragedy' and 'Comedy' on the borders of the lake, he would probably have seemed to Juvenal or Martial a man to be envied. But he had another large estate in Etruria near the town of Tifernum Tiberinum, which, as he himself tells Trajan,5 brought in an annual revenue of 400,000 sesterces, while he had a splendid suburban villa at Laurentum, seventeen miles from Rome, and others at Tusculum, Tibur, and Praeneste.8 Still, though rich, Pliny was no millionaire. His property was mostly in land, and the severe agricultural depression of the time,10 heightened by bad seasons and poor vintages,11 made a certain amount of economy and management necessary,12 especially as his official dignity had to be kept up, and the claims of friendship and public munificence were never disregarded. However, he thinks it by no means impossible to raise, with a little help from his mother-in-law, the sum of three million sesterces for the purchase of an estate adjoining his own.13 His liberality, both public and private, was unwearied. At one time he gives a fellow-townsman 300,000 sesterces to make up the equestrian census; 14 at another he contributed 100,000 towards the wedding-dower of a friend's daughter ; at another he helped Artemidorus the philosopher to satisfy his clamorous debtors.16 The poet Martial received some help towards his journey home to Spain.17 Quintilian was presented by his old pupil with a sum of 50,000 sesterces for his daughter's dower,18 while an old nurse was settled comfortably on a little farm which Pliny bought for her. 19 If acts like these prove a kindly and generous feeling for friends, Pliny's public acts of liberality are a striking proof, not only of patriotism, but of an interest in the spread of education and culture which, in spite

15

9 iii 19, 8.

10 ii 4, 3.

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of the literary dilettanteism of the time, was probably not too common. There was no school at Comum, and boys, in consequence, had to be sent to Mediolanum. To remedy this defect, Pliny offered himself to pay one-third of the salary required for a competent teacher, and would have defrayed the whole expense but for a conviction that the parents ought not to be relieved of all responsibility. Besides this, we know from a letter to Calvisius Rufus 2 that Pliny had contributed to the needs of his native town no less than 1,600,000 sesterces. Of these, 500,000 were for the maintenance of a number of plebeian boys and girls,3 which, in order to make the bequest a secure one, Pliny handed over to the municipal authorities, in the form of a mortgage on one of his estates, amounting to an annual payment of 30,000 sesterces.* Another not less important boon conferred on the town was a public library,5 which Pliny built at an expense of 1,000,000 sesterces, and maintained in working order with the interest on 100,000 more. At Tifernum again, of which Pliny had been from a boy the patronus, he built and dedicated a temple adorned with statues of the emperors, including Nerva and Trajan, while on another of his estates he rebuilt a dilapidated temple of Ceres, added two colonnades and a new statue of the goddess in marble to replace the old image of wood. Finally, by his will, Pliny left a sum of money for the construction of some thermae at Comum, as well as for their suitable adornment and maintenance, and also a sum of 1,866,666 sesterces for the maintenance of a hundred of his freedmen, after whose decease the money was to be used for a public banquet to the people.10 But it was not only with his purse that Pliny helped his friends. His influence was always at their service. For some he obtained the 'latus clavus'; 11 for others the 'ius trium liberorum,' 12 or a military tribuneship,13 or the post of centurion.14 For his friend Sura he sought to obtain the praetorship from Trajan; 15 and in fact he was always ready to canvass for his friends, and always

generous in encouraging, helping, and praising young pleaders in the centumviral court.1

He was

Pliny was essentially a man of many friends. To those of a past generation like Verginius Rufus,2 or Corellius, or Spurinna, he displays both reverence and affection; his fellowtownsmen Voconius Romanus, Calvisius Rufus, Caninius Rufus, and others have always certain claims on his regard; while old colleagues like Cornutus Tertullus and Calaestrius Tiro are always spoken of with affection and respect. With the philosophers, Musonius, Euphrates, and Artemidorus, Pliny associated as much as his official duties would allow. Herennius Senecio, Arulenus Rusticus, Iunius Mauricus, and Helvidius Priscus, were all joined to him by bonds of friendship more or less close. Martial found in him a kinder patron perhaps than those on whom he bestows his sometimes fulsome flattery, while between Pliny and Tacitus there seems to have been a friendship especially close, and on the side of the former, at least, an outspoken and generous admiration. Nothing, indeed, is more amiable than Pliny's unstinted praises of his friends. blamed for it by some, but, as he says, the error, if error it was, was a happy one. If Pliny was not unwilling that his friends should make the same mistake with regard to himself, that by no means implies that his admiration was less than sincere. Nor amid these literary friendships were his domestic duties overlooked. Between him and his young wife, Calpurnia, there was a tender and even a romantic affection; he was always thoughtful and considerate towards his slaves and freedmen,7 and in spite of the allurements of city life, he was never so happy as when he could get away and rusticate in one of his many villas. Pliny's life was in almost every respect a happy one: he was exactly suited to his environment. A dabbler in philosophy, he had no convictions which could have drawn upon him the fate of Thrasea, or Helvidius, or Rusticus; an upholder of senatorial dignity, he had no fruitless longings for a political liberty and independence which might add to that dignity a more than nominal power, and pure and humane as his private life undoubtedly was, he had no objection to a little harmless

6

6 iv 19; vi 4; vi 7.

7 i 4, 4; v 19, 1; viii 18.