In the Shadow of Vesuvius

by Daisy Dunn

  11 Russo and Russo, 79 d.C Rotta su Pompei, p. 23.

  12 M. J. Becker and J. M. Turfa, The Etruscans and the History of Dentistry, Routledge, London and New York, 2017, p. 322 on the skull and non-matching mandible. See D. J. Waarsenburg, ‘Archeologisch Nieuws verzorgd door het Nederlands Institut te Rome: De Schedel van Plinius Maior’, Hermeneus: Tijdshrift voor Antieke Cultuur 63e, No. 1, February 1991, pp. 39–43 on the difficulties surrounding the identification of the skull and inconsistencies in Matrone’s account of the excavation. As Waarsenburg notes, groundwater hampered the extraction of objects from the site.

  13 Tacitus Dialogus 29.

  14 Darwin owned the 1601 edition of the Natural History – C. Darwin, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin Vol. 4: 1847–50, edited by F. Burkhardt and S. Smith, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 457, 485. Darwin and the Plinian Society – J. Browne, Charles Darwin, Voyaging, Volume I of a Biography, Pimlico, London, 2003, pp. 72–80.

  15 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1876, pp. 115, 123–4.

  16 PLY 4.7.7.

  17 Martial Epigrams 6.38; PLY 4.2.1.

  18 PLY 4.2.3.

  19 PLY 6.6.3.

  20 Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 1.1.1.

  21 PLY 6.6.3.

  22 Tacitus Dialogus 34–5.

  23 Petronius Satyrica 1.1.

  24 PLY 4.13.8.

  25 PLY 7.18.

  26 Hoffer in Anxieties of Pliny the Younger, pp. 95–6, calculated that Pliny’s gift (of 500,000 sesterces or 30,000 sesterces annual income) could have provided for the education of only about 150 children, a small proportion of Comum’s total population. Duncan-Jones, ‘The Finances of a Senator’, p. 101 suggests that it supported 175 boys and girls in total.

  27 Six per cent calculation – Radice, Pliny: Letters and Panegyricus, Vol. 1, p. 522 n.2.

  28 CIL V 5278.

  29 PLY 1.8.9.

  30 Luraschi, Storia di Como, p. 31. After Pliny died a magnificent inscription (CIL V 5262) was erected in the town to commemorate the full range of his achievements and benefactions. A sixth of it survives at Milan (there is a copy of it in the Museo Civico at Comum). Radice (Pliny: Letters and Panegyricus, Vol. 2, p. 549) suggests that the inscription ‘evidently stood over the baths at Comum’.

  31 PLY 1.8.2–5; on Pliny’s library see T. K. Dix, ‘Pliny’s Library at Comum’, Libraries & Culture, Vol. 31, No. 1, Reading & Libraries I, Winter 1996, pp. 85–102.

  NINE: The Death of Principle

  1 From V. S. Vernon Jones’s 1912 translation.

  2 PLE 10.81.

  3 PLE 10.141–2.

  4 PLE 9.20–3.

  5 Herodotus Histories 1.24.

  6 PLY 9.33.8. See PLE 9.26 for Pliny the Elder’s version of the dolphin story.

  7 On Pliny’s dolphin story see C. L. Miller, ‘The Younger Pliny’s Dolphin Story (“Epistulae” IX 33): An Analysis’, Classical World, Vol. 60, No. 1, September 1966, pp. 6–8.

  8 PLE 7.23; 7.16.

  9 PLY 6.24.

  10 PLE 26.139–47; 28.241–3; 30.113–18.

  11 PLE 30.116; Hippocrates Prorrhetikon II, Kühn, 1825, I, p. 207.

  12 The Arch of Titus was probably completed under Domitian; see D. E. E. Kleiner, Roman Sculpture, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1992, pp. 183–5.

  13 PLY 3.16; Martial Epigrams 1.13.

  14 PLY 3.16.6. Martial also observed that suicide could be used to achieve fame.

  15 PLY 3.16.5.

  16 PLY 8.22.3.

  17 Tacitus Annals 16.22; accusations against Thrasea were brought by Cossutianus Capito, who was bitter because Thrasea had formerly assisted in having him prosecuted for extortion.

  18 Plutarch later drew on Thrasea Paetus’ biography of Cato when he wrote his own Life of Cato. Thrasea Paetus’ text was based on a treatise by Munatius (Plutarch Cato the Younger 37).

  19 M. Griffin (Nero: The End of a Dynasty, Routledge, London and New York, 2001, p. 173) notes that the Stoics’ moral disapproval of Nero’s behaviour was political in so far as they condemned tyranny. See especially pp. 171–7 on the relevance of Stoicism to these men’s fates.

  20 Dio Cassius Roman History 65.12.2; on Helvidius’ philosophical upbringing see Tacitus Histories 4.5.

  21 Tacitus says that when the young Arulenus Rusticus had hoped to try to save Thrasea Paetus from being condemned, Thrasea had told him to save himself; his career was just beginning. Suetonius (Life of Domitian 10.3) is alone in stating that Arulenus wrote both biographies.

  22 PLY 9.13.2.

  23 PLY 7.19.

  24 PLY 7.19.7; Suetonius Life of Domitian 10.3.

  25 Dio Cassius Roman History 67.16.1.

  26 Tacitus Histories 1.1. On the dilemma Tacitus and Pliny faced and Pliny’s efforts to align himself with the Stoics, see C. Whitton, ‘“Let us tread our path together”: Tacitus and the Younger Pliny’, in V. E. Pagán (ed.), A Companion to Tacitus, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, West Sussex; Malden, MA, 2012, p. 353.

  27 Tacitus Agricola 45.

  28 See J. A. Shelton, The Women of Pliny’s Letters, Routledge, Oxford and New York, 2013, p. 69. J. M. Carlon (Pliny’s Women: Constructing Virtue and Creating Identity in the Roman World, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York, 2009, p. 19) notes that ‘Pliny’s silence, like that of his fellow senators, assured their condemnation …’, and A. R. Birley (Hadrian: The Restless Emperor, Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 1997, p. 29) observes that the senators were ‘obliged to vote for the death sentence against Helvidius, Rusticus and Senecio’.

  29 Tacitus Agricola 45.

  30 Tacitus Agricola 2.

  31 PLY 7.19.6.

  32 Suetonius Life of Domitian 10.4.

  33 Suetonius Life of Domitian 3.1; Martial Epigrams 11.13.

  34 Dio Cassius Roman History 67.3; Suetonius (Life of Domitian 10.1) suggested that Domitian had one of Paris’s protégés killed because he reminded him of Paris.

  35 Suetonius Life of Domitian 10.3.

  36 Dio Cassius Roman History 67.13.3; all the philosophers left in Rome, Dio said, were banished again – which may refer to an earlier banishment by Domitian, or perhaps rather to banishments under Nero and Vespasian.

  37 See B. W. Jones, The Emperor Domitian, pp. 120–3.

  38 Juvenal Satires 7.86–9.

  39 Eusebius Church History 3.17.

  40 ‘On a very slight suspicion’: Suetonius Life of Domitian 15.1; atheism/Judaism: Dio Cassius Roman History 67.14.

  41 Dio Cassius Roman History 67.14.

  42 Eusebius Church History 3.19–20, quoting Hegesippus, a second-century AD writer. Jones (The Emperor Domitian, p. 117) suggests that Domitian’s persecution of Christians was largely a myth.

  43 Tertullian Apology 5.4.

  44 PLY 1.5.

  45 PLE 8.215.

  46 PLY 1.5.3.

  47 PLY 7.19.10.

  48 PLY 3.11.3.

  49 Dio Cassius Roman History 67.1; Pliny Panegyricus 90.5; PLY 3.11.3.

  TEN: The Imitation of Nature

  1 PLY 5.6.19.

  2 PLY 4.1.4.

  3 PLY 5.6.6–7.

  4 J. Boyle, Earl of Orrery, The Letters of Pliny the Younger with Observations on Each Letter; And an Essay on Pliny’s Life, addressed to Charles Lord Boyle, James Bettenham for Paul Vaillant, London, 1752, p. 350.

  5 PLY 5.6.46.

  6 Cato On Agriculture 1.1. On the healthy climate see PLY 8.1.

  7 PLE 8.227.

  8 S. Black, J. Browning, and R. Laurence, ‘From Quarry to Road: The Supply of Basalt for Road Paving in the Tiber Valley’, in F. Coarelli and H. Patterson (eds), Mercator Placidissimus: The Tiber Valley in Antiquity, Quasar, Rome, 2008, pp. 715–17. The basalt came from volcanic regions including Mount Vulsini, on Lake Bolsena, and Lake Bracciano. The basalt repaving dates to the first/second century AD.

  9 J. Uroz Sáez, ‘Fundiary property and brick production in the hig
h Tiber valley’, in Coarelli and Patterson (eds), Mercator Placidissimus, p. 124.

  10 G. F. Gamurrini, ‘Le Statue della Villa di Plinio in Tuscis’, in W. Helbig (ed.), Strena Helbigiana, B. G. Teubner, Leipzig, 1900, p. 95 and n.5; more tiles stamped with Pliny’s initials were discovered in the late twentieth century.

  11 Uroz Sáez, ‘Fundiary property and brick production in the high Tiber valley’, p. 124.

  12 PLY 9.6.

  13 Suetonius Life of Domitian 4.

  14 I. K. McEwen, ‘Housing Fame: In the Tuscan Villa of Pliny the Younger’, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 27, spring 1995, p. 18. The restoration was completed under Trajan.

  15 PLY 10.74.

  16 On Pliny the Elder and rings see R. Hawley, ‘Lords of the Rings: Ring-Wearing, Status, and Identity in the Age of Pliny the Elder’, in Bispham and Rowe (eds), Vita Vigilia Est, pp. 103–11.

  17 Tacitus Germania 31.

  18 PLE 33.21.

  19 PLE 33.8.

  20 The room was intended servire per una guardaroba di cose rare et pretiose, et per valuta, et per arte … (V. Borghini, Lo Stanzino del Principe in Palazzo Vecchio: i concetti, le immagini, il desiderio, edited by M. Dezzi Bardeschi, Le Lettere, Florence, 1980. Invenzione I, p. 31).

  21 I examined Francesco de Medici’s Studiolo, including the use of Pliny the Elder’s descriptions of rings, in detail in my doctoral thesis (2013). On the recreation of Natural History in this room see also S. J. Schaefer, The Studiolo of Francesco I de’Medici in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, PhD Thesis, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, 1976.

  22 The first Italian translation of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History was by Cristoforo Landino and printed at Venice by Nicolas Jenson in 1476. There were 1025 copies printed; a rare copy, on parchment, is now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (Arch.G b.6).

  23 Christopher Columbus, as McHam notes (Pliny and the Artistic Culture of the Italian Renaissance, p. 149), owned a copy of Cristoforo Landino’s translation. This was the 1489 edition, printed at Venice and now housed in the Biblioteca Colombina in Seville; see the inventory of Columbus’s books in S. A. Bedini (ed.), The Christopher Columbus Encyclopaedia, Vol. 1, Macmillan, London, 1992, p. 421.

  24 Rubin (Giorgio Vasari, p. 304) observes that Vasari uses the word effigie in the 1550 edition of his book. He may have chosen the word after reading Landino’s translation of the Natural History.

  25 The British Library, Harley 2677 f.1, c.1457–8, illustrated by Andrea da Firenze. The British Library also holds a beautiful edition (Harley 2676) by Hubertus with Medici coat of arms from c.1467.

  26 PLE 9.119.

  27 PLE 33.8.

  28 Filippo Villani, Liber de civitatis florentiae famosis civibus (1381–2), edited by G. C. Galletti, Joannes Mazzoni, Florence, 1847, p. 35.

  29 PLE 35.79.

  30 PLE 35.65.

  31 See L. Freedman, ‘Titian and the Classical Heritage’, in P. Meilman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Titian, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004, p. 193.

  32 Dolce’s Aretino – L. Dolce, Dolce’s Aretino and Venetian Art Theory of the Cinquecento, edited by M. W. Roskill, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Buffalo, NY, London, 2000, pp. 96–7.

  33 PLY 5.6.22.

  34 On the painting fragments at the estate see R. E. Tébar, ‘Gli Intonaci’, in Braconi and Uroz Sáez (eds), La Villa Di Plinio il Giovane a San Giustino, p. 64.

  35 J. C. M. Villora, ‘Le Terrecotte Architettoniche’, in Braconi and Sáez, La Villa Di Plinio il Giovane a San Giustino, pp. 52–3.

  36 PLE 7.10.

  37 PLY 4.19.7.

  ELEVEN: A Difficult, Arduous, Fastidious Thing

  1 PLY 7.5.1.

  2 PLY 9.36.2.

  3 PLY 9.10.3.

  4 PLY 7.20.6.

  5 PLY 9.10.1.

  6 PLY 1.6.2.

  7 According to the calculation of Uroz Sáez, ‘Fundiary property and brick production in the high Tiber valley’, pp. 132–3. Uroz Sáez includes in this total the adjacent plot Pliny is planning to buy in Letter 3.19.

  8 Other entertainments held in the Colosseum included candlelit gladiator fights and mock ‘sea’ battles over a flooded stage.

  9 See especially R. Edwards, ‘Hunting for Boars with Pliny and Tacitus’, Classical Antiquity, Vol. 27, No. 1, April 2008, pp. 35–58 on the association between the Marcus Aper of Tacitus’ Dialogus and Pliny’s ‘three boars’. On the Dialogus and Pliny see W. Dominik, ‘Tacitus and Pliny on Oratory’, in W. Dominik and J. Hall (eds), A Companion to Roman Rhetoric, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, West Sussex and Malden, MA, 2010, pp. 323–38.

  10 Tacitus Dialogus 5–10.

  11 PLY 9.10.2.

  12 PLY 6.17.5.

  13 PLY 1.9.4.

  14 PLE 36.117. On Pliny the Elder and Curio’s theatre see C. Schultze, ‘Making a Spectacle of Oneself: Pliny on Curio’s Theatre’, in Bispham and Rowe (eds), Vita Vigilia Est, pp. 127–45.

  15 P. Fane–Saunders, Pliny the Elder and the Emergence of Renaissance Architecture, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2016, pp. 246–7.

  16 PLY 7.30.3.

  17 On the treasury see F. Millar, ‘The Aerarium and its Officials under the Empire’, Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 54, Parts 1 and 2, 1964, pp. 39–40.

  18 CIL V 5667.

  19 PLY 1.10.9.

  20 Suetonius Life of Domitian 14.

  21 Suetonius Life of Domitian 17.

  22 Suetonius Life of Domitian 14.

  23 A. M. Ward, F. M. Heichelheim and C. A. Yeo (A History of the Roman People, Routledge, London and New York, 2016, p. 326) describe Stephanus entering the conspiracy as a ‘devoted former butler’ of Domitilla.

  24 It was said that a storm put out Domitian’s funeral pyre and dogs tore apart his semi-burned corpse.

  25 Tacitus Histories 4.41; 44; see Levick, Vespasian, p. 49.

  26 Pliny Panegyricus 34.

  27 PLY 1.5.1.

  28 PLY 7.27.12–16.

  29 PLY 9.13.2.

  30 PLY 9.13.6.

  31 PLY 1.5.15.

  32 PLY 9.13.21.

  33 Tacitus Agricola 3.

  34 PLY 4.22.7.

  35 Epitome de Caesaribus 12.8. The Praetorian Guard are said to have seized both the cubicularius or chamberlain Parthenius and Petronius Secundus, one of the praetorian prefects. On the frustration of the Guard see also Dio Cassius Roman History 68.8. Cf. Pliny Panegyricus 6.2.

  36 See J. D. Grainger, Nerva and the Roman Succession Crisis of AD 96–99, Routledge, London and New York, 2003, p. 89 on the dilemma Nerva faced over when to adopt a successor.

  37 On the complex machinations which might have been taking place among the Guard and behind the scenes see W. Eck, ‘An Emperor is Made: Senatorial Politics and Trajan’s Adoption by Nerva in 97’, in G. Clark and T. Rajak (eds), Philosophy and Power in the Graeco-Roman World: Essays in Honour of Miriam Griffin, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2002, pp. 211–26. See also Grainger, Nerva and the Roman Succession Crisis of AD 96–99, pp. 90–9.

  38 Pliny Panegyricus 8.1.

  39 PLY 9.13.21.

  40 PLY 7.19.4.

  41 PLY 9.13.25.

  42 PLY 1.10.10.

  TWELVE: Head, Heart, Womb

  1 PLE 7.191. In late May a fertility rite known as the Ambarvalia honoured Ceres.

  2 PLY 9.39.

  3 PLY 6.30.4.

  4 A. Marzano (Roman Villas in Central Italy: A Social and Economic History, Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2007, p. 110) explains that the villa was built by Granius Marcellus; pottery finds, but not building materials, predate his ownership. Establishing a precedent for Pliny, this magistrate had fired thousands of tiles bearing his name, more than 300 of which have since been recovered from the plain and from as far as ten kilometres away, at Parnacciano and Mazzano; see Uroz Sáez, ‘Fundiary property and brick production in the high Tiber valley’, p. 128. Gamurrini (‘Le Statue della Villa di Plinio in Tuscis’, p. 97) made the link between these tiles, Pliny
’s statues, and the two men named Granius mentioned by Tacitus. In Letter 10.8.1 Pliny says that the statues of the emperors had been passed down per plures successiones. The idea that his are the same statues owned by Granius Marcellus is uncertain but very compelling and is proposed by Gamurrini, pp. 93–7; Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, pp. 322–3; and A. J. Woodman, ‘Tacitus and the contemporary scene’, in A. J. Woodman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009, pp. 34–5.

  5 CIL XI 5264 names Granius as a duovir quinquennalis of Hispellum. See Marzano, Roman Villas in Central Italy, p. 110.

  6 Tacitus Annals 1.74.

  7 Tacitus Annals 6.38; Uroz Sáez (‘Fundiary property and brick production in the high Tiber valley’, pp. 128–9) suggests that the estate passed to Granius’ son Granius Marcianus and then into imperial hands when he committed suicide.

  8 Uroz Sáez, ‘Fundiary property and brick production in the high Tiber valley’, p. 131.

  9 Jean Hardouin cited in E. Allain, Pline le jeune et ses héritiers, Fontemoing, Paris, 1902, Vol. 3, pp. 282–91. The inscription was recorded by the sixteenth-century Augustinian monk Onofrio Panvinio in his In Fastorum Libros Commentarii and later adduced by Gamurrini (‘Le Statue della Villa di Plinio in Tuscis’, p. 98), whose theory of Pliny the Elder recovering the property is developed by Uroz Sáez (‘Fundiary property and brick production in the high Tiber valley’, pp. 130–1; and in Braconi and Uroz Sáez (eds), La Villa Di Plinio il Giovane a San Giustino, pp. 194–5).

  10 Pliny Panegyricus 52.

  11 Pliny Panegyricus 51.

  12 Suetonius Life of Domitian 5; Dio Cassius 66.24. See P. Roche, ‘The Panegyricus and the Monuments of Rome’, in P. Roche (ed.), Pliny’s Praise, p. 46.

  13 Pliny Panegyricus 52.4–5; see also Suetonius Life of Domitian 23. Domitian is said to have allowed only gold and silver sculptures of a certain weight to be dedicated to him on the Capitoline Hill (see Suetonius Life of Domitian 13).

  14 PLY 10.5.1; 7.1.4. Sherwin-White (Letters of Pliny, p. 566) dates Letter 10.5, in which Pliny writes of being ill ‘last year’, to between mid-AD 98 and 99. In Letter 10.8, Pliny describes how his ill health delayed work on the temple.