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32. — TO QUINTILIAN.
Though you are personally the most modest of men in your desires, and though you have brought up your daughter as it was proper that your daughter and the grandchild of Tutilius should be brought up, nevertheless, as she is about to be married to a most honourable gentleman, Nonius Celer, who by reason of his public employments has a certain necessity imposed on him of making an appearance, she should be provided with a wardrobe and an establishment suitable to her husband’s station; matters which, though they will not add to her position, will be adornments and proper accompaniments to it. Furthermore, I know that while you are rich in mental endowments, your fortune is but small. According I lay claim to a share of your burden, and in the character of a second father to our dear girl, contribute towards her portion fifty thousand sesterces. I would contribute a larger sum, were it not that it is by the smallness of my present alone that I have the assurance of being able to prevail on your modesty not to refuse it.
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33. — TO ROMANUS.
“‘Throw, throw your tasks aside,’ great Vulcan cried;
‘Off with your works begun.’”
Whether you he reading or writing anything, “throw it aside,”
“off with it,” be the order, and take in hand my speech, divine as were those arms of Vulcan — would it be possible to speak more boastfully? — well, in sober truth, an excellent one for a production of mine, and it is enough for me to compete with myself. This speech is on behalf of Attia Viriola, and is rendered remarkable by the station of the individual, the singularity of the case, and the importance of the decision. For, this lady, of lofty birth, married to a man of Prætorian rank, and disinherited by her octogenarian father within eleven days of the time when, smitten with love, he had brought home a stepmother for her, sought to recover her paternal property by a process instituted before the four courts. One hundred and eighty judges sat (for so many are brought together in the four chambers); there was a vast crowd of assistants on either side, and the benches were thronged; moreover a dense circle of spectators, consisting of many rows, encircled the spacious court. Add to this that the tribune was packed, and even in the galleries of the building women as well as men were hanging over in their eagerness to hear, which was difficult, and to see, which was easy. Great was the expectation of fathers and daughters and even of stepmothers. The results which followed were various: for in two chambers we gained the verdict, in the same number we lost it. Truly a notable and marvellous thing that in the same cause, before the same judges, with the same advocates and on the same occasion, so great a diversity should occur by chance, yet so as not to look like chance. The stepmother was beaten, who had herself been made heir to a sixth part of the fortune, and Suberinus was beaten, who, after being disinherited by his own father, had with singular impudence claimed the property of another person’s father, though he did not dare to sue for that of his own parent.
I have given you these details, first that you might learn from my letter what you could not have learnt from the speech, and secondly (for I will discover my arts) that you might have the greater pleasure in reading the speech, ]if you seemed to yourself not so much to be reading, as to be present at the trial. And though it be lengthy, I do not despair of its obtaining the same favour as a very short one. For its freshness is preserved by the abundance of the subject-matter, the niceness of the distinctions, by many short narratives and by the variety of the diction. There are many passages in it (I should not dare say this save to you) of an elevated kind, many of an argumentative, and many too of a subtle character. For in the midst of the former powerful and lofty passages, the necessity often interposed itself of dealing with matters of account, and almost of calling for table and counters, so that a Centumviral trial became all of a sudden changed into the form of a private inquiry. I gave full sails to my indignation, to my wrath, to my grief, and in so mighty a cause, as though on a great sea, was carried by many winds. In short, some of our friends generally consider this speech as being the “Pro Ctesiphonte” of my speeches; whether truly, you will most easily judge, who have them all so well in your memory as to be able to compare them with this, while reading this alone.
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34. — TO MAXIMUS.
You have acted rightly in promising a gladiatorial show to our friends at Verona, who have long loved and respected and honoured you. And it was thence you obtained that wife who was so dear to you and so deservedly appreciated; to whose memory either a construction of some kind was due, or else a spectacle, and such a one as this in preference to any other, as being most suited to a death-celebration. Besides, you were entreated with so much unanimity that to refuse would have seemed not so much resolution as obstinacy. In this also you have acted admirably, in being so ready and liberal in furnishing the show; for these are points too in which large-mindness is shown. I could have wished that the panthers, of which you bought such numbers, had come to hand on the day appointed, but though they failed, from being detained by stress of weather, you at any rate deserved to get the credit of what it was no fault of yours that you did not exhibit.
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BOOK VII.
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1. — TO GEMINUS.
THE obstinacy of this illness of yours alarms me, and, though knowing how great is your self-control, I fear it may even affect your temper. Accordingly, I urge you to bear up against it with patience. This is the laudable, the wholesome course, and what I advise is within the power of human nature. For my part, at any rate, when in health, I am in the habit of dealing with my people after this fashion: “It is assuredly my hope that, in case of falling sick, I shall desire nothing to be ashamed of or repented of; yet, should the disease get the better of me, I warn you to give me nothing, except by permission of the doctors; and know that if you do give me anything, I shall punish the act in the same way as others punish a refusal to comply with their wishes.” Moreover, on the occasion of my being burnt up by a raging fever, when, freed at last from the crisis and anointed, I received a drink from the doctor, I held out my pulse and bid him feel it, and thereupon gave back the cup which I had already raised to my lips. Afterwards, on the twentieth day of my illness, when I was being prepared for the bath, and noticed that the doctors were all of a sudden speaking together in an undertone, I inquired the reason. They replied that I might possibly bathe with safety, yet not altogether without some apprehension. “Where,” said I, “is the necessity?” and so placidly and calmly laying aside all hope of the bath, which I had seemed on the point of being conveyed to, I composed my mind and my looks for the privation no less readily than just before for the bath.
All this I have written to you, firstly, that my warning might not he unaccompanied by an example, and next, that for the future I myself might he bound to the same course of self-control, through having engaged myself to it by this letter as by a kind of pledge.
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2. — TO JUSTUS.
How can it be consistent that in one and the same breath you declare you are engrossed by incessant occupations and yet are longing for my productions, which even from idle folks can scarce obtain a moment of their useless time? I will therefore permit your summer to go by, with its cares and its agitations, and not till winter (when it is presumable that in the evenings at any rate you will possibly have some leisure) will I consider which of my trifles had test be sent you. Meanwhile, it is enough if my letters do not prove a nuisance to you — but they must be, so they shall be cut shorter. Adieu.
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3. — TO PRÆSENS.
Still the same persistency on your part in remaining at one time in Lucania, at another in Campania! “Why,” say you, “
I myself am a Lucanian and my wife is a Campanian.” Good grounds these for a more protracted absence from town; but not, however, for an uninterrupted one. Why not return then at some time to Rome, where consideration and honour and friendships, distinguished as well as humble, await you. How long will you continue to play the king, waking when you choose and sleeping as long as you choose? How long are your dress-shoes to be nowhere, your toga to have a holiday, your whole day to be free? It is time that you should revisit our worries, if with this object only, that those pleasures of yours may not languish through satiety. Pay your court to others for a brief while, that it may be the more agreeable to you to be courted in turn. Jostle in this crowd of ours, in order to enjoy solitude. But why foolishly retard him whom I am striving to recall? For, perhaps, you will be urged by this very language of mine more and more to wrap yourself up in your ease, which I don’t want to see broken up, but merely intermitted. For, just as if I were giving you a dinner I should intermingle with sweet dishes some that were sharp-flavoured and piquant, that your taste, deadened and cloyed by the former, might receive a fresh stimulus from the latter, so now I exhort you to season your most delectable mode of life now and then with, so to speak, a trifling admixture of acids.
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4. — TO PONTIUS.
You say you have read my hendecasyllables; you would even seek to know how it was that I began to write them, who am, in your estimation, a serious personage, and, as I myself admit, no trifler. I was at no time (to go back a long way) averse from the poetic art; nay more, when fourteen years of age, I wrote a Greek tragedy. “What sort of one?” you ask. I can’t say; it was called a tragedy. Afterwards, when, on my return from military service, I was detained by adverse winds in the island of Icaria, I wrote some Latin elegiacs on the sea there and the island itself. At times I have tried my hand at heroic metre; now for the first time at hendecasyllables, which were originated and first saw the light in this wise. The chapters of Asinius Gallus on the comparison between his father and Cicero were being read to me at my house at Laurentum, when an epigram of Cicero on his favourite Tiro occurred. Afterwards, on retiring for a midday siesta (for it was summer time) when sleep failed to steal over me, I began to ponder how the greatest orators not only esteemed this kind of literary effort as a recreation, but also took credit for it. I applied my mind, and, contrary to my expectation, after such long disuse, in a remarkably short space of time scribbled the following verses on the very subject which had induced me to write: —
“When Gallus I read, who pretends that his sire
Had far more than Tully poetical fire:
The wisest of men, I perceived, held it fit
To temper his wisdom with love and with wit;
For Tully, grave Tully, in amorous strains
Of the frauds of his paramour Tiro complains;
That, faithless to love and to pleasure untrue,
From his promised embrace the arch wanton withdrew;
Then I said to my heart, ‘Why should’st thou conceal
The sweetest of passions, the love which you feel?
Yes, fly, wanton Muse, and proclaim it around,
Thy Pliny has loved and his Tiro has found.’
The coy one so artful, who sweetly denies,
And from the sweet flame, but to heighten it, flies.”
I passed on to elegiacs; these, too, I delivered myself of with no less celerity, and, corrupted by this facility, I added some iambics. Then, on my return to town, I read them to my friends. They approved them. Afterwards I attempted a variety of metres in my leisure moments, and principally when travelling. At last I determined, in accordance with the example set by many, to complete one separate volume of hendecasyllables, nor do I repent having done so. It is read, transcribed, indeed sung, and accompanied — by the Greeks, too, whom their relish for this little book has taught Latin — sometimes on the guitar, at other times on the lyre. But why talk so big? However, poets are privileged to rave. And yet I do not speak from my own but from others’ judgments, who, whether they judge rightly or wrongly, at any rate delight me. I only pray that posterity likewise may judge, whether rightly or wrongly, in the same way.
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5. — TO CALPURNIA, HIS WIFE.
It is incredible what a yearning for you possesses me. The reason of this is first of all my love for you, and next that we have not been accustomed to be separated. Hence it is that I spend a great part of my nights wakeful over your image; hence in the day, at the times when I was in the habit of looking in on you, my feet of their own accord take me — as the phrase runs most truly — to your apartment; hence in the end, sick at heart and sad, as one who has been denied admittance, I retire from the deserted threshold. One time alone is free from these torments, that in which I am worn out in the Forum by the law-suits of my friends. It is for you to judge what my life must be when it finds its repose in labour, its solace in miseries and cares!
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6. — TO MACRINUS.
A strange and remarkable circumstance has happened to Varenus, though it be still of an uncertain character. The Bithynians are reported to have given up his prosecution on the ground of its having been undertaken without consideration. Reported, do I say? The agent of the province is here, and has brought a decree of its council to Cæsar, to many of our leading men, and to us, the advocates of Varenus, into the bargain. Still, that same Magnus holds out; more than this, he worries with the utmost pertinacity the worthy Nigrinus, through whom he made application to the consuls that Varenus should be ordered to produce his accounts. I assisted Varenus, but now only as a friend, having made up my mind to hold my tongue. For nothing could be more disadvantageous than that I, appointed his advocate by the Senate, should defend, as though lying under an accusation, a person to whom it imported that he should appear not to be accused at all. However, when at the close of Nigrinus’s application the consuls turned their eyes towards me, “You will know,” said I, “that I have good reason for my silence when you have heard the real agents of the province.” In answer to this, “To whom have they been sent?” asked Nigrinus. Said I, “To me, as well as to others. I am in possession of the decree of the province.” To which he returned, “You may feel satisfied.” I replied, “If you are satisfied the other way, it is possible that I, too, may be satisfied, and with better reason.” Upon this the provincial agent, Polyænus, set forth the grounds for annulling the prosecution, and demanded that there should be no prejudgment of the matter in view of Cæsar’s cognisance of it. Magnus spoke in reply, and Polyænus a second time. For my part, merely interspersing an occasional and brief remark, I observed in general a profound silence. For I have learnt that there are times when it is no less the part of an orator to hold his tongue than to speak. And I can even remember that in the case of certain persons capitally accused, I have served them still better by my silence than by the most elaborate oratory.
A mother who had lost her son (for what prohibits me, though my reason for writing this letter was a different one, from discussions of a professional kind?) accused to the prince his freedmen, who were also co-heirs with her, of forgery and poisoning, and obtained Julius Servianus for judge. I defended the accused, and that too in a very crowded court; for the case attracted great notice, and, besides, the most celebrated talent was employed on either side. The trial ended by the slaves being put to the question, and the result was in favour of the accused. Subsequently the mother applied to the prince, declaring that she had discovered fresh evidence. Suburanus was directed to hear the case thus decided, reargued, in the event of her producing any new matter. The mother’s counsel was Julius Africanus, a grandson of that orator after hearing whom Passienus Crispus exclaimed, “Finely spoken, by Hercules, finely spoken! But to what end all this fine speaking?” This orator’s grandson, a young man of talent, but not much judgment, after he
had talked at great length and filled up the time allotted him, “I beg,” said he, “Suburanus, that you would permit me to add just one word.” Then I, when all were looking to me with the expectation of hearing a long reply, spoke thus, “I should have replied, if Africanus had added just that ‘one word,’ which, I doubt not, would have contained all his new matter.” I cannot readily call to mind having ever obtained so much approval by speaking, as I did then by not speaking. Similarly on the present occasion I was lauded and welcomed for having so far held my tongue on behalf of Varenus. The consuls, in accordance with the application of Polyænus, have kept the whole matter open for the prince, whose decision I await in suspense. For, the day when it is given will either put us at rest and at ease for Varenus, or will force us to resume our interrupted labours with renewed anxiety.
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7. — TO SATURNINUS.
I thanked our friend Priscus lately, and have done so again — since you so bade me — with the greatest pleasure. It is indeed particularly delightful to me that two such excellent men and dear friends of mine should be so knit together as to think yourselves under a reciprocal obligation. For he, too, professes to derive the highest gratification from your intimacy, and engages with you in a truly noble contest of mutual affection, which time itself will increase. I am sorry to hear that you are engrossed by business, for this reason, that you are unable to devote yourself to literature. However, when you have concluded one case before a judge, and (as you tell me) settled the other in person, you will begin, first, to enjoy your leisure where you are, and then, when you have had enough of it, to think of returning to us.
Delphi Complete Works of Pliny the Younger (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) Page 22
