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8. — TO PRISCUS.
I cannot express my delight at our friend Saturninus speaking to me of his deep thankfulness to you in letter after letter. Go on as you have begun, and cherish with all possible affection this excellent man, from whose friendship you will derive great satisfaction, and for no short time either; for abounding as he is in all good qualities, he is principally distinguished for the remarkable constancy of his affections.
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9. — TO FUSCUS.
You ask me after what manner I think you ought to pursue your studies in the retirement which you have now for some time enjoyed. It will be particularly profitable — and so it is laid down by many — to translate either from Greek into Latin, or from Latin into “Greek. This is a kind of exercise which will furnish you with propriety and brilliancy of expression, a great supply of ornamental turns, force in exposition, and, moreover, by imitation of the best models, a faculty of inventing what will resemble them. At the same time, what might have eluded the notice of a reader cannot escape a translator. By this means taste and judgment are acquired. It will do you no harm if — taking what you have read with sufficient attention to recollect the matter and the argument — you write down the substance in a spirit of rivalry, and then compare it with what you have read, carefully considering what you and what your author have put in a preferable way. Great will be your joy if you have bettered him in some places; great your shame if he has bettered you in everything. It will sometimes be permissible to select the best known parts, and to compete with the choicest passages. This contest, though a daring one, will not be impertinent, because it is carried on in private. Though, for the matter of that, we see many who have undertaken this kind of competition with great credit, and who, by reason of not despairing, have outstripped those whom they thought it sufficient to follow in the wake of. You may also take in hand again what you have written, after you have forgotten it, and then retain much of it, throw out more, insert some things, and rewrite others. This is an irksome and extremely tedious task, but which the difficulty itself renders profitable — to warm to one’s work afresh, and resume one’s swing after it has been enfeebled and has ceased, and, finally, to insert fresh members, so to speak, in a completed framework, yet so as not to disturb what was there before.
I know that just now you have a particular affection for oratory, but I would not on that account advise you always to adopt that contentious, and, if I may so term it, warlike style. For as soils are refreshed by varying and changing the seeds, so are our minds by exercising the thoughts now in one direction, now in another. I should wish you occasionally to take up some historical topic. I should also wish you to write a letter with especial pains. For oftentimes, even in an oration, a necessity occurs, not only for historical, but almost for poetical treatment, and a concise and pure style is acquired by letter-writing. Even poetry is a fitting relaxation. I don’t say long and sustained poems (for such as these can only be elaborated with full leisure), but of that lively and short kind which form a suitable interruption to occupations and business, however important. We call them poetic sports. But these sports sometimes attain to no less fame than serious effusions. Nay, more (for why should I not exhort you to verse-making by verse?): —
As yielding wax the artist’s skill commands,
Submissive shaped beneath his forming hands;
Now dreadful stands in arms a Mars confessed,
Or now with Venus’ softer air impressed;
Now by the mould a wanton Cupid lies, —
Now shines, severely chaste, a Pallas wise;
As not alone to quench the sacred flame
The sacred fountain pours her friendly stream,
But sweetly gliding through the flowery green,
Spreads glad refreshment o’er the smiling scene;
So, formed by science, should the ductile mind
Receive, distinct, each various art refined.
And so the greatest orators, who were at the same time the greatest of men, either exercised or delighted themselves, nay, rather both exercised and delighted themselves. For it is marvellous how, by means of these small compositions, the mind is at once exerted and refreshed. There is room in them for love, hatred, wrath, pity, humour, everything, in short, which has a place in daily life, as well as in the Forum and its trials. There is in these, too, the same advantage as in other kinds of poetry, that, after acquitting ourselves of the necessities imposed by metre, we learn to rejoice in the freedom of prose, and that which comparison shows to be the easier for us we write with all the more pleasure.
You have now got, perhaps, even more than you required. One thing, however, has been omitted, for I have not said what I thought you ought to read, and yet I did say it when telling you what ought to be written. Do you mind and make a careful selection of authors, each of his own kind. For they say that one ought to read much, not many things. Who these authors are is so well-known and established that there is no necessity for pointing them out; and, independently of this, I have so immoderately extended this letter, that, while advising you on the way in which you ought to conduct your studies, I have been robbing you of time for study. Resume, then, your note-books, and either write something in accordance with these suggestions, or go on with the particular work you had begun.
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10. — TO MACRINUS.
As I myself, when I have learnt the beginning of a story, long to tack to it the ending, which has in a manner been forcibly separated from it, so I suppose that you too would like to learn the remainder about Varenus and the Bithynians. The cause was pleaded by Polyænus on one side, and Magnus on the other. At the conclusion of their speeches, “Neither party,” said Cæsar, “shall have to complain of delay; it shall be my care to ascertain the wishes of the province.” Meanwhile Varenus has obtained a good deal. For, indeed, how doubtful it must be whether a man is rightly accused, when it is uncertain whether he be accused at all? All that remains is that the province should not once more approve of what it is said to have condemned, and thus repent of its own repentance.
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11. — TO FABATUS, HIS WIFE’S GRANDFATHER.
You are surprised that Hermes, my freedman, should have sold to Corellia the five-twelfth share which was left me in an estate (without waiting for the auction, though I had ordered the property to be advertised), at the rate of seven hundred thousand sesterces for the whole. You add that the estate could be sold for nine hundred thousand, and hence you are more particular in inquiring whether I am prepared to stand by what he has done. I certainly do stand by it, for reasons you will now learn, for I am anxious that you should approve, and my co-heirs should excuse, my separating myself from them under the compulsion of a still higher obligation. I have a regard and profound respect for Corellia, first of all as being the sister of Corellius Rufus, whose memory is in the highest degree sacred in my eyes, and next as the bosom friend of my mother. Ties of long standing unite me to her husband also, Minicius Justus, a man of the loftiest character, and very strong ones united me to her son, to such an extent indeed that, during my Prætorship, he presided at the shows which I gave. Corellia, when I was lately in those parts, intimated to me her desire to own some property upon our Larian lake. I offered her, out of my estates, anything she liked, at her own price, always excepting what had come to me from my mother and father, for I could not part with these, even to Corellia. So when this inheritance had fallen to me, containing the lands in question, I wrote to her that they would be offered for sale. Hermes was the bearer of my letter, and on her urgently requesting that he would at once dispose of my portion to her, he complied. You see how completely I must stand to that which has been done by my freedman in compliance with my sentiments. It remains that my co-heirs should bear with a good grace my having sold se
parately what I was entitled not to sell at all. Nor, indeed, are they compelled to imitate my example, for there are not the same ties between them and Corellia. They can, therefore, look to their own interests; mine were replaced by a sense of friendship.
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12. — TO MINICIUS.
The enclosed small production was composed by me at your request for your, nay, rather our friend (for what is there that is not common between us?), to use if occasion requires. I have sent it you later than I otherwise should, in order that you may have no time for correcting it, that is to say, pulling it to pieces. However, you will find time, whether for correcting it I know not, but certainly for pulling it to pieces. For you “gentlemen of correct taste” cut out all the best bits. Well, if you do this, I will take it in good part. For I shall afterwards, on some occasion or other, use these same bits on my own account, and obtain applause for them by favour of your contemptuous rejection of them — as, for instance, that passage which you will find marked, and the sense set out in a different way, in what I have written above it: for suspecting that it would seem to you turgid, inasmuch as it is high-sounding and elevated, I thought it not inopportune (in order to spare you torture) to append to it forthwith something conciser and simpler, or rather commoner and worse, but which, in your judgment, will be more appropriate. Why, in sooth, should I not take every opportunity of pursuing and railing at your flimsy taste?
So much, that amidst your occupations you might for once have something to laugh at. What follows is serious.
Be sure you repay me the expenses which have come out of my pocket for the special messenger sent herewith. But doubtless, after reading this, you will condemn, not parts of the book only, but the whole book, and, when asked for the price of it, will declare that it is worth no price at all!
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13. — TO FEROX.
One and the same letter of yours intimates to me that you are, and that you are not, engaged in literary studies Do I talk enigmas? So it must be till I express my meaning more clearly. For while it denies that you are studying, it is so elegant that it could only have been written by a student; or else you are the most fortunate of men if you can turn out such compositions as these as the fruits of idleness and leisure.
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14. — TO CORELLIA.
You, for your part, have acted most honourably in begging and insisting with so much earnestness that I would order the purchase-money of the estate to be received from you, not at the rate of seven hundred thousand sesterces — that at which you bought it from my freedman — but at the rate of nine hundred thousand, that at which you compounded for the duty of five per cent, with the farmers of the revenue. In my turn, I beg and insist you will consider, not only what befits you, but what befits me, and will suffer me, in this one particular, to oppose your wishes in the same spirit as on all other occasions I am wont to exhibit in complying with them.
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15. — TO SATURNINUS.
You ask what I am about. What you know. I am greatly tried by my official duties, and at the beck and call of my friends. Occasionally I study, to be able to do which, not occasionally, but exclusively and uninterruptedly, would be, I dare not say a more proper, but certainly a happier thing. That your occupations are everything but what you could wish would be a subject of regret to me and were it not that those occupations are of so noble a character. For to administer the affairs of one’s country, and to act as arbitrator for one’s friends, this is in the highest degree glorious. I was sure that the society of our friend Priscus would be a pleasure to you. I was acquainted with his straightforwardness and agreeable manners, and now learn by experience, what I was less acquainted with, his grateful disposition, since you write to me that he is so agreeably mindful of our services to him.
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16. — TO FABATUS, HIS WIFE’S GRANDFATHER.
I have an intimate regard for Calestrius Tiro, who is attached to me both by private and public ties. We served in the army together, and we were Cæsar’s Quæstors together. He preceded me in the tribuneship, in virtue of his having children, but I overtook him in the prætorship — Cæsar having remitted me a year. I have often enjoyed the retirement of his country seats, and he has often recovered his health at my house. He is now, in the capacity of Proconsul, about to go to the province of Bætica, by way of Ticinum. I hope, nay, am confident, that I shall easily prevail on him to turn out of his way and visit you, if it be your wish to liberate in regular form the slaves whom you have recently manumitted in the presence of your friends. You need not be at all afraid that this will inconvenience him, since he would not think a journey round the world too long for my sake. Lay aside, then, that excessive diffidence of yours, and consult your own wishes. It is as agreeable to him to do my bidding as it is to me to do yours.
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17. — TO CELER.
Every one has his own reasons for reciting. Mine, as I have already often said, is this, that in case anything escapes my notice (as certainly things do escape), I may be warned of the fact. And this makes me wonder the more at your writing that there have been some who blamed me for reciting my orations at all — unless, indeed they think that these are the only compositions which’ need no correction. Of these people I should be glad to inquire why they admit (if, however, they do admit) that a history ought to be recited, which is composed, not with a view to display, but to fidelity and truth? Or why a tragedy, which requires, not a recitation chamber, but a stage and actors? Or why lyric poetry, which requires, not a reader, but the chorus and the lyre? “Oh, but the recitation of these kind of things is now a received usage.” Pray, then, is the person to be blamed who originated it? Though, by the way, orations too have often been read aloud both by our countrymen and by the Greeks. “At any rate, it is a work of supererogation to recite what you have already spoken.” Granted, if you recite exactly the same thing, to precisely the same people, without a moment’s delay. If, however, you make many additions and many changes, if you invite to hear you some fresh people, together with some of those who have heard you before (after an interval, however), why should your reasons for reading aloud what you have already spoken be less acceptable than for publishing the same? “But it is difficult for an oration to give satisfaction when recited.”
Well, but this is a point which concerns the pains taken by the reciter, not the reasons for not reciting. Nor, indeed, do I seek approval while reciting, but while being read. Consequently, I neglect no means of improvement.
First of all, I go carefully over what I have written by myself; next I read it to two or three people; then I hand it over to others to make their notes on it, and these notes, when in any doubt, I again ponder in company with one or other of them. Last of all, I recite to a larger audience, and, if you will believe me, then it is that I am keenest at correcting; for the ardour of my application is proportioned to my anxiety. Indeed, respect for one’s audience and a sense of diffidence are the best of critics. Take it in this way: are you not less perturbed if you are going to address some one person, who, however great his culture, is still a single individual, than if you are going to address a number of people, even though they be uncultured? Do you not, on rising to plead, mistrust yourself, particularly at that moment; at that moment desire, not merely that many things, but that everything in your speech could be changed? And that still more strongly if the scene be enlarged and the circle of hearers extended? For we look with apprehension even upon the common folk in their dusky attire. Are you not — if you fancy any part of your opening to be unfavourably received — at once discouraged and prostrated? I presume this is because, in numbers themselves, there is a certain weighty and collective judgment; and while each individual has but a small critical fac
ulty, yet, taken altogether, they have a great deal. Hence Pomponius Secundus — he was a writer of tragedies — if there chanced to be any passage which one of his intimate friends thought of a nature to be left out, while he himself thought it should be retained, used to say, “I appeal to the public!” And accordingly, judging from the silence or the approval of the public, he followed either his own or his friend’s opinion. Such importance did he attach to this same public; rightly or wrongly, does not concern me; for it is not my custom to invite the public, but persons I am sure of and have selected, whom I can look at and trust, whom I can scrutinise singly, and stand in awe of collectively. For M. Cicero’s opinion about the pen I hold with regard to fear. Apprehension is the sharpest corrector. The very fact that we reflect we are about to recite acts as a corrector; our entrance into the audience-room, the act of growing pale, our shivering, our looking about us, all these are so many correctors. Consequently, I am not ashamed of my habit, which experience shows me to be a most useful one, and, so far from being deterred by these people’s tittle-tattle, I will go further, and ask you if you can tell me of anything to be added to all this. Nothing, indeed, will satisfy my precautions; for I reflect what an important matter it is to deliver anything into the hands of men; and I cannot persuade myself that it is not proper to revise often, and in the company of many, that which one desires should give pleasure at all times and to all people.
Delphi Complete Works of Pliny the Younger (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) Page 23
