The Letters of the Younger Pliny Part 7

You tell me that Sabina, who left us her heirs, never gave any instructions that her slave Modestus was to be granted his freedom, though she left him a legacy in these words: "I give...to Modestus, whom I have ordered to receive his liberty." You ask me what I think of the matter. I have consulted some eminent lawyers and they all agree that Modestus need not be given his freedom, because it was not expressly granted by Sabina, nor his legacy, because she left it to him as a slave. But the mistake is obvious to me, and so I think that we ought to act as though Sabina had ordered him to be freed in express terms, since she certainly was under the impression that she had ordered it. I am sure that you will be of my way of thinking, for you are most punctilious in carrying out the intentions of a dead person, which are, with honourable heirs, tantamount to legal obligations. For with us honour has as much weight as necessity has with others. So I propose that we should allow Modestus to have his liberty and enjoy his legacy, as if Sabina had taken all proper precautions to ensure that he should.

For a lady who has made a good choice of her heirs has surely taken all the precautions necessary. Farewell.

4.XI.--TO CORNELIUS MINICIa.n.u.s.

Have you heard that Valerius Licinia.n.u.s is teaching rhetoric in Sicily?

I do not think you can have done, for the news is quite fresh. He is of praetorian rank, and he used at one time to be considered one of our most eloquent pleaders at the bar, but now he has fallen so low that he is an exile instead of being a senator, and a mere teacher of rhetoric instead of being a prominent advocate. Consequently in his opening remarks he exclaimed, sorrowfully and solemnly: "O Fortune, what sport you make to amuse yourself! For you turn senators into professors, and professors into senators." There is so much gall and bitterness in that expression that it seems to me that he became a professor merely to have the opportunity of uttering it. Again, when he entered the hall wearing a Greek pallium--for those who have been banished with the fire-and- water formula are not allowed to wear the toga--he first pulled himself together and then, glancing at his dress, he said, "I shall speak my declamations in Latin."

You will say that this is all very sad and pitiful, but that a man who defiled his profession of letters by the guilt of incest deserves to suffer. It is true that he confessed his guilt, but it is an open question whether he did so because he was guilty or because he feared an even heavier punishment if he denied it. For Domitian was in a great rage and was boiling over with fury because his witnesses had left him in the lurch. His mind was set upon burying alive Cornelia, the chief of the Vestal Virgins, as he thought to make his age memorable by such an example of severity, and, using his authority as Chief Pontiff, or rather exercising the cruelty of a tyrant and the wanton caprice of a ruler, he summoned the rest of the pontiffs not to the Palace but to his Villa at Alba. There, with a wickedness just as monstrous as the crime which he pretended to be punis.h.i.+ng, he declared her guilty of incest, without summoning her before him and giving her a hearing, though he himself had not only committed incest with his brother's daughter but had even caused her death, for she died of abortion during her widowhood. He immediately despatched some of the pontiffs to see that his victim was buried alive and put to death. Cornelia invoked in turns the aid of Vesta and of the rest of the deities, and amid her many cries this was repeated most frequently: "How can Caesar think me guilty of incest, when he has conquered and triumphed after my hands have performed the sacred rites?" It is not known whether her purpose was to soften Caesar's heart or to deride him, whether she spoke the words to show her confidence in herself or her contempt of the Emperor. Yet she continued to utter them until she was led to the place of execution, and whether she was innocent or not, she certainly appeared to be so. Nay, even when she was being let down into the dreadful pit and her dress caught as she was being lowered, she turned and readjusted it, and when the executioner offered her his hand she declined it and drew back, as though she put away from her with horror the idea of having her chaste and pure body defiled by his loathsome touch. Thus she preserved her sanct.i.ty to the last and displayed all the tokens of a chaste woman, like Hecuba, "taking care that she might fall in seemly wise."

Moreover, when Celer, the Roman knight who was accused of having intrigued with Cornelia, was being scourged with rods in the Forum, he did nothing but cry out, "What have I done? I have done nothing."

Consequently Domitian's evil reputation for cruelty and injustice blazed up on all hands. He fastened upon Licinia.n.u.s for hiding a freedwoman of Cornelia on one of his farms. Licinia.n.u.s was advised by his friends who interested themselves on his behalf to take refuge in making a confession and beg for pardon, if he wished to escape being flogged in the Forum, and he did so. Herennius Senecio spoke for him in his absence very much in the words of Homer, "Patroclus is fallen," for he said, "Instead of being an advocate, I am the bearer of news: Licinia.n.u.s has removed himself." This so pleased Domitian that he allowed his gratification to betray him into exclaiming, "Licinia.n.u.s has cleared us." He even went on to say that it would not do to press a man who admitted his fault too hard, and gave him permission to get together what he could of his belongings before his goods were confiscated, and granted him a pleasant place of exile as a reward for his consideration.

Subsequently, by the clemency of the Emperor Nerva, he was removed to Sicily, where he now is a Professor of Rhetoric and takes his revenge upon Fortune in his prefatory remarks.

You see how careful I am to obey your wishes, as I not only give you the news of the town, but news from abroad, and minutely trace a story from its very beginning. I took for granted that, as you were away from Rome at the time, all you heard of Licinia.n.u.s was that he had been banished for incest. For rumour only gives one the gist of the matter, not the various stages through which it pa.s.ses. Surely I deserve that you should return the compliment and write and tell me what is going on in your town and neighbourhood, for something worthy of note is always happening. But say what you will, provided you give me the news in as long a letter as I have written to you. I shall count up not only the pages, but the lines and the syllables. Farewell.

4.XII.--TO MATURUS ARRIa.n.u.s.

You have a regard for Egnatius Marcellinus and you often commend him to my notice; you will love him and commend him the more when you hear what he has recently done. After setting out as quaestor for his province, he lost by death a secretary, who was allotted to him, before the day when the man's salary fell due, and he made up his mind and resolved that he ought not to keep the money which had been paid over to him to give to the secretary. So when he returned he consulted first Caesar and then the Senate, on Caesar's recommendation, as to what was to be done with the money. It was a trifling question, but, after all, it was a question. The secretary's heirs claimed it should pa.s.s to them; the prefects of the treasury claimed it for the people. The case was heard, and counsel for the heirs and for the people pleaded in turn, and both spoke well to the point. Caecilius Strabo proposed that it should be paid over to the treasury; Baebius Macer that it should be given to the man's heirs; Strabo carried the day. I hope you will praise Marcellinus for his conduct, as I did on the spot, for, although he thinks it more than enough to have been congratulated by the Emperor and the Senate, he will be glad to have your commendation as well. All who are anxious for glory and reputation are wonderfully pleased with the approbation and praise even of men of no particular account, while Marcellinus has such regard for you that he attaches the greatest importance to your opinion.

Besides, if he knows that the fame of his action has penetrated so far, he cannot but be pleased at the ground his praises have covered and the rapidity and distance they have travelled. For it somehow happens that men prefer a wide even to a well-grounded reputation. Farewell.

4.XIII.--TO TACITUS.

I am delighted that you have returned to Rome, for though your arrival is always welcome, it is especially so to me at the present moment. I shall be spending a few more days at my Tusculan villa in order to finish a small work which I have in hand, for I am afraid that if I do not carry it right through now that it is nearly completed I shall find it irksome to start on it again. In the meanwhile, that I may lose no time, I am sending this letter as a sort of forerunner to make a request which, when I am in town, I shall ask you to grant.

But first of all, let me tell you my reasons for asking it. When I was last in my native district a son of a fellow townsman of mine, a youth under age, came to pay his respects to me. I said to him, "Do you keep up your studies?" "Yes," said he. "Where?" I asked. "At Mediolanum,"

he replied. "But why not here?" I queried. Then the lad's father, who was with him, and indeed had brought him, replied, "Because we have no teachers here." "How is that?" I asked. "It is a matter of urgent importance to you who are fathers"--and it so happened, luckily, that a number of fathers were listening to me--"that your children should get their schooling here on the spot. For where can they pa.s.s the time so pleasantly as in their native place; where can they be brought up so virtuously as under their parents' eyes; where so inexpensively as at home? If you put your money together you could hire teachers at a trifling cost, and you could add to their stipends the sums you now spend upon your sons' lodgings and travelling money, which are no light amounts. I have no children of my own, but still, in the interest of the State, which I may consider as my child or my parent, I am prepared to contribute a third part of the amount which you may decide to club together. I would even promise the whole sum, if I were not afraid that if I did so my generosity would be corrupted to serve private interests, as I see is the case in many places where teachers are employed at the public charge. There is but one way of preventing this evil, and that is by leaving the right of employing the teachers to the parents alone, who will be careful to make a right choice if they are required to find the money. For those who perhaps would be careless in dealing with other people's money will a.s.suredly be careful in spending their own, and they will take care that the teacher who gets my money will be worth his salt when he will also get money from them as well. So put your heads together, make up your minds, and let my example inspire you, for I can a.s.sure you that the greater the contribution you lay upon me the better I shall be pleased. You cannot make your children a more handsome present than this, nor can you do your native place a better turn. Let those who are born here be brought up here, and from their earliest days accustom them to love and know every foot of their native soil. I hope you may be able to attract such distinguished teachers that boys will be sent here to study from the towns round about, and that, as now your children flock to other places, so in the future other people's children may flock hither."

I thought it best to repeat this conversation in detail and from the very beginning, to convince you how glad I shall be if you will undertake my commission. As the subject is one of such importance, I beg and implore you to look out for some teachers from among the throng of learned people who gather round you in admiration of your genius, whom we can sound on the matter, but in such a way that we do not pledge ourselves to employ any one of them. For I wish to give the parents a perfectly free hand. They must judge and choose for themselves; my responsibilities go no further than a sympathetic interest and the payment of my share of the cost. So if you find any one who is confident in his own abilities, let him go to Comum, but on the express understanding that he builds upon no certainty beyond his own confidence in himself. Farewell.

4.XIV.--TO PATERNUS.

Perhaps you are asking and looking out for a speech of mine, as you usually do, but I am sending you some wares of another sort, exotic trifles, the fruit of my playtime. You will receive with this letter some hendecasyllabics of mine with which I pa.s.s my leisure hours pleasantly when driving, or in the bath, or at dinner. They contain my jests, my sportive fancies, my loves, sorrows, displeasures and wrath, described sometimes in a humble, sometimes in a lofty strain. My object has been to please different tastes by this variety of treatment, and I hope that certain pieces will be liked by every one. Some of them will possibly strike you as being rather wanton, but a man of your scholars.h.i.+p will bear in mind that the very greatest and gravest authors who have handled such subjects have not only dealt with lascivious themes, but have treated them in the plainest language. I have not done that, not because I have greater austerity than they--by no means, but because I am not quite so daring. Otherwise, I am aware that Catullus has laid down the best and truest regulations governing this style of poetry in his lines: "For it becomes a pious bard to be chaste himself, though there is no need for his verses to be so. Nay, if they are to have wit and charm, they must be voluptuous and not too modest."

You may guess from this what store I set on your critical judgment when I say that I prefer you should weigh the whole in the balance rather than pick out a few for your special praise. Yet pieces, perfect in themselves, cease to appear so the moment they are all on a dead level of perfection. Besides, a reader of judgment and ac.u.men ought not to compare different pieces with one another, but to weigh each on its own merits and not to think one inferior to another, if it is perfect of its kind. But why say more? What more foolish than to excuse or commend mere trifles with a long preface? Still there is one thing of which I think I should advise you, and it is that I am thinking of calling these trifles "Hendecasyllables," a t.i.tle which simply refers to the single metre employed. So, whether you prefer to call them epigrams, or idylls, or eclogues, or little poems, as many do, or any other name, remember that I only offer you "Hendecasyllables." I appeal to your candour to speak to me frankly about my tiny volume as you would to a third person, and this is no hard request. For if this trifling work of mind were my chef d'oeuvre, or my one solitary composition, it might perhaps seem harsh to say, "Seek out some other employment for your talent," but it is perfectly gentle and kindly criticism to say, "You have another sphere in which you show to greater advantage." Farewell.

4.XV.--TO FUNDa.n.u.s.

If I have ever been guided by judgment, it has been in the strength of regard I have for Asinius Rufus. He is one of a thousand, and a devoted admirer of all good men among whom why may I not include myself? He is on the very closest of terms of friends.h.i.+p with Cornelius Tacitus, and you know what an honourable man Tacitus is. So if you have any high opinion of both Tacitus and myself, you must also think as highly of Rufus as you do of us, since similarity of character is perhaps the strongest bond for cementing friends.h.i.+ps. Rufus has a number of children. Even in this respect he has acted the part of a good citizen, in that he was willing to freely undertake the responsibilities entailed upon him by the fruitfulness of his wife, in an age when the advantages of being childless are such that many people consider even one son to be a burden. He has scorned all those advantages, and has also become a grandfather. For a grandfather he is, thanks to Saturius Firmus, whom you will love as I do when you know him as intimately.

I mention these particulars to show you what a large and numerous household you can oblige by a single favour, and I am induced to ask it from you, in the first place, because I wish to do so, and in the second, owing to a good omen. For we hope and prophesy that next year you will be consul, and we are led to make that forecast by your own good qualities, and by the opinion that the Emperor has of you. But it also happens that Asinius Ba.s.sus, the eldest son of Rufus, will be quaestor in the same year, and he is a young man even more worthy than his father, though I don't know whether I ought to mention such a fact, which the modesty of the young fellow would deny, but which his father desires me to think and openly declare. Though you always repose confidence in what I say, it is difficult, I know, for you to credit my account of an absent man when I say that he possesses splendid industry, probity, learning, wit, application, and powers of memory, as you will discover for yourself when you have tried him. I only wish that our age was so productive of men of high character that there were others to whom you ought to give preference over Ba.s.sus; if it did, I should be the first to advise and exhort you to take a good look round, and consider long and carefully on whom your choice should fall. But as it is--yet no, I do not wish to boast about my friend, I will merely say that he is a young man well deserving of adoption by you as a son in the old-fas.h.i.+oned way. For prudent men, like yourself, ought to receive as children from the State children such as we are accustomed to hope that Nature will bestow upon us. When you are consul it will become you to have as quaestor a man whose father was praetor, and whose relatives are of consular rank, especially as he, although still young, is in his turn already in their judgment an honour to them and their family. So I hope you will grant my request and take my advice.

Above all, pardon me if you think I am acting prematurely, first, because in a State where to get a thing done depends on the earliness of the application, those who wait for the proper time find the fruit not only ripe but plucked, and, secondly, when one is anxious to get a favour it is very pleasant to enjoy in advance the certainty of obtaining it. Give Ba.s.sus the opportunity of respecting you even now as consul, and do you entertain a friendly regard for him as your quaestor, and let us who are devoted to both of you have the enjoyment of this double satisfaction. For while our regard for you and Ba.s.sus is such that we shall use all our resources, energy, and influence to obtain the advancement of Ba.s.sus, no matter to what consul he is a.s.signed as quaestor--as well as the advancement of any quaestor that may be allotted to you--it would be immensely gratifying to us if we could at one and the same time prove our friends.h.i.+p and advance your interests as consul by helping the cause of our young friend, and if you of all people, whose wishes the Senate is so ready to gratify, and in whose recommendations they place such implicit trust, were to stand forth as the seconder of my desires. Farewell.

4.XVI.--TO VALERIUS PAULINUS.

Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice, on my account, on your own, and on that of the public. The student still has his meed of recompense. Just recently, when I had to speak in the Court of the Hundred, I could find no way in except by crossing the tribunal and pa.s.sing through the judges, all the other places were so crowded and thronged. Moreover, a certain young man of fas.h.i.+on who had his tunic torn to pieces--as often happens in a crowd--kept his ground for seven long hours with only his toga thrown round him. For my speech lasted all that time; and though it cost me a great effort, the results were more than worth it. Let us therefore prosecute our studies, and not allow the idleness of other people to be an excuse for laziness on our part. We can still find an audience and readers, provided only that our compositions are worth hearing, and worth the paper they are written on. Farewell.

4.XVII.--TO ASINIUS GALLUS.

You recommend and press me to take up the case of Corellia, in her absence, against Caius Caecilius, the consul-designate. I thank you for the recommendation, but I am a little hurt at your pressing me; it was right of you to recommend me to do so, and so inform me of the case, but I needed no pressing to do what it would have been scandalous for me to leave undone. Am I the man to hesitate a second about protecting the rights of a daughter of Corellius? It is true that I am not only an acquaintance, but also a close friend of him whom you ask me to oppose.

Moreover, he is a man of position and the office for which he has been chosen is a great one, one indeed for which I cannot but feel all the greater respect, inasmuch as I recently held it myself. It is natural that a man should desire the dignities to which he has himself attained to be held in the very highest esteem.

However, all those considerations seem unimportant and trifling when I consider that I am about to champion the daughter of Corellius. I picture to myself that worthy gentleman, a man second to none in our age for gravity, uprightness of life, and quickness of judgment. I began to love him because I admired him so much, and the better I learned to know him the more my admiration grew--a result that rarely happens. Yes, and I knew his character thoroughly; he had no secrets from me, I knew him in his sportive and serious moods, in his moments both of sorrow and joy. I was but a young man, yet, young as I was, he held me in honour, and I will make bold to say that he paid me the respect he would have paid to one of his own years. When I sought advancement, it was he who canva.s.sed and spoke for me; when I entered upon an office he introduced me and stood by my side; in all administrative work he gave me counsel and kept me straight; in short, in all my public duties, despite his weakness and his years, he showed himself to have the energy and fire of youth. How he helped to build up my reputation at home and in public, and even with the Emperor himself! For when it so happened that the conversation in the presence of the Emperor Nerva turned upon the subject of the promising young men of the day, and several speakers sang my praises, Corellius kept silence for a little while--a fact which added material weight to his remarks--and then he said in that grave manner you knew so well, "I must be careful how I praise Secundus, for he never does anything without taking my advice." The words were a tribute such as it would have been unreasonable for me to ask for or expect, for they amounted to this, that I never acted except in the most prudent manner, since I invariably acted on the advice of a man of his consummate prudence.

Nay, even on his deathbed he said to his daughter, as she is never tired of repeating, "I have procured for you a mult.i.tude of friends, and, even had I lived longer, I could hardly have got you more, but best of all I have won you the friends.h.i.+p of Secundus and Cornutus." When I think of those words, I feel that it is my duty to work hard, that I may not seem to have fallen short in any particular of the confidence reposed in me by such an excellent judge of men. So I will take up Corellia's case without loss of time, nor will I mind giving offence to others by the course I adopt. Yet I think that I shall not only be excused, but receive the praises even of him who, as you say, is bringing this new action against Corellia, possibly because she is a woman, if during the hearing I explain my motives, more fully and amply than I can in the narrow limits of a letter, either in order to justify or even to win approval of my conduct. Farewell.

4.XVIII.--TO ARRIUS ANTONINUS.

How can I better prove to you how greatly I admire your Greek epigrams than by the fact that I have tried to imitate some of them and turn them into Latin? I grant they have lost in the translation, and this is due in the first place to the poorness of my wits, and in the second place-- and even more--to what Lucretius calls the poverty of our native tongue.

But if these verses, writ in Latin and by me, seem to you to possess any grace, you may guess how charming the originals are which were written in Greek and by you. Farewell.

4.XIX.--TO CALPURNIA HISPULLA.

As you yourself are a model of the family virtues, as you returned the affection of your brother, who was the best of men and devoted to you, and as you love his daughter as though she were your own child, and show her not only the affection of an aunt but even that of the father she has lost, I feel sure you will be delighted to know that she is proving herself worthy of her father, worthy of you, and worthy of her grandfather. She has a sharp wit, she is wonderfully economical, and she loves me--which is a guarantee of her purity. Moreover, owing to her fondness for me she has developed a taste for study. She collects all my speeches, she reads them, and learns them by heart. When I am about to plead, what anxiety she shows; when the pleading is over, how pleased she is! She has relays of people to bring her news as to the reception I get, the applause I excite, and the verdicts I win from the judges. Whenever I recite, she sits near me screened from the audience by a curtain, and her ears greedily drink in what people say to my credit. She even sings my verses and sets them to music, though she has no master to teach her but love, which is the best instructor of all.

Hence I feel perfectly a.s.sured that our mutual happiness will be lasting, and will continue to grow day by day. For she loves in me not my youth nor my person--both of which are subject to gradual decay and age--but my reputation. Nor would other feelings become one who had been brought up at your knee, who had been trained by your precepts, who had seen in your house nothing that was not pure and honourable, and, in short, had been taught to love me at your recommendation. For as you loved and venerated my mother as a daughter, so even when I was a boy you used to shape my character, and encourage me, and prophesy that I should develop into the man that my wife now believes me to be.

Consequently my wife and I try to see who can thank you best, I because you have given her to me, and she because you gave me to her, as though you chose us the one for the other. Farewell.

4.XX.--TO MAXIMUS.

You know my opinion of your volumes singly, for I have written to tell you as I finished each one; now let me give my broad view of the whole work. It is beautifully written, with power, incisiveness, loftiness, and variety of treatment, in elegant, pure language, with plenty of metaphor, while it is comprehensive and covers an amount of ground that does you great credit. You have been carried far by the sweeping sails of your genius and your resentment, both of which have been a great help to you; for your genius has lent a lofty magnificence to your resentment, which in turn has added power and sharpness to your genius.

Farewell.

4.XXI.--TO VELIUS CEREALIS.

What a terribly sad fate has overtaken those two sisters, the Helvidiae!

Both to have given birth to daughters, and both to have died in childbirth! I am very, very sorry, yet I keep my grief within bounds.

What seems to me so lamentable is that two honourable ladies should in the very spring-time of life have been carried off at the moment of becoming mothers. I am grieved for the infants who are left motherless at their birth; I am grieved for their excellent husbands, and grieved also on my own account. For even now I retain the warmest affection for their dead father, as I have shown in my pleading and my books. Now but one of his three children is alive, and only one remains to support a house which a little time ago had so many props to sustain it. But my grief will be greatly relieved should Fortune preserve him at least to robust and vigorous health, and make him as good a man as his father and grandfather were before him. I am the more anxious for his health and character now that he is the only one left. You know the tenderness of my mind where my affections are engaged and how nervous I am, so you must not be surprised if I show most anxiety on behalf of those of whom I have formed the greatest hopes. Farewell.

4.XXII.--TO SEMp.r.o.nIUS RUFUS.

I have been called in by our excellent Emperor to take part and advise upon the following case. Under the will of a certain person, it has been the custom at Vienne to hold a gymnastic contest. Trebonius Rufus, a man of high principle and a personal friend of mine, in his capacity of duumvir, discontinued and abolished the custom, and it was objected that he had no legal authority to do so. He pleaded his case not only with eloquence but to good effect, and what lent force to his pleading was that he spoke with discretion and dignity, as a Roman and a good citizen should, in a matter that concerned himself. When the opinion of the Council was taken, Junius Mauricus, who stands second to none for strength of will and devotion to truth, was against restoring the contest to the people of Vienne, and he added, "I wish the games could be abolished at Rome as well." That is a bold consistent line, you will say. So it is, but that is no new thing with Mauricus. He spoke just as frankly before the Emperor Nerva. Nerva was dining with a few friends; Veiento was sitting next to him and was leaning on his shoulder--I need say no more after mentioning the man's name. The conversation turned upon Catullus Messalinus, who was blind, and had that curse to bear in addition to his savage disposition. He was void of fear, shame, and pity, and on that account Domitian often used him as a tool for the destruction of the best men in the State, just as though he were a dart urging on its blind and sightless course. All at table were speaking of this man's villainy and b.l.o.o.d.y counsels, when the Emperor himself said: "I wonder what his fate would be if he were alive to-day," to which Mauricus replied, "He would be dining with us." I have made a long digression, but willingly. The Council resolved that the contest should be abolished, because it had corrupted the morals of Vienne, just as our contests have corrupted the whole world. For the vices of Vienne go no further than their own walls, but ours spread far and wide. As in the body corporal, so in the body of the State, the most dangerous diseases are those that spread from the head. Farewell.

4.XXIII.--TO POMPONIUS Ba.s.sUS.

I have been delighted to hear from our mutual friends that you map out and bear your retirement in a way that is worthy of your ripe wisdom, that you live in a charming spot, that you take exercise on both sea and land, that you have plenty of good conversation, that you read a great deal and listen to others reading, and that, though your stock of knowledge is vast, you yet add thereto every day. That is just the way a man should spend his later years after filling the highest magistracies, after commanding armies, and devoting himself wholly to the service of the State for as long as it became him to do so. For we owe our early and middle manhood to our country, our last years are due to ourselves--as indeed the laws direct which enforce retirement when we reach a certain age. When will that appointed time come to me? When shall I attain the age at which I may honourably retire and imitate the example of beautiful and perfect peace that you set me? When shall I be able to enjoy calm retreat without people calling it not peaceful tranquillity but laziness and sloth? Farewell.