Letters of Pliny Part 13

[Footnote 112: See book V. letter XX.]

[Footnote 113: Trajan.]

[Footnote 114: One of the Bithynians employed to manage the trial. M.]

[Footnote 115: About $28,000.]

[Footnote 116: About $26,000.]

[Footnote 117: There is a kind of witticism in this expression, which will be lost to the mere English reader unless he be informed that the Romans had a privilege, confirmed to them by several laws which pa.s.sed in the earlier ages of the republic, of appealing from the decisions of the magistrates to the general a.s.sembly of the people: and they did so in the form of words which Pomponius here applies to a different purpose.

M.]

[Footnote 118: The priests, as well as other magistrates, exhibited public games to the people when they entered upon their office. M.]

[Footnote 119: A famous lawyer who flourished in the reign of the emperor Claudius: those who followed his opinions were said to be Ca.s.sians, or of the school of Ca.s.sius. M.]

[Footnote 120: A Stoic philosopher and native of Tarsus. He was tutor for some time to Octavius, afterwards Augustus, Caesar.]

[Footnote 121: Balzac very prettily observes: "Il y a des riviere: qui ne font jamais tact de bien que quand elles se dibordent; de eneme, l'amitie n'a mealleur quo l'exces." M.]

[Footnote 122: Persons of rank and literature among the Romans retained in their families a domestic whose sole business was to read to them. M.]

[Footnote 123: It was a doctrine maintained by the Stoics that all crimes are equal M.]

[Footnote 124: About $400.]

[Footnote 125: About $600.]

[Footnote 126: About $93.]

[Footnote 127: Horn. II. lib. IX. V. 319.]

[Footnote 128: Those of Nero and Domitian. M.]

[Footnote 129: When Nerva and Trajan received the empire. M.]

[Footnote 130: A slave could acquire no property, and consequently was incapable bylaw of making a will. M.]

[Footnote 131: Now called Amelia, a town in Ombria. M.]

[Footnote 132: Now Laghetto di Ba.s.sano. M.]

[Footnote 133: A province in Anatolia, or Asia Minor. M.]

[Footnote 134: The performers at these gaines were divided into companies, distinguished by the particular colour of their habits; the princ.i.p.al of which were the white, the red, the blue, and the green. Accordingly the spectators favoured one or the other colour, as humour and caprice inclined them. In the reign of Justinian a tumult arose in Constantinople, occasioned merely by a contention among the partisans of these several colours, wherein no less than 30,000 men lost their lives.

M.]

[Footnote 135: Now called Castello di Baia, in Terra di Lavoro. It was the place the Romans chose for their winter retreat; and which they frequented upon account of its warm baths. Sonic few ruins of the beautiful villas that once covered this delightful coast still remain; and nothing can give one a higher idea of the prodigious expense and magnificence of the Romans in their private buildings than the manner in which some of these were situated. It appears from this letter, as well as from several other pa.s.sages in the cla.s.sic writers, that they actually projected into the sea, being erected upon vast piles, sunk for that purpose.]

[Footnote 136: The buskin was a kind of high shoe worn upon the stage by the actors of tragedy, in order to give them a more heroical elevation of stature; as the sock was something between a shoe and stocking, it was appropriated to the comic players. M.]

[Footnote 137: Lyons.]

[Footnote 138: He was accused of treason, under pretence that in a dramatic piece which he composed he had, in the characters of Paris and Oenone, reflected upon Domitian for divorcing his wife Domitia. Suet, in Vit.

Domit. C. 10. M.]

[Footnote 139: Helvidius.]

[Footnote 140: Upon the accession of Nerva to the empire, after the death of Domitian. M.]

[Footnote 142: Our authors first wife; of whom we have no particular account.

After her death, he married his favourite Caipurnia. M.]

[Footnote 143: It is very remarkable that, when any senator was asked his opinion in the house, he had the privilege of speaking as long as he pleased upon any other affair before he came to the point in question. Aul.

Gell. IV. C. 10. M.]

[Footnote 144: Aeneid, LIB. VI. V. 105.]

[Footnote 145: Arria and Fannia.]

[Footnote 146: The appellation by which the senate was addressed. M.]

[Footnote 147: The tribunes were magistrates chosen at first out of the body of the commons, for the defence of their liberties, and to interpose in all grievances offered by their superiors. Their authority extended even to the deliberations of the senate. M.]

[Footnote 148: Diomed's speech to Nestor, advising him to retire from the field of battle. Iliad, VIII. 302. Pope. M.]

[Footnote 149: Nerva.]

[Footnote 150: Domitian; by whom he had been appointed consul elect, though he had not yet entered upon that office. M.]

[Footnote 151: These persons were introduced at most of the tables of the great, for the purposes of mirth and gaiety, and const.i.tuted an essential part in all polite entertainments among the Romans. It is surprising how soon this great people fell off from their original severity of manners, and were tainted with the stale refinements of foreign luxury. Livy dates the rise of this and other unmanly delicacies from the conquest of Scipio Asiaticus over Antiochus; that is when the Roman name had scarce subsisted above a hundred and threescore years. "Luxuriae peregrinae origio," says he, "exercitu Asiatico in urbem invecta est." This triumphant army caught, it seems, the contagious softness of the people it subdued; and, on its return to Rome, spread an infection among their countrymen, which worked by slow degrees, till it effected their total destruction. Thus did Eastern luxury revenge itself on Roman arms. It may be wondered that Pliny should keep his own temper, and check the indignation of his friends at a scene which was fit only for the dissolute revels of the infamous Trimalchio. But it will not, perhaps, be doing justice to our author to take an estimate of his real sentiments upon this point from the letter before us. Genitor, it seems, was a man of strict, but rather of too austere morals for the free turn of the age: "emendatus et gravis: paulo etiam horridior et durior ut in hac licentia teniporuni" (Ep. III. 1. 3). But as there is a certain seasonable accommodation to the manners of the times, not only extremely Consistent with, but highly conducive to, the interests of virtue, Pliny, probably, may affect a greater lat.i.tude than he in general approved, in order to draw off his friend from that stiffness and unyielding disposition which might prejudice those of a gayer turn against him, and consequently lessen the beneficial influence of his virtues upon the world. M.]

[Footnote 152: See letter CIII.]

[Footnote 153: Iliad, XXI. 387. Pope. M.]

[Footnote 154: Iliad, V. 356, speaking of Mars. M.]

[Footnote 154: Iliad, IV. 452. Pope.]

[Footnote 155: The design of Pliny in this letter is to justify the figurative expressions he had employed, probably, in same oration, by instances of the same warmth of colouring from those great masters of eloquence, Demosthenes and his rival Aesehines. But the force of the pa.s.sages which he produces from those orators must necessarily be greatly weakened to a mere modern reader, some of them being only hinted at, as generally well known; and the metaphors in several of the others have either lost much of their original spirit and boldness, by being introduced and received in Common language, or cannot, perhaps, he preserved in an English translation. M.]

[Footnote 156: See 1st Philippic.]

[Footnote 157: See Demosthenes' speech in defence of Cteisphon.]

[Footnote 158: See end Olynthiac.]