Every man ought to make his life acceptable to others besides himself, but his death to himself alone.
Seneca, radical self-improver.
Dramatically, Seneca took his own advice. Implicated in the assassination plot against Nero, he was ordered to kill himself (which he did, although his bloodletting took slightly longer than expected, and his friends were encouraged to carry him into a warm bath to complete the ordeal).
His passing cleared the way for one more great letter-writer of the age. Pliny the Younger, born four years after Seneca’s death, did more than anyone to establish the letter in its modern form, and to rescue it from the byways of inconsequence, pomposity, rhetoric and philosophical instruction. His letters from the turn of the first century, arguably the most buoyant period in the life of the Roman Empire, continue to entertain and inform the reader more than 2,000 years later.
Before the form is put back in the box by an early Christian world more interested in religious stricture and instruction, Pliny’s letters serve as a beacon for what secular letters will become as they emerge in the twelfth century and beyond into the early Renaissance: commonplace, personal and indispensible.
We have 247 personal and professional letters from Pliny collected in nine books that were published in his lifetime, and 121 further official letters to and from the Emperor Trajan published posthumously. The letters were written when Pliny held some of the highest offices in the Treasury and legal profession, and many of his correspondents are also influential lawyers, philosophers and literary men, the majority of them in Rome, some also in his home town of Como (known then as Comum; Pliny owned several houses overlooking the lake). He writes generously and maintains consistent friendships, and his letters reflect wide cultural interests. His main value for us is historical, as a documenter of the times; that this is conveyed not through rhetoric, but through a natural, easy and expressive style renders it not only more accessible but also more authentic. The fact that he is often a vividly descriptive and aesthetic writer is a rare attribute for any Roman man of letters, and may explain why his correspondence has weathered so well.
Here are four letters. Written several decades apart, all are descriptive; the first (to a friend at Lake Como) is nostalgic and instructive, the second (about a failed dinner party) is woeful and comic, and the last two (about the eruption of Vesuvius) are famous and vital. All of them – in these translations from 1909 and the 1960s – could have been written yesterday, were it not for the fact that Lake Como is now a European fixture for the Hollywood A-list, and Pompeii a magnet for the international flip-flop brigade.
To Caninius Rufus (a former school friend and neighbour):
I wonder how our darling Comum is looking, and your lovely house outside the town, with its colonnade where it is always springtime, and the shady plane trees, the stream with its sparkling greenish water flowing into the lake below, and the drive over the smooth firm turf. Your baths which are full of sunshine all day, the dining rooms large and small, the bedrooms for night or the day’s siesta – are you there and enjoying them all in turn, or are you as usual for ever being called away to look after your affairs? If you are there, you are a lucky man to be so happy; if not, you do no better than the rest of us.
But isn’t it really time you handed over those tiresome petty duties to someone else and shut yourself up with your books in the peace and comfort of your retreat? This is what should be both business and pleasure, work and recreation, and should occupy your thoughts awake and asleep! Create something, perfect it to be yours for all time; for everything else you possess will fall to one or another master after you are dead, but this will never cease to be yours once it has come into being. I know the spirit and ability I am addressing, but you must try now to have the high opinion of yourself which the world will come to share if you do.
The following, to his friend Septicius Clarus (a leader of the Praetorian Guard at the beginning of the second century), carries a rebuke as delicious as the food it describes.
Oh you are a pretty fellow! You make an engagement to come to supper and then never appear. Justice shall be exacted: you shall reimburse me to the very last penny the expense I went to on your account; no small sum, let me tell you. I had prepared, you must know, a lettuce apiece, three snails, two eggs, and a barley cake, with some sweet wine [chilled with] snow (the snow most certainly I shall charge to your account, as a rarity that will not keep). Olives, beetroot, gourds, onions, and a thousand other dainties equally sumptuous. You should likewise have been entertained either with an interlude, the rehearsal of a poem, or a piece of music, whichever you preferred; or (such was my liberality) with all three. But the oysters, sows’-bellies, sea-urchins, and dancers from Cadiz of a certain _______ I know not who, were, it seems, more to your taste. You shall give satisfaction; how, shall at present be a secret.
And finally this, to the historian Tacitus, written some 20 years after the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum in AD 79. Pliny was 17 at the time, and his eye-witness account (described in two letters, here slightly edited) carries its loaded portent and scorching intensity to the present day. Tacitus had requested a description of the death of Pliny’s uncle, the writer, philosopher and naval commander who had been Pliny’s mentor.
My uncle was stationed at Misenum, in active command of the fleet. On 24 August, in the early afternoon, my mother drew his attention to a cloud of unusual size and appearance. He had been out in the sun, had taken a cold bath, and lunched while lying down, and was then working at his books. He called for his shoes and climbed up to a place which would give him the best view of the phenomenon. It was not clear at that distance from which mountain the cloud was rising (it was afterwards known to be Vesuvius); its general appearance can be best expressed as being like an umbrella pine, for it rose to a great height on a sort of trunk and then split off into branches, I imagine because it was thrust upwards by the first blast and then left unsupported as the pressure subsided, or else it was borne down by its own weight so that it spread out and gradually dispersed. Sometimes it looked white, sometimes blotched and dirty, according to the amount of soil and ashes it carried with it. My uncle’s scholarly acumen saw at once that it was important enough for a closer inspection, and he ordered a boat to be made ready, telling me I could come with him if I wished. I replied that I preferred to go on with my studies, and as it happened he had himself given me some writing to do.
As he was leaving the house, he was handed a message from Rectina, wife of Tascius whose house was at the foot of the mountain, so that escape was impossible except by boat. She was terrified by the danger threatening her and implored him to rescue her from her fate. He changed his plans, and what he had begun in a spirit of inquiry he completed as a hero. He gave orders for the warships (5) to be launched and went on board himself with the intention of bringing help to many more people besides Rectina, for this lovely stretch of coast was thickly populated. He hurried to the place which everyone else was hastily leaving, steering his course straight for the danger zone. He was entirely fearless, describing each new movement and phase of the portent to be noted down exactly as he observed them. Ashes were already falling, hotter and thicker as the ships drew near, followed by bits of pumice and blackened stones, charred and cracked by the flames: then suddenly they were in shallow water, and the shore was blocked by the debris from the mountain. For a moment my uncle wondered whether to turn back, but when the helmsman advised this he refused, telling him that Fortune favoured the brave. [The] wind was of course full in my uncle’s favour, and he was able to bring his ship in.
Meanwhile on Mount Vesuvius broad sheets of fire and leaping flames blazed at several points, their bright glare emphasized by the darkness of night. My uncle tried to allay the fears of his companions by repeatedly declaring that
