Pliny the Younger, Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus

Pliny the Younger (c.62 - c.113) was the nephew and heir of the historian and naturalist Pliny the Elder, who perished in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. After the latter's death, presumably because he was adopted in the will, he changed his name from Caius Caecilius to Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus. The famous Verginius Rufus was his guardian.

Originally from Comum in Northern Italy and quite well to do through land holdings, he enjoyed an illustrious legal and administrative career, becoming consul in 100 CE at the age of 39, and finally going to Bithynia on a special commission from the emperor Trajan, where he is supposed to have died. Among his literary friends were Tacitus and Suetonius, and he was a patron of the poet Martial. livius.org has an illustrated biography. And I found this delightful entry from Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, 1873.

Pliny's modern claim to fame are his letters, a selection of which, numbering 247, he published in nine books. Book X, his official correspondence (121 letters) with the emperor while stationed in Bithynia, was published posthumously, by whom is not known − speculation is that it may have been Suetonius. The Romans were avid letter writers, and next to Cicero, Pliny is the most prolific one of those whose letters are extant. Unlike Cicero's, the letters are not dated. Betty Radice, the translator mentioned below, holds the theory that Books I-III cover the years 97 to 102, Books IV-VII the years 103 to 107, VIII-IX the years 108 and 109, and that the letters within those books are only roughly arranged in a chronological order. The topics are wide-ranging and give a good impression of the social and political life of the era.

One of my favorites is Pliny's Letter to Gallus (II.XVII), describing his villa at Laurentum (Laurentinum) outside Ostia. Here is a site attempting a reconstruction of the villa with excellent illustrations! The text is excerpted from the Pliny Project, indicating that the actual location of the villa is disputed by some. More − and more (from Le ville di Plinio).

Related: The Roman Villa and AIA Seminar January 2005 (scroll down to "Mapping the Laurentine Shore")

Letters online: Books I through V and The Letters of Pliny the Consul. Individual letters are interspersed throughout the Internet, for example: Selected Letters (there are more on that site). Letters in Latin, Panegyricus in Latin.

Print editions: The Letters of the Younger Pliny (Penguin Classics), 1963, translated by Betty Radice, with an excellent introduction. Radice is also the translator for the Loeb Classical Library Edition in two volumes (1969), which includes the Panegyricus, an oration to the Emperor Trajan in the year 100.

eBooks, John B. Firth translation:
Letters of the Younger Pliny, The: First Series, Vol 1 (Digital) for Adobe Reader 
Letters of the Younger Pliny, The: First Series, Vol 1 (Digital) for Microsoft Reader

Comments

[Irene Hahn]

Thank you! I'm sure some of this can be found in Google Books, such as

The Letters of Pliny the Consul:: With Occasional Remarks. By Pliny, William Melmoth

[Victoria]

Just wanted to let you know that many of his letters also appear in translation in "Epistles; Elegant, Familiar and Instructive, Selected from the Best Writers, Ancient as well as Modern; intended for the Improvement of Young Persons and for the General Entertainment."
There were eleven editions, I believe. I am reading from the 1791 version.
Cheers.

[Irene Hahn]

Letter V.VI, to Domitius Apollinaris, has a description of another of Pliny's villas, the Tuscan (Le ville di Plinio), even more lovingly narrated than the Laurentian one.