PLINY (GArus Ptirmus Cx.craus SEOUN-• nus), called Pliny the younger, Roman author: b. Novum Comum, 62 A.D. ; d. about 113. He was a nephew of Pliny the Elder, by whom he was adopted and carefully educated. He studied at Rome under Quintilian and Nicetes Sacerdos, in 76 wrote a work in Greek—"What it was I know not; it was called a tradegy"— and in 81 made his first appearance as an advocate by pleading a case before the centumviri. After i service in Syria as tribune of the third legion, he entered public life, becoming successively quastor Cmsaris (emperor's qumstor ; 87), tribune of the plebs (91), and praetor (93). He was then forced by the conditions of Domitian's government to withdraw from his office; and the discovery among Domitian's papers of a charge of treason against him makes it evident that his life was saved by the tyrant's assassin ation (96). In September 100 he became con sul (with Cornutus Tertullus). Trajan, with clear appreciation of Pliny's administrative tal ents, made him augur (104 or 105), and later curator of the channel banks of the Tiber and of the municipal drainage system. He was sent out in 111 as governor with special powers of the province of Bithynia. His official cor respondence with the emperor ends in 113; and he then disappears from view. His miscella neous letters are the best extant contemporary authority for an important period of Roman history. Those to and from Trajan afford the chief documentary evidence for the study of Roman provincial government; and they con tain, also, the earliest information ab extra of the manners of the primitive Christians and their official treatment by the Roman adminis tration. Through the extent and variety of his
own works, supplemented by inscriptions dis covered at Novum Camum, Pliny is perhaps more fully and accurately known than any an cient writer save Cicero. His letters, however, unlike those of Cicero, were evidently written and arranged for publication. The order is largely. chronological, although, to give an im pression of carelessness, slight deviations ap pear within the individual books. The diction is clear and smooth; and if, as Simcox thinks, his "boundless self-complacency found here a safe opportunity for expansion," there is also manifest throughout a certain tone of culture and distinction which quite reconciles to any Such quality. Of Pliny's verses nothing re mains and of his published speeches only a ful some panegyric on Trajan whose florid style probably represents his oratorical attempts to imitate Demosthenes. The best edition is that of Keil (1873), who established the text and was aided by Mommsen. There are also many other excellent editions in whole or in part.
There is an English version of the letters by Lewis (1880). Consult also Church and Brod ribb, Letters (1872) in Collins' 'An cient Classics for English Readers' ; and Schanz, Martin, der Romischen Litteratur' (Munich 1913).