Recent scholarship has contributed greatly to the developing view that ‘Pliny is an extremely sophisticated writer … whose work handsomely repays close reading’ (p. 5). In addition to notable monographs (Ludolph 1997, Hoffer 1999, Marchesi 2008), an edited collection (Castagna and Lefèvre 2003), and influential journal articles, G. & M. have themselves already edited a volume of Arethusa (2003.36.2) devoted to Pliny and have organised several related conferences. Now they have written a fine introduction to Pliny the Younger's letters.
Pliny's ten books of letters cover a vast array of addressees, topics and themes. Although some letters, such as Pliny's report to Tacitus about Vesuvius and his correspondence with Trajan regarding Christians, are well-known, G. & M. undertake to acquaint readers with the far greater range and complex nexuses of letters than can be explored in anthologies – the ‘normal point of entry’ (p. 37) to Pliny's collection. They control this seemingly shifting and elusive material by analysing representative books, letters and themes using different reading methods. There is marked support for the sequential reading of the entire collection or individual books ‘as contrived artistic entities’ (p. 4). Yet G. & M. also demonstrate how fruitful the focus on letter cycles of individuals or themes can be.
A clear introduction lays out the methodology and structure. Of the subsequent eight chapters, Chapter 1 focusses on ‘the story of the author's life’ (p. 9), with special attention to Book 1, Chapter 2 primarily uses a linear method to examine the carefully crafted unity of Book 6, and Chapter 3 examines Pliny's epistolary models. A thematic approach provides the principal methodological framework for Chapters 4 to 7, with emphasis on ‘Pliny's Elders and Betters’ (Chapter 4), ‘Pliny's Peers’ (Chapter 5), his treatment of otium (Chapter 6), and his villas (Chapter 7). The final chapter considers the ‘Grand Design’ of the collection.
The aim of the volume is to provide a ‘general literary-historical introduction’ (p. 5) to Pliny's collection. To that end, G. & M. have supplemented their study with four appendices: a timeline of Pliny's era, a catalogue of the addressees and general content of the letters in Books 1–9, a compilation of frequent topics in the letters with relevant bibliography, and an annotated list of the primary characters. With 247 letters in the first 9 books addressed to more than 100 individuals and covering myriad topics, these appendices will prove indispensable. Additionally, the bibliography is current and the footnotes – essential reading – demonstrate G. & M.'s extensive use of the relevant scholarship.
In its examination of ‘how Pliny shapes his “autobiography”’ (p. 9), Chapter 1 provides pertinent biographical information, a summary of the political and social environment within which Pliny composed and published his letters, and a survey of ancient theory on letter collections, biography and autobiography. Although Pliny follows tradition in disregarding strict chronology within individual books, the unconventional overarching chronological structure of his collection leads G. & M. to claim that the letters have ‘autobiographical potential’ (passim). While this is convincing and one might read the collection for its autobiographical narrative, it does not, however, necessarily follow that Pliny organised his letters for that purpose. Epistolography was recognised in the ancient world primarily for its illustration of character (ps.-Demetr. Eloc. 227). As G. himself more recently has acknowledged (‘On the Nature of Ancient Letter Collections’, JRS [2012], 1–23), ‘there is no systematic or straightforward association between ancient letter collections and biographical or historical narration’ (p. 1), adding that letter collections were for sharing ‘a life's constituent aspects, rather than towards following a life's evolving story’ (p. 12). To be sure, knowing that Pliny omitted entirely or postponed until the last books significant historical and personal details helps us understand more clearly both the interconnections between the later and earlier books and Pliny's epistolary persona. That Pliny did so in order ‘to whet the reader's appetite for further revelations’ (p. 20), however, is arguable. Equally debatable is the assertion that the placement of Ep. 1.10 is ‘a deliberate first act in the creation of a narrative about the onward march of Pliny's career’ (p. 22). On the other hand, it is a valid claim that the juxtaposition of Ep. 1.10 (with its complaint of excessive judicial work) to 1.9 (whose topic is otium) illustrates the variety and opposition Pliny favours in his letters. This is one of many sound observations about the fundamental structure and nature of Pliny's collection found in this chapter.
Chapter 2 argues for the artistic design of Book 6 through symmetry and significant internal connections. A study of the first seventeen letters laudably restores familiar anthological letters (e.g. Vesuvius, Calpurnia) to their proper context, leading to further insightful observations on contrast and heterogeneity in juxtaposed letters (e.g. Epp. 6.4–5, 6.10–11) and on significant themes and narrative cycles, such as negotium, Pliny's career after Regulus' death and Trajan.
We find in Chapter 3 a welcome study of Pliny's subtle and explicit references to Cicero's writings (oratorical, epistolary and poetic), which show how ‘Pliny builds his professional and epistolary persona upon Ciceronian foundations’ (p. 76). Although Cicero dominates this chapter (despite the subtitle, ‘Cicero and Seneca’), the broader study of Pliny's epistolary models leads to the important conclusion that Pliny ‘creatively enriches a (now) Ciceronian genre with a programme of allusion to other genres such as elegy, epigram and historiography’ (p. 82). These additional literary influences should be kept in mind as we consider the overall architecture of the collection and Pliny's self-presentation.
Chapters 4 to 7 offer a number of important observations about Pliny's relationships, developing persona and ‘life of balanced variety’ (p. 137). Among the notable: Pliny ultimately eschewed some habits of his mentors (including his uncle) as he became a model to a younger generation of Romans; Pliny developed his epistolary friendships subtly and cumulatively through expressions of emotional intensity, shared private or political experiences and literary interests; letters to Tacitus, with whom Pliny was concerned about ‘parity in careers, status and studia’ (p. 163), are placed among letters to Pliny's closest friends, ‘implicitly creating a shared circle of associates’ (p. 168); Pliny repeatedly addresses the proper use of otium (here Seneca's influence becomes clear), which he links with effort and studia in ‘didactic moral messages’ (p. 197); Pliny ‘develops the letter as the prose genre most appropriate to otium, and the medium in which life's variety and repetitiveness alike may be most aptly depicted’ (p. 197); Pliny's villa letters ‘embody his persona and mirror his various social and literary agendas’ (p. 202), and from recent archaeological evidence it is clear that this persona sometimes contradicted reality (pp. 232–3).
In the final chapter we learn that although the two authors are responsible for different chapters (G.: 1, 2, 4, 7; M.: 3, 5, 6, 8), they agree upon such fundamental aspects of the collection as Pliny's preoccupation with time management, the requisite re-examination of earlier letters after reading details postponed to the last books, an artistic structure especially at the beginnings and ends of books and the collection, and the usefulness of cyclical and linear approaches for understanding the collection. Yet this final chapter is more than a summary conclusion. Here Book 10's correspondence between Trajan and Pliny is shown to continue the development of Pliny's persona and didactic agenda, as well as his engagement with epistolary predecessors (with special attention to Ovid's exile poetry). As a consequence, ‘it seems interpretatively fruitful to consider the effects of including Book 10 within the boundaries of a planned and balanced collection’ (p. 263). This reconsideration of the role of Book 10 is a fitting way to conclude the volume. It caps a series of insightful chapters which introduce Pliny's letters to new readers, stimulate those who know the letters through anthologies to read the entire collection, and entice those already familiar with the collection to reread and re-evaluate this kaleidoscopic mosaic (p. 1).
