Letters of Pliny

1002 (return)

[ Nerva, who succeeded Domitian, reigned but sixteen months and a few days. Before his death he not only adopted Trajan, and named him for his successor, but actually admitted him into a share of the government; giving him the titles of Cæsar, Germanicus and Imperator. Vid. Plin. Paneg. M.]

1003 (return)

[ $16,000.]

1004 (return)

[ One of the four governments of Lower Egypt. M.]

1005 (return)

[ The extensive power of paternal authority was (as has been observed in the notes above) peculiar to the Romans. But after Chrysippus was made a denizen of Rome, he was not, it would seem, consequentially entitled to that privilege over those children which were horn before his denization. On the other hand, if it was expressly granted him, his children could not preserve their right of patronage over their own freedmen, because that right would of course devolve to their father, by means of this acquired dominion over them. The denization therefore of his children is as expressly solicited as his own. But both parties becoming quirites, the children by this creation, and not pleading in right of their father, would be patres fam. To prevent which the clause is added, "ita ut sint in patris potestate:" as there is another to save to them their rights of patronage over their freedmen, though they were reduced in patrmam potestate. M.]

1006 (return)

[ Pliny enjoyed the office of treasurer in conjunction with Cornutus Tertullus. It was the custom at Rome for those who had colleagues to administer the duties of their posts by monthly turns. Buchner. M.]

1007 (return)

[ About $16,000; the annual income of Pliny's estate in Tuscany. He mentions another near Comum in Milan, the yearly value of which does not appear. We find him likewise meditating the purchase of an estate, for which he was to give about $117,000 of our money; but whether he ever completed that purchase is uncertain. This, however, we are sure of, that his fortunes were but moderate, considering his high station and necessary expenses: and yet, by the advantage of a judicious economy, we have seen him in the course of these letters, exercising a liberality of which after ages have furnished no parallel. M.]

1008 (return)

[ The senators were not allowed to go from Rome into the provinces without having first obtained leave of the emperor. Sicily, however, had the privilege to be excepted out of that law; as Gallia Narbonensis afterwards was, by Claudius Cæsar. Tacit. Ann. XII. C. 23. M.]

1009 (return)

[ One of the seven priests who presided over the feasts appointed in honour of Jupiter and the other gods, an office, as appears, of high dignity, since Pliny ranks it with the augurship.]

1010 (return)

[ Bithynia, a province in Anatolia, or Asia Minor, of which Pliny was appointed governor by Trajan, in the sixth year of his reign, A. D. 103, not as an ordinary proconsul, but as that emperor's own lieutenant, with powers extraordinary. (See Dio.) The following letters were written during his administration of that province. M.]

1011 (return)

[ A north wind in the Grecian seas, which rises yearly some time in July, and continues to the end of August; though others extend it to the middle of September. They blow only in the day-time. Varenius's Geogr. V.I. p. 513. M.]

1012 (return)

[ The inhabitants of Prusa (Brusa), a principal city of Bithynia.]

1013 (return)

[ In the sixth year of Trajan's reign, A. D. 103, and the 41st of our author's age: he continued in this province about eighteen months. Vid. Mass, in Vit. Phin. 129. M.]

1014 (return)

[ Among other noble works which this glorious emperor executed, the forum or square which went by his name seems to have been the most magnificent. It was built with the foreign spoils he had taken in war. The covering of this edifice was all brass, the porticoes exceedingly beautiful and magnificent, with pillars of more than ordinary height and dimensions. In the centre of this forum was erected the famous pillar which has been already described.]

1015 (return)

[ It is probable the victory here alluded to was that famous one which Trajan gained over the Daciaiss; some account of which has been given in the notes above. It is certain, at least, Pliny lived to see his wish accomplished, this emperor having carried the Roman splendour to its highest pitch, and extended the dominions of the empire farther than any of his predecessors; as after his death it began to decline. M.]

1016 (return)

[ The capital of Bithynia; its modern name is Izmid.]

1017 (return)

[ The town of Panticapoeum, also called Bosporus, standing on the European side of the Cimmerian Bosporus (Straits of Kaffa), in the modern Crimea.]

1018 (return)

[ Nicea (as appears by the 15th letter of this book), a city in Bithynia, now called Iznik. M.]

1019 (return)

[ Sarmatia was divided into European, Asiatic, and German Sarmatia. It is not exactly known what bounds the ancients gave to this extensive region; however, in general, it comprehended the northern part of Russia, and the greater part of Poland, &c. M.]

1020 (return)

[ The first invention of public couriers is ascribed to Cyrus, who, in order to receive the earliest intelligence from the governors of the several provinces, erected post-houses throughout the kingdom of Persia, at equal distances, which supplied men and horses to forward the public despatches. Augustus was the first who introduced this most useful institution among the Romans, by employing post-chaises, disposed at convenient distances, for the purpose of political intelligence. The magistrates of every city were obliged to furnish horses for these messengers, upon producing a diploma, or a kind of warrant, either from the emperor himself or from those who had that authority under him. Sometimes, though upon very extraordinary occasions, persons who travelled upon their private affairs, were allowed the use of these post-chaises. It is surprising they were not sooner used for the purposes of commerce and private communication. Louis XI. first established them in France, in the year 1414; but it was not till later (date uncertain) that the post-office was settled in England by Act of Parliament, M.]

1021 (return)

[ Particular temples, altars, and statues were allowed among the Romans as places of privilege and sanctuary to slaves, debtors and malefactors. This custom was introduced by Romulus, who borrowed it probably from the Greeks; but during the free state of Rome, few of these asylums were permitted. This custom prevailed most under the emperors, till it grew so scandalous that the Emperor Pius found it necessary to restrain those privileged places by an edict. See Lipsii Excurs. ad Taeiti Ann. III, C. 36, M.]

1022 (return)

[ General under Deeebalus, king of the Dacians. M.]

1023 (return)

[ A province in Daeia, comprehending the southern parts of Servia and part of Bulgaria. M.]

1024 (return)

[ The second expedition of Trajan against Decebalus was undertaken the same year that Pliny went governor into this province; the reason therefore why Pliny sent this Calhidromus to the emperor seems to be that some use might possibly be made of him in favour of that design, M.]

1025 (return)

[ Receiver of the finances. M.]

1026 (return)

[ The coast round the Black Sea.]

1027 (return)

[ The text calls him primipilarem, that is, one who had been Prirnipilus, in officer in the army, whose post was both highly honourable and profitable; among other parts of his office he had the care of the eagle, or chief standard of the legion. M.]

1028 (return)

[ Slaves who were purchased by the public. M.]

1029 (return)

[ The most probable conjecture (for it is a point of a good deal of obscurity) concerning the beneficiary seems to be that they were a certain number of soldiers exempted from the usual duty of their office, in order to be employed as a sort of body-guards to the general. These were probably foot; as the equites here mentioned were perhaps of the same nature, only that they served on horseback. Equites singulares Cæsaris Augusti, &c., are frequently met with upon ancient inscriptions, and are generally supposed to mean the bodyguards of the emperor. M.]

1030 (return)

[ A province in Asia Minor, bounded by the Black Sea on the north, Bithynia on the west, Pontus on the east, and Phrygia on the south.]

1031 (return)

[ The Roman policy excluded slaves from entering into military service, and it was death if they did so. However, upon cases of great necessity, this maxim was dispensed with; but then they were first made free before they were received into the army, excepting only (as Servius in his notes upon Virgil) observes after the fatal battle of Cannae; when the public distress was so great that the Romans recruited their army with their slaves, though they had not time to give them their freedom. One reason, perhaps, of this policy might be that they did not think it safe to arm so considerable a body of men, whose numbers, in the times when the Roman luxury was at its highest, we may have some idea of by the instance which Pun the naturalist mentions of Claudius Isodorus, who at the time of his death was possessed of no less than 4,116 slaves, notwithstanding he had lost great numbers in the civil wars. Pun. Hist. Nat. XXXIII. 10. M.]

1032 (return)

[ A punishment among the Romans, usually inflicted upon slaves, by which they were to engage with wild beasts, or perform the part of gladiators, in the public shows. M.]

1033 (return)

[ It has been generally imagined that the ancients had not the art of raising water by engines; but this passage seems to favour the contrary opinion. The word in the original is sipho, which Hesychius explains (as one of the commentators observes) "instrumentuns ad jaculandas aquas adversas incendia; an instrument to throw up water against fires." But there is a passage in Seneca which seems to put this matter beyond conjecture, though none of the critics upon this place have taken notice of it: "Solemiss," says he, "duabus manibus inter se junctis aguam concipere, et com pressa utrinque palma in modum ciphonis exprimere" (Q. N. 1. II. 16) where we plainly see the use of this sipho was to throw UP water, and consequently the Romans were acquainted with that art. The account which Pliny gives of his fountains at Tuscum is likewise another evident proof. M.]

1034 (return)

[ This was an anniversary custom observed throughout the empire on the 30th of December. M.]

1035 (return)

[ About $132,000.]

1036 (return)

[ About $80,000.]

1037 (return)

[ About $400,000. To those who are not acquainted with the immense riches of the ancients, it may seem incredible that a city, and not the capital one either, of a conquered province should expend so large a sum of money upon only the shell (as it appears to be) of a theatre: but Asia was esteemed the most considerable part of the world for wealth; its fertility and exportations (as Tully observes) exceeding that of all other countries. M.]

1038 (return)

[ The word carte, in the original, comprehends more than what we call the pit in our theatres, as at means the whole space lit which the spectators sat. These theatres being open at the top, the galleries here mentioned were for the convenience of retiring in bad weather. M.]

1039 (return)

[ A place in which the athletic exercises were performed, and where the philosophers also used to read their lectures. M.]

1040 (return)

[ The Roman foot consisted of 11.71 inches of our standard, M.]

1041 (return)

[ A colony in the district of Cataonia, in Cappadocia.]

1042 (return)

[ The honorary senators, that is, such who were not received into the council of the city by election, but by the appointment of the emperor, paid a certain sum of money upon their admission into the senate. M.]

1043 (return)

[ "Graeculi. Even under the empire, with its relaxed morality and luxurious tone, the Romans continued to apply this contemptuous designation to people to whom they owed what taste for art and culture they possessed." Church and Brodribb.]

1044 (return)

[ A Roman cubit is equal to a foot 5.406 inches of our measure. Arbuthanot's Tab. M.]

1045 (return)

[ About $480.]

1046 (return)

[ About $120.]

1047 (return)

[ A diploma is properly a grant of certain privileges either to particular places or persons. It signifies also grants of other kinds; and it sometimes means post-warrants, as, perhaps, it does in this place. M.]

1048 (return)

[ A city in Bithynia. M.]

1049 (return)

[ Cybele, Rhea, or Ops, as she is otherwise called; from whom, according to the pagan creed, the rest of the gods are supposed to have descended. M.]

1040b (return)

[ Whatever was legally consecrated was ever afterwards unapplicable to profane uses. M.]

1041b (return)

[ That is, a city not admitted to enjoy the laws and privileges of Rome. M.]

1042b (return)

[ The reason why they did not choose to borrow of the public at the same rate of interest which they paid to private persons was (as one of the Commentators observes) because in the former instance they were obliged to give security, whereas in the latter they could raise money upon their personal credit. M.]

1043b (return)

[ These, in the original institution as settled by Augustus, were only commanders of his body-guards; but in the later times of the Roman empire they were next in authority under the emperor, to whom they seem to have acted as a sort of prime ministers. M.]

1044b (return)

[ The provinces were divided into, a kind of circuits called conventus, whither the proconsuls used to go in order to administer justice. The judges here mentioned must not be understood to mean the same sort of judicial officers as with us: they rather answered to our juries. M.]

1045b (return)

[ By the imperial constitutions the philosophers were exempted from all public functions. Catariscus. M.]

1046b (return)

[ About $24,000.]

1047b (return)

[ Geographers are not agreed where to place this city; Cellarius conjectures it may possibly be the same with Prusa ad Olympum, Prusa at the foot of Mount Olympus in Mysia.]

1048b (return)

[ Domitian.]

1049b (return)

[ That is, whether they should be considered in a state of freedom or slavery. M.]

1050 (return)

[ "Parents throughout the entire ancient world had the right to expose their children and leave them to their fate. Hence would sometimes arise the question whether such a child, if found and brought up by another, was entitled to his freedom, whether also the person thus adopting him must grant him his freedom without repayment for the cost of maintenance." Church and Brodribb.]

1051 (return)

[ "This decision of Trajan, the effect of which would be that persons would be slow to adopt an abandoned child which, when brought up, its natural parents could claim back without any compensation for its nurture, seems harsh, and we find that it was disregarded by the later emperors in their legal decisions on the subject." Church and Brodribb.]

1052 (return)

[ And consequently by the Roman laws unapplicable to any other purpose. M.]

1053 (return)

[ The Roman provinces in the times of the emperors were of two sorts: those which were distinguished by the name of the provinciae Cæsaris and the provinciae senatus. The provinciae Cæsaris, or imperial provinces, were such as the emperor, for reasons of policy, reserved to his own immediate administration, or of those whom he thought proper to appoint: the provinciae senatus, or proconsular provinces, were such as he left to the government of proconsuls or praetors, chosen in the ordinary method of election. (Vid. Suet, in Aug. V. 47.) Of the former kind was Bithynis, at the time when our author presided there. (Vid. Masson. Vit. Plin. p. 133.) M.]

1054 (return)

[ A province in Asia, bordering upon the Black Sea, and by some ancient geographers considered as one province with Bithynia. M.]

1055 (return)

[ About $2,000. M.]

1056 (return)

[ Cities of Pontus near the Euxine or Black Sea. M.]

1057 (return)

[ Gordium, the old capital of Phrygia. It afterwards, in the reign of the Emperor Augustus, received the name of Juliopolis. (See Smith's Classical Diet.)]

1058 (return)

[ Pompey the Great having subdued Mithridates, and by that means enlarged the Roman empire, passed several laws relating to the newly conquered provinces, and, among others, that which is here mentioned. M.]

1059 (return)

[ The right of electing Senators did not originally belong to the censors, who were only, as Cicero somewhere calls them, guardians of the discipline and manners of the city; but in process of time they engrossed the whole privilege of conferring that honour. M.]

1060 (return)

[ This, probably, was some act whereby the city was to ratify and confirm the proceedings of Dion under the commission assigned to him.]

1061 (return)

[ It was a notion which generally prevailed with the ancients, in the Jewish as well as heathen world, that there was a pollution in the contact of dead bodies, and this they extended to the very house in which the corpse lay, and even to the uncovered vessels that stood in the same room. (Vid. Pot. Antiq. V. II. 181.) From some such opinion as this it is probable that the circumstance, here mentioned, of placing Trajan's statue where these bodies were deposited, was esteemed as a mark of disrespect to his person.]

1062 (return)

[ A thriving Greek colony in the territory of Sinopis, on the Euxine.]

1063 (return)

[ A colony of Athenians in the province of Pontus. Their town, Amisus, on the coast, was one of the residences of Mithridates.]

1064 (return)

[ Casaubon, in his observations upon Theophrastus (as cited by one of the commentators) informs us that there were at Athens and other cities of Greece Certain fraternities which paid into a common chest a monthly contribution towards the support of such of their members who had fallen into misfortunes; upon condition that, if ever they arrived to more prosperous circumstances, they should repay into the general fund the money so advanced. M.]

1065 (return)

[ By the law for encouragement of matrimony (some account of which has already been given in the notes above), as a penalty upon those who lived bachelors, they were declared incapable of inheriting any legacy by will; so likewise, if being married, they had no children, they could not claim the full advantage of benefactions of that kind.]

1066 (return)

[ This letter is esteemed as almost the only genuine monument of ecclesiastical antiquity relating to the times immediately succeeding the Apostles, it being written at most not above forty years after the death of St. Paul. It was preserved by the Christians themselves as a clear and unsuspicious evidence of the purity of their doctrines, and is frequently appealed to by the early writers of the Church against the calumnies of their adversaries. M.]

1067 (return)

[ It was one of the privileges of a Roman citizen, secured by the Semprorian law, that he could not be capitally convicted but by the suffrage of the people; which seems to have been still so far in force as to make it necessary to send the persons here mentioned to Rome. M.]

1068 (return)

[ These women, it is supposed, exercised the same office as Phoebe mentioned by St. Paul, whom he styles deaconess of the church of Cenchrea. Their business was to tend the poor and sick, and other charitable offices; as also to assist at the ceremony of female baptism, for the more decent performance of that rite: as Vossius observes upon this passage. M.]

1069 (return)

[ If we impartially examine this prosecution of the Christians, we shall find it to have been grounded on the ancient constitution of the state, and not to have proceeded from a cruel or arbitrary temper in Trajan. The Roman legislature appears to have been early jealous of any innovation in point of public worship; and we find the magistrates, during the old republic frequently interposing in cases of that nature. Valerius Maximus has collected some instances to that purpose (L. I. C. 3), and Livy mentions it as an established principle of the earlier ages of the commonwealth, to guard against the introduction of foreign ceremonies of religion. It was an old and fixed maxim likewise of the Roman government not to suffer any unlicensed assemblies of the people. From hence it seems evident that the Christians had rendered themselves obnoxious not so much to Trajan as to the ancient and settled laws of the state, by introducing a foreign worship, and assembling themselves without authority. M.]

1070 (return)

[ On the coast of Paphlagonia.]

1071 (return)

[ By the Papian law, which passed in the consulship of M. Papius Mutilus and Q. Poppeas Secundus, u. c. 761, if a freedman died worth a hundred thousand sesterces (or about $4,000 of our money), leaving only one child, his patron (that is, the master from whom he received his liberty) was entitled to half his estate; if he left two children, to one-third; but if more than two, then the patron was absolutely excluded. This was afterwards altered by Justinian, Inst. 1. III. tit. 8. M.]

1072 (return)

[ About $7,000.]

1073 (return)

[ About $175]

1074 (return)

[ About $350.]

1075 (return)

[ The denarius=7 cents. The sum total, then, distributed among one thousand persons at the rate of, say, two denara a piece would amount to about $350.]

1076 (return)

[ These games are called Iselastic from the Greek word invehor, because the victors, drawn by white horses, and wearing crowns on their heads, were conducted with great pomp into their respective cities, which they entered through a breach in the walls made for that purpose; intimating, as Plutarch observes, that a City which produced such able and victorious citizens, had little occasion for the defence of walls (Catanaeus). They received also annually a certain honourable stipend from the public. M.]