What did Pliny do?
Pliny the Detective?
Pliny was not a detective, of course. There was no such thing in his day. But a number of modern authors, beginning with Margaret Doody’s Aristotle Detective (1976), have set mystery novels in various places and times in the ancient world—Egypt, Athens, Britain, to name a few. Among Roman mystery writers Lindsey Davis, Steven Saylor, and John Maddox Roberts are usually called the Big Three, but there is a legion of them (okay, not literally a legion, which was 6,000 men). For a reasonably full list, see The Detective and the Toga (http://histmyst.org/)
I’ve studied Pliny since I was in graduate school. About ten years ago I began to think of him as the kind of inquisitive, scientific person (by the standards of his day) who would make a good investigator. I have tried to be faithful to his way of thinking, as best I can fathom it from his letters. One friend of mine says she thinks I am Pliny reincarnated, but I don’t go that far. I do find it curious, though, that one of Pliny’s favorite spots was his villa at Laurentum (in Latin, Laurens meum), and I was born in Laurens, South Carolina (cue the theme from “The Twilight Zone”).
Pliny’s Career
Pliny the Younger inherited a great deal of money and land. He also seems to have inherited a sense of obligation to public service. In many of his letters he complains that his duties keep him from writing, but he continued to hold offices and conduct court cases for his friends because his uncle had done so. Pliny admired Cicero, the great orator and writer of the late Republic, and wanted to emulate Cicero’s career as much as possible, even going so far as to write smutty poetry because Cicero did (none of it—Cicero’s or Pliny’s—survives).
Much of Pliny’s public career took place under the reign of the emperor Domitian (81-96). Domitian grew increasingly paranoid as he got older and had people—even in his own family—arrested on the slightest charges. In one letter Pliny claims that, after Domitian was assassinated, a list of his next victims was found among his papers and Pliny’s name was on it. This may just be Pliny’s way of trying to distance himself from an unpopular emperor. It always embarrassed Pliny that Domitian liked him.
In 100 A. D., under the emperor Trajan, Pliny’s public service was rewarded by an appointment to a suffect consulship. This means he wasn’t elected consul to start the year, but was appointed by the emperor later in the year. This had become a common practice by that time, to increase the number of former consuls, who were then eligible for other government jobs, particularly governorships in provinces. As was customary, Pliny made a long speech in the Senate thanking Trajan for the honor. (It took three days to deliver it.) Aside from his letters, this speech, the Panegyricus, is the only piece of Pliny’s writing that survives. And that’s unfortunate, because it’s an embarrassing example of flattery—of outright sucking up. One wonders how the author of those 247 graceful, carefully crafted letters could have produced such bombastic garbage. And he was proud of it, as we see in a couple of letters when he sends copies to his friends (and they get the expanded version!)
The culmination of Pliny’s career was his appointment as governor of the province of Bithynia, in northern Turkey on the Black Sea. In the letters produced during the year or so that Pliny held this office we see what kind of bureaucratic trivia a provincial administration had to deal with—whether to build a covered in a town, ownership of a piece of land, what to do with escaped prisoners who’ve been recaptured. Pliny could never predict how Trajan would respond to his requests for decisions on tricky issues, so he kept copies of all his correspondence. We don’t know whether Pliny died in Bithynia or on the way home or shortly after his return to Italy. He did not live long enough to hold any other office or write any other letters.
Pliny was not a detective, of course. There was no such thing in his day. But a number of modern authors, beginning with Margaret Doody’s Aristotle Detective (1976), have set mystery novels in various places and times in the ancient world—Egypt, Athens, Britain, to name a few. Among Roman mystery writers Lindsey Davis, Steven Saylor, and John Maddox Roberts are usually called the Big Three, but there is a legion of them (okay, not literally a legion, which was 6,000 men). For a reasonably full list, see The Detective and the Toga (http://histmyst.org/)
I’ve studied Pliny since I was in graduate school. About ten years ago I began to think of him as the kind of inquisitive, scientific person (by the standards of his day) who would make a good investigator. I have tried to be faithful to his way of thinking, as best I can fathom it from his letters. One friend of mine says she thinks I am Pliny reincarnated, but I don’t go that far. I do find it curious, though, that one of Pliny’s favorite spots was his villa at Laurentum (in Latin, Laurens meum), and I was born in Laurens, South Carolina (cue the theme from “The Twilight Zone”).
Pliny’s Career
Pliny the Younger inherited a great deal of money and land. He also seems to have inherited a sense of obligation to public service. In many of his letters he complains that his duties keep him from writing, but he continued to hold offices and conduct court cases for his friends because his uncle had done so. Pliny admired Cicero, the great orator and writer of the late Republic, and wanted to emulate Cicero’s career as much as possible, even going so far as to write smutty poetry because Cicero did (none of it—Cicero’s or Pliny’s—survives).
Much of Pliny’s public career took place under the reign of the emperor Domitian (81-96). Domitian grew increasingly paranoid as he got older and had people—even in his own family—arrested on the slightest charges. In one letter Pliny claims that, after Domitian was assassinated, a list of his next victims was found among his papers and Pliny’s name was on it. This may just be Pliny’s way of trying to distance himself from an unpopular emperor. It always embarrassed Pliny that Domitian liked him.
In 100 A. D., under the emperor Trajan, Pliny’s public service was rewarded by an appointment to a suffect consulship. This means he wasn’t elected consul to start the year, but was appointed by the emperor later in the year. This had become a common practice by that time, to increase the number of former consuls, who were then eligible for other government jobs, particularly governorships in provinces. As was customary, Pliny made a long speech in the Senate thanking Trajan for the honor. (It took three days to deliver it.) Aside from his letters, this speech, the Panegyricus, is the only piece of Pliny’s writing that survives. And that’s unfortunate, because it’s an embarrassing example of flattery—of outright sucking up. One wonders how the author of those 247 graceful, carefully crafted letters could have produced such bombastic garbage. And he was proud of it, as we see in a couple of letters when he sends copies to his friends (and they get the expanded version!)
The culmination of Pliny’s career was his appointment as governor of the province of Bithynia, in northern Turkey on the Black Sea. In the letters produced during the year or so that Pliny held this office we see what kind of bureaucratic trivia a provincial administration had to deal with—whether to build a covered in a town, ownership of a piece of land, what to do with escaped prisoners who’ve been recaptured. Pliny could never predict how Trajan would respond to his requests for decisions on tricky issues, so he kept copies of all his correspondence. We don’t know whether Pliny died in Bithynia or on the way home or shortly after his return to Italy. He did not live long enough to hold any other office or write any other letters.
