Pliny letter to cornelius tacitus biography

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Indeed, to a moderate man, even the village (between which and my house there is only one villa) would supply all ordinary requirements. He says he wishes to marry,—a piece of perversity, like all his other conduct. For he composes most elegant lyrics both in Greek and Latin. Pliny says the story will be immortalized by Tacitus.

6.20.

So agreeably, indeed, that if ever I should arrive at old age, there is no man whom I would sooner choose for my model, for nothing can be more perfect in arrangement than his mode of life. Her husband Caecinna Paetus, and her son, were both attacked at the same time with a fatal illness, as was supposed; of which the son died, a youth of remarkable beauty, and as modest as he was comely, endeared indeed to his parents no less by his many graces than from the fact of his being their son.

A dangerous and slippery situation this, even when one is led into it by plea of necessity! Remember, then, nothing is more to be avoided than this modern alliance of luxury with meanness; odious enough when existing separate and distinct, but still more hateful where you meet with them together.

The first letter describes the journey of his uncle Pliny the Elder during which he perished. Up to this time the interest of my friends and the consideration of my early time of life have kept me in this court, as I am afraid they might think I was doing it to shirk work rather than to avoid these indecencies, were I to leave it just yet: however, I go there less frequently than I did, and am thus effecting a gradual retreat.

A shorthand writer constantly attended him, with book and tablets, who, in the winter, wore a particular sort of warm gloves, that the sharpness of the weather might not occasion any interruption to my uncle's studies: and for the same reason, when in Rome, he was always carried in a chair. It affords some consolation in the loss of those friends whom disease snatches from us that they fall by the general destiny of mankind; but those who destroy themselves leave us under the inconsolable reflection, that they had it in their power to have lived longer.

Consider then whether your dream, like this one I have related, may not pre-signify success. Thou makest rhetoricians of senators, and senators of rhetoricians!" A sarcasm so poignant and full of gall that one might almost imagine he fixed upon this profession merely for the sake of an opportunity of applying it.

It was the custom of the ancients to distinguish those poets with honours or pecuniary rewards, who had celebrated particular individuals or cities in their verses; but this good custom, along with every other fair and noble one, has grown out of fashion now; and in consequence of our having ceased to act laudably, we consider praise a folly and impertinence.

He pressed me a third time. So let us set to and not screen our own indolence under pretence of that of the public. He has completed the history which Aufidius Bassus[48] left unfinished, and has added to it thirty books. He chose lately to be extremely concerned for the loss of his son: accordingly he mourned for him as never man mourned before.

I had, as far as the differences between our ages would admit, a friendship for his father-in-law Musonius, whom I both loved and esteemed, while Artemidorus himself I entered into the closest intimacy with when I was serving as a military tribune in Syria.