THE LETTERS OF THE YOUNGER PLINY. WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY JOHN B.
FIRTH.

FIRST SERIES.

THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD,
LONDON AND FELLING-ON-TYNE.
NEW YORK: 3 EAST 14TH STREET.



NOTE.--In the following translation the Teubner text, edited by Keil,
has been followed.


INTRODUCTION.

Some slight memoir and critical estimate of the author of this
collection of Letters may perhaps be acceptable to those who are
unfamiliar with the circumstances of the times in which he lived.
Moreover, few have studied the Letters themselves without feeling a warm
affection for the writer of them. He discloses his character therein so
completely, and, in spite of his glaring fault of vanity and his endless
love of adulation, that character is in the main so charming, that one
can easily understand the high esteem in which Pliny was held by the
wide circle of his friends, by the Emperor Trajan, and by the public at
large. The correspondence of Pliny the Younger depicts for us the
everyday life of a Roman gentleman in the best sense of the term. We
see him practising at the Bar; we see him engaged in the civil
magistracies at Rome, and in the governorship of the important province