inasmuch as they degrade the character and morals of the whole world.
In another passage (ix. 6) he says that the Circensian games have not
the smallest attraction for him--ne levissime quidem teneor. He cannot
understand why so many thousands of grown-up people take such a childish
pleasure in watching horses running races. It is not the speed of the
horses or the skill of the drivers which is the attraction,--if it were,
there might be some reason for their enthusiasm,--what they go to see is
the victory of their pet racing colours, the triumph of the reds, blues,
or greens. Favent panno, pannum amant.

We find him writing on all manner of subjects. He asks his scientific
friends to explain to him the mystery of a spring whose waters ebb and
flow, of a lake which contained floating islands, and in one letter he
tells a fascinating ghost story of quite the conventional type, about a
haunted house, which drove any unwary tenant crazy, and the ghost of a
murdered man which walked with clanking chains. Pliny was no cut and
dried philosopher. Like his master Cicero he was an eclectic, and
pinned his faith to no single creed. Whatever was human interested him,
and on whatever interested him he put pen to paper. It need scarcely be
said how valuable these letters are in filling up the gaps of Roman
history. We have to thank Pliny for our knowledge of the great eruption
of Vesuvius which overwhelmed Pompeii and Herculaneum, and it was
probably only due to the accident that the elder Pliny was one of the
victims that we possess the two striking letters in which the disaster
is described. In another letter our author describes how the Emperor
Trajan sent for him and others to his country seat at Centum Cellae, to
help him to try certain important cases, and then he tells us of the
modest, simple living of Trajan--Suavitas simplicitasque convictus--and
the presents he gave them on their departure. The debates in the
Senate, the trials in the Court of the Hundred, the public readings in