respective authors were contemporaries. When turning over the pages of
Tacitus one feels that the vices and despotism of the Emperors and the
Empire had crushed all spirit out of the world, had made quiet family
life impossible, and had stamped out every trace of justice and clean
living. It is a remarkable fact that the great writers of the first
century, as soon as the Augustan era had closed, should have been
masters of a merciless satire, which has rarely been equaled in the
history of the world, and never excelled. When we think of Roman
society, as it was in the early Empire, our thoughts recur to the lurid
canvases which have been painted for us by Juvenal, by Tacitus, by
Lucan, by Seneca, and by Petronius--pictures which have made the world
shudder, and have led even careful historians astray. Pliny supplies
the needful corrective and gives us the reverse side of the medal. Like
the authors we have mentioned, he too writes of the evil days which he
himself has passed through, as of a horrid nightmare from which he has
just awakened; but from his letters, artificial and stilted as they are
in some respects, we learn that there were still to be found those who
had not bowed the knee to Baal.

And so, with this volume in our hands, we obtain a personal introduction
to a number of distinguished Romans and Roman matrons, whose names have
been preserved for all time by the Younger Pliny. His circle of friends
was a large one. Let us mention a few of them. We have already spoken
of Virginius Rufus, the grand old soldier and patriot, who, dying at the
age of eighty-four, was awarded a public funeral, while Cornelius
Tacitus, then Consul, delivered the panegyric in his honour. Vestricius
Spurinna was another distinguished general of the old school, and Pliny
relates with enthusiasm how he paid a visit to him in his country-house
when Spurinna was seventy-seven years of age and had retired from public
office. He tells us how his friend spent his day, how he drove and