CLASSICS], [POMPEII], [VESUVIUS], [ALDINE PRESS], [PLINY THE YOUNGER], PLINIUS, Gaius Secundus

Epistolarim Libri X

      Aldi, et Andreae Asulani, (Aldus Manutius), Venetiis, (Venice) 1518 - [56], 525pp, [1]. Lacking final blank, else collated and complete. *-***8, ****-4, a-8-z8, aa-kk7. Handsomely bound in slightly later lettered vellum. Yapp-edges. Light wear to extremities, a few wormholes to spine/joints, single-track to FFEP, not extending to text. Marbled front and rear fixed endpapers. Bookplate removed from front endpaper. Very light marginal dampstaining to prelims, occasionally to the odd signature of text. Very light and sporadic foxing, else a very clean and crisp example of this early Aldine Press printing. Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, (c.61-c113), administrator of part of the Roman Empire. Pliny the Younger, adopted by his uncle Pliny the Elder, studied philosophy and rhetoric under Nicetes Sacerdos and Quintilian, and practised civil law. Eventually rising to the political court, where he prosecuted provincial governors on charges of corruption and extortion. He acheived the ranks of both Praetor and Consul (in 100 AD) of the Roman Empire. Friend of Tacitus, Martial and Suetonius, Pliny was likewise a published author with these 10 books of letters, issued between 100 and 109 - collectively they almost the entirety of Pliny's surviving work and offer a valuable insight into the Roman world of the 1st Century. 'The Letters are models of graceful thought and refined expression, each of them dealing with a single topic and generally ending with an epigrammatic point.' (Encyc. Britannica 11th Ed). They deal with various issues, including on of the few accounts of the eruption of Vesuvius made by an eyewitness (for the Younger Pliny had accompanied his uncle and adoptive father) to the area in AD79, describing his final hours in detail in a letter to Tacitus (VI). 'In his Letters Pliny presents us with a picture of the varied interests of a cultivated Roman gentleman. The etiquette of the imperial circle, scenes from the law-courts and the recitationroom, the reunions of dilettanti and philosophers, the busy life of the capital or of the municipal town, the recreations of the seaside and of the country - all these he brings vividly before our eyes. He elaborately describes his Laurentine and his Tuscan villa, and frankly tells us how he spends the day at each (ii. 17, v. 6, ix. 36 and 40);'expatiates on his verses and his speeches, his holiday-tasks in Umbria (vii. 9, ix. so), and his happy memories of the Lake of Como (i. 6). He gives an enthusiastic account of a statuette of Corinthian bronze he has recently purchased (iii. 6). He is interested in providing a teacher of rhetoric for the place of his birth (iv. 13); he exults in the devotion of his wife, Calpurnia (vi. 19); towards his servants he is an indulgent master (viii. 16); he intercedes on behalf of the freedman of a friend (ix. 21), and, when a freedman of his own is in delicate health, sends him first to Egypt and afterwards to the Riviera (v. 19). He consults Suetonius on the interpretation of dreams (1.18); he presents another of his correspondents with a batch of ghost-stories (vii. 27) or a marvellous tale about a tame dolphin on the north coast of Africa (ix. 33). He discourses on the beauties of the Clitumnus (viii. 8) and the floating islands of the Vadimonian lake (viii. 20).He takes as his models Cicero and Tacitus (vii. 20), whose name is so often (to his delight) associated with his own (ix. 23). He rejoices to learn that his writings are read at Lyons (ix. I I). He complains of the inanity of circus-races (ix. 6), of the decay of interest in public recitations (i. 13), of bad taste in matters of hospitality (ii. 6), and of the way in which time is frittered away in the social duties of Rome (i. 9). He lays down the principles that should guide a Roman governor in Greece (viii. 24); he maintains the cause of the oppressed provinces of Spain and Africa; and he exposes the iniquities of the informer Regulus, the only living man whom he attacks in his Letters, going so far as to denounce him as omnium bipedum nequissimus (i. 5, [Attributes: First Edition]