The Shadow of Vesuvius

by Daisy Dunn

  36 PLE 7.10.

  37 PLY 4.19.7.

  ELEVEN: A Difficult, Arduous, Fastidious Thing

  1 PLY 7.5.1.

  2 PLY 9.36.2.

  3 PLY 9.10.3.

  4 PLY 7.20.6.

  5 PLY 9.10.1.

  6 PLY 1.6.2.

  7 According to the calculation of Uroz Sáez, ‘Fundiary property and brick production in the high Tiber valley’, pp. 132–3. Uroz Sáez includes in this total the adjacent plot Pliny is planning to buy in Letter 3.19.

  8 Other entertainments held in the Colosseum included candlelit gladiator fights and mock ‘sea’ battles over a flooded stage.

  9 See especially R. Edwards, ‘Hunting for Boars with Pliny and Tacitus’, Classical Antiquity, Vol. 27, No. 1, April 2008, pp. 35–58 on the association between the Marcus Aper of Tacitus’ Dialogus and Pliny’s ‘three boars’. On the Dialogus and Pliny see W. Dominik, ‘Tacitus and Pliny on Oratory’, in W. Dominik and J. Hall (eds), A Companion to Roman Rhetoric, Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, West Sussex and Malden, MA, 2010, pp. 323–38.

  10 Tacitus Dialogus 5–10.

  11 PLY 9.10.2.

  12 PLY 6.17.5.

  13 PLY 1.9.4.

  14 PLE 36.117. On Pliny the Elder and Curio’s theatre see C. Schultze, ‘Making a Spectacle of Oneself: Pliny on Curio’s Theatre’, in Bispham and Rowe (eds), Vita Vigilia Est, pp. 127–45.

  15 P. Fane–Saunders, Pliny the Elder and the Emergence of Renaissance Architecture, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2016, pp. 246–7.

  16 PLY 7.30.3.

  17 On the treasury see F. Millar, ‘The Aerarium and its Officials under the Empire’, Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 54, Parts 1 and 2, 1964, pp. 39–40.

  18 CIL V 5667.

  19 PLY 1.10.9.

  20 Suetonius Life of Domitian 14.

  21 Suetonius Life of Domitian 17.

  22 Suetonius Life of Domitian 14.

  23 A. M. Ward, F. M. Heichelheim and C. A. Yeo (A History of the Roman People, Routledge, London and New York, 2016, p. 326) describe Stephanus entering the conspiracy as a ‘devoted former butler’ of Domitilla.

  24 It was said that a storm put out Domitian’s funeral pyre and dogs tore apart his semi-burned corpse.

  25 Tacitus Histories 4.41; 44; see Levick, Vespasian, p. 49.

  26 Pliny Panegyricus 34.

  27 PLY 1.5.1.

  28 PLY 7.27.12–16.

  29 PLY 9.13.2.

  30 PLY 9.13.6.

  31 PLY 1.5.15.

  32 PLY 9.13.21.

  33 Tacitus Agricola 3.

  34 PLY 4.22.7.

  35 Epitome de Caesaribus 12.8. The Praetorian Guard are said to have seized both the cubicularius or chamberlain Parthenius and Petronius Secundus, one of the praetorian prefects. On the frustration of the Guard see also Dio Cassius Roman History 68.8. Cf. Pliny Panegyricus 6.2.

  36 See J. D. Grainger, Nerva and the Roman Succession Crisis of AD 96–99, Routledge, London and New York, 2003, p. 89 on the dilemma Nerva faced over when to adopt a successor.

  37 On the complex machinations which might have been taking place among the Guard and behind the scenes see W. Eck, ‘An Emperor is Made: Senatorial Politics and Trajan’s Adoption by Nerva in 97’, in G. Clark and T. Rajak (eds), Philosophy and Power in the Graeco-Roman World: Essays in Honour of Miriam Griffin, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 2002, pp. 211–26. See also Grainger, Nerva and the Roman Succession Crisis of AD 96–99, pp. 90–9.

  38 Pliny Panegyricus 8.1.

  39 PLY 9.13.21.

  40 PLY 7.19.4.

  41 PLY 9.13.25.

  42 PLY 1.10.10.

  TWELVE: Head, Heart, Womb

  1 PLE 7.191. In late May a fertility rite known as the Ambarvalia honoured Ceres.

  2 PLY 9.39.

  3 PLY 6.30.4.

  4 A. Marzano (Roman Villas in Central Italy: A Social and Economic History, Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2007, p. 110) explains that the villa was built by Granius Marcellus; pottery finds, but not building materials, predate his ownership. Establishing a precedent for Pliny, this magistrate had fired thousands of tiles bearing his name, more than 300 of which have since been recovered from the plain and from as far as ten kilometres away, at Parnacciano and Mazzano; see Uroz Sáez, ‘Fundiary property and brick production in the high Tiber valley’, p. 128. Gamurrini (‘Le Statue della Villa di Plinio in Tuscis’, p. 97) made the link between these tiles, Pliny’s statues, and the two men named Granius mentioned by Tacitus. In Letter 10.8.1 Pliny says that the statues of the emperors had been passed down per plures successiones. The idea that his are the same statues owned by Granius Marcellus is uncertain but very compelling and is proposed by Gamurrini, pp. 93–7; Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, pp. 322–3; and A. J. Woodman, ‘Tacitus and the contemporary scene’, in A. J. Woodman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009, pp. 34–5.

  5 CIL XI 5264 names Granius as a duovir quinquennalis of Hispellum. See Marzano, Roman Villas in Central Italy, p. 110.

  6 Tacitus Annals 1.74.

  7 Tacitus Annals 6.38; Uroz Sáez (‘Fundiary property and brick production in the high Tiber valley’, pp. 128–9) suggests that the estate passed to Granius’ son Granius Marcianus and then into imperial hands when he committed suicide.

  8 Uroz Sáez, ‘Fundiary property and brick production in the high Tiber valley’, p. 131.

  9 Jean Hardouin cited in E. Allain, Pline le jeune et ses héritiers, Fontemoing, Paris, 1902, Vol. 3, pp. 282–91. The inscription was recorded by the sixteenth-century Augustinian monk Onofrio Panvinio in his In Fastorum Libros Commentarii and later adduced by Gamurrini (‘Le Statue della Villa di Plinio in Tuscis’, p. 98), whose theory of Pliny the Elder recovering the property is developed by Uroz Sáez (‘Fundiary property and brick production in the high Tiber valley’, pp. 130–1; and in Braconi and Uroz Sáez (eds), La Villa Di Plinio il Giovane a San Giustino, pp. 194–5).

  10 Pliny Panegyricus 52.

  11 Pliny Panegyricus 51.

  12 Suetonius Life of Domitian 5; Dio Cassius 66.24. See P. Roche, ‘The Panegyricus and the Monuments of Rome’, in P. Roche (ed.), Pliny’s Praise, p. 46.

  13 Pliny Panegyricus 52.4–5; see also Suetonius Life of Domitian 23. Domitian is said to have allowed only gold and silver sculptures of a certain weight to be dedicated to him on the Capitoline Hill (see Suetonius Life of Domitian 13).

  14 PLY 10.5.1; 7.1.4. Sherwin-White (Letters of Pliny, p. 566) dates Letter 10.5, in which Pliny writes of being ill ‘last year’, to between mid-AD 98 and 99. In Letter 10.8, Pliny describes how his ill health delayed work on the temple.

  15 PLY 7.1.3.

  16 PLE 29.11.

  17 PLE 29.28.

  18 PLE 29.25; 33.116.

  19 PLE 29.27.

  20 PLE 29.26.

  21 PLE 26.12.

  22 PLE 20.42–3; 26.14.

  23 A handful of bricks survive from the complex with the letters CAESAR. See Braconi and Uroz Sáez, ‘La Villa Di Plinio il Giovane a San Giustino’, in Coarelli and Patterson (eds), Mercator Placidissimus, p. 114. A piece of mosaic floor found at Pliny’s Tuscan villa consisted of black and white tiles arranged in triangular patterns with a chequered border; it has been dated to the end of the first century AD/first half of the second century AD, which coincides precisely with Pliny’s dates; see A. G. Catalá, ‘Mosaici’, in Braconi and Uroz Sáez (eds), La Villa Di Plinio il Giovane a San Giustino, pp. 121–5.

  24 PLY 7.1.6.

  25 PLY 10.5; 10.6; 6.3.

  26 PLY 7.26.1.

  27 PLY 2.8.2.

  28 1 Peter 1:7.

  29 PLY 7.26.4.

  30 PLE 7.41.

  31 A male foetus, on the other hand, was said to move on the fortieth day after conception.

  32 See, for example, PLE 28.70, and R. Flemming, ‘Women, Writing and Medicine in the Classical World’, Classical Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 1, May 2007, particularly pp. 273–4, on Pliny the Elder’s l
ack of distinction between the two professions. On matters of gynaecological health in the Natural History see A. Richlin, ‘Pliny’s Brassiere: Roman Medicine and the Female Body’, in L. K. McClure (ed.), Sexuality and Gender in the Classical World, Blackwell, Oxford, 2002, pp. 225–52.

  33 PLE 7.64.

  34 PLY 8.11.3.

  35 Tacitus Annals 16.8.

  36 PLY 8.10.

  37 It is impossible to know whether the illness that led Calpurnia to travel to Campania was the result of her miscarriage, or another illness entirely, but I believe it is likely that she went there to recover after her loss.

  38 Statius Silvae 4.4.81–2. To the historian Dio Cassius (Roman History 66.21), writing in the third century AD, the mountain now resembled an amphitheatre, its centre burned out but its slopes once again covered in vineyards. Even then the crater continued to belch forth smoke, fire, and ash.

  39 Camardo, ‘Herculaneum from the AD 79 eruption to the medieval period’, p. 305.

  40 PLY 6.30.

  41 PLY 6.28.

  42 PLY 6.4.1–2.

  43 PLY 6.4.4.

  44 PLY 6.4.5; 6.7.

  45 R. Steele and J. Addison, The Tatler, Vol. 3, John Sharpe, London, 1804, pp. 180–6. The original article was published in 1709–10 and is cited by C. Whitton and R. Gibson, ‘Readers and Readings of Pliny’s Epistles’, in Gibson and Whitton (eds), The Epistles of Pliny, p. 9.

  46 PLY 7.5.2.

  47 PLE 26.100.

  48 Several of these remedies for gout were included in the Medicina Plinii that was compiled from the medical passages of the Natural History in the fourth century AD.

  49 PLY 1.12.

  50 PLY 1.12.8; see Hoffer, Anxieties of Pliny the Younger, pp. 141–8.

  51 PLY 1.12.12.

  THIRTEEN: After the Solstice

  1 Cicada: PLE 11.107; Vines: PLE 16.104.

  2 PLE 10.80.

  3 PLE 21.56; 18.265.

  4 PLE 18.295.

  5 PLE 18.267.

  6 PLE 8.133.

  7 PLE 18.72.

  8 PLE 18.295.

  9 PLE 18.97; 18.296–8.

  10 Outbuildings and square: Braconi and Uroz Sáez, ‘La Villa Di Plinio il Giovane a San Giustino’, p. 115, and Braconi, ‘La Villa di Plinio a San Giustino’, pp. 35–6.

  11 PLY 4.6.2.

  12 PLY 7.30.3; 9.37.2.

  13 PLE 18.36.

  14 PLE 18.11.

  15 Hesiod Works and Days 303–9.

  16 PLY 10.8.5.

  17 PLY 2.4.3.

  18 PLY 3.19.8.

  19 PLY 5.6.10; PLE 18.181. Sherwin-White (Letters of Pliny, p. 322) used the similarities of their descriptions of the soil as further evidence that Pliny inherited the Tuscan estate from his uncle.

  20 Horace Satires 2.6.4–5.

  21 PLE 18.9.

  22 Hesiod Works and Days 43–4.

  23 PLY 3.19.

  24 Carlon, Pliny’s Women, p. 120, suggests that Pliny had tutelary control over Pompeia Celerina’s funds.

  25 Carlon, Pliny’s Women, p. 122, notes that Letter 1.4, in which Pliny describes visiting Pompeia Celerina’s properties, almost definitely post-dates the death of his first wife. Even under Trajan, Pliny was still assisting Pompeia by requesting that her relative, Caelius Clemens, be transferred to Bithynia; when Trajan granted the favour, Pliny thanked him for being so generous to his ‘whole household’ (PLY 10.51.2).

  26 PLY 5.6.4.

  27 PLE 15.3.

  28 PLE 15.8.

  29 See J. M. Vidal, ‘Mercantile trade in the Upper Tiber Valley: the villa of Pliny the Younger “in Tuscis”’, in Coarelli and Patterson (eds), Mercator Placidissimus, pp. 231–3.

  30 Vidal (‘Mercantile trade in the Upper Tiber Valley’, p. 232) describes the abundance of amphorae for preserved fish products imported from Cadiz and surrounding areas and found at Pliny’s estate.

  31 PLY 5.6.29.

  32 PLE 14.13.

  33 PLE 14.10.

  34 Columella On Agriculture 3.3.8.

  35 Propertius Elegies 4.2.

  36 PLY 9.20.

  37 Braconi and Uroz Sáez, ‘La Villa Di Plinio il Giovane a San Giustino’, p. 115: Pliny either extended the existing equipment or created it new.

  38 Seneca Epistles 83.

  39 PLE 14.137.

  40 PLE 14.141.

  41 PLE 14.8.

  42 Suetonius Life of Domitian 7.2.

  43 PLE 14.134.

  44 PLE 14.134.

  45 Vidal, ‘Mercantile trade in the Upper Tiber Valley’, p. 228.

  46 Vidal, ‘Mercantile trade in the Upper Tiber Valley’, pp. 227–35; Marzano, Roman Villas in Central Italy, p. 111 n.45, on so-called Spello amphorae (Altotiberina 1 and 2 amphorae).

  47 PLY 2.6.

  48 PLE 14.91.

  49 PLY 2.6.4–5.

  50 Juvenal Satires 7.119–21, also cited by Vidal, ‘Mercantile trade in the Upper Tiber Valley’, p. 228.

  51 P. Braconi, ‘Territorio e Paesaggio Dell’Alta Valle Del Tevere in Età Romana’, in Coarelli and Patterson (eds), Mercator Placidissimus, p.100.

  52 Marzano, Roman Villas in Central Italy, p. 111 n.45.

  53 Vidal, ‘Mercantile trade in the Upper Tiber Valley’, pp. 227–8.

  FOURTEEN: Life in Concrete

  1 PLE 3.54.

  2 PLY 5.6.12.

  3 PLY 8.17.2–5.

  4 PLY 9.16; 8.15.

  5 PLY 4.6; 10.8.5.

  6 Epitome De Caesaribus 12.10–12. This account was written hundreds of years after the event.

  7 Tacitus Agricola 3.

  8 PLY 10.1.

  9 Pliny Panegyricus 4.

  10 Epitome De Caesaribus 1.6; P. Garnsey, Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World: Responses to Risk and Crisis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993, p. 231.

  11 Pliny Panegyricus 30.2.

  12 Pliny Panegyricus 29.3–4.

  13 PLY 4.8.5.

  14 PLE 7.117.

  15 AE 1972. The statue was dedicated by one Marcus Cassius Comicus. The base still survives and is on display in the Museo Civico at Como.

  16 PLY 3.18.1.

  17 Pliny Panegyricus 59.2.

  18 Tacitus Annals 1.1; Pliny Panegyricus 2.2.

  19 Pliny Panegyricus 35.1.

  20 PLY 3.18.10.

  21 A. N. Sherwin-White, ‘Pliny, the Man and His Letters’, Greece & Rome, Vol. 16, No. 1, April 1969, p. 77 described the speech as ‘terrible’.

  22 Pliny Panegyricus 52.1.

  23 Pliny Panegyricus 49.6. Suetonius (Life of Domitian 21), by contrast, remembered Domitian’s banquets as generous and not prolonged. On the juxtapositions and a close literary analysis of the speech, see R. Rees, ‘To Be and Not to Be: Pliny’s Paradoxical Trajan’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Vol. 45, 2001, pp. 149–68.

  24 Pliny Panegyricus 46.4.

  25 See D. H. Sick, ‘Ummidia Quadratilla: Cagey Businesswoman or Lazy Pantomime Watcher?’, Classical Antiquity, Vol. 18, No. 2, October 1999, p. 334 on Pliny’s struggle in this passage on pantomimes.

  26 Pliny Panegyricus 17.

  27 Pliny Panegyricus 13.

  28 Dio Cassius Roman History 68.13–14.

  29 PLY 8.4.2.

  30 Pliny Panegyricus 12.4.

  31 On this obscure post, which might have involved directing some river traffic as well as managing Rome’s sewers, see B. Campbell, Rivers and the Power of Ancient Rome, University of North Carolina Press, North Carolina, 2012, pp. 318–19.

  32 PLY 6.31.13.

  33 PLY 6.31.17.

  34 PLE 35.166.

  35 M. D. Jackson, S. R. Mulcahy, H. Chen, Y. Li, Q. Li, P. Cappelletti and H. Wenk, ‘Phillipsite and Al-tobermorite mineral cements produced through low-temperature water-rock reactions in Roman marine concrete’, American Mineralogist, Vol. 102, (7), 2017, pp. 1435–50.

  36 Pliny Panegyricus 75.2.

  37 PLY 3.7.5.

  38 PLY 3.7.13 on Herodotus Histories 7.45.

  39 PLY 3.7.15.
See also PLY 1.3.4.

  40 PLY 5.5.4.

  41 PLE Preface 12–13.

  42 PLY 3.18.

  43 Pliny’s Panegyricus was preserved separately from his letters, in a manuscript known as the XII Panegyrici Latini (Pan Latin X(2)). It considerably predates the other eleven speeches in that collection. The next earliest speech after Pliny’s Panegyricus dates to almost two hundred years later.

  FIFTEEN: Depraved Belief

  1 On Pliny’s role, and on Book 10 of his letters as a collection, see G. Woolf, ‘Pliny’s Province’, pp. 93–108, in T. Bekker-Nielsen (ed.), Rome and the Black Sea Region, Aarhus University Press, Aarhus, 2006.

  2 PLY 10.15.

  3 PLE 36.2.

  4 PLY 10.17A.

  5 Tacitus Annals 3.33–4 cited in Shelton, The Women of Pliny’s Letters, p. 24.

  6 Hoffer, Anxieties of Pliny the Younger, p. 12, observes that ‘the system of political patronage seems to have acted as a disincentive to child-rearing’.

  7 See Power, ‘Pliny, Letters 5.10 and the Literary Career of Suetonius’, p. 158.

  8 PLY 10.2; 2.13.8.

  9 PLY 10.94; 10.95.

  10 PLY 10.78.

  11 B. Levick (‘Pliny in Bithynia – and What Followed’, Greece & Rome, Vol. 26, No. 2, October 1979, pp. 125–30) argues that the focus placed on work here might have been in recognition of Bithynia’s growing importance to the empire.

  12 See, for example, PLY 4.9; 5.20; 6.13; 7.6; 7.10.

  13 PLE 11.242.

  14 PLY 10.17B.

  15 PLY 10.18.2.

  16 On the tension that could arise from this arrangement see F. Millar, ‘Trajan: Government by Correspondence’, in Government, Society, and Culture in the Roman Empire, Vol. 2, edited by H. M. Cotton, and G. M. Rogers, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London, 2004, p. 25.

  17 PLY 2.12.6.

  18 Millar, ‘Trajan: Government by Correspondence’, pp. 35–40.

  19 PLY 10.23.

  20 PLY 10.40.3.

  21 PLY 10.40.3; see also PLY 10.18, in which Trajan rejects Pliny’s request for land surveyors; on suspected instances of Trajan’s voice versus his secretary’s in the letters, and the history of scholarship thereof, see A. N. Sherwin-White, ‘Trajan’s Replies to Pliny: Authorship and Necessity’, Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 52, Pts 1 and 2, 1962, pp. 114–19.

  22 PLY 10.61; 10.41–2.

  23 PLY 10.33.