Pliny The Younger Quotes

An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.

[Pliny the Elder] used to say that “no book was so bad but some good might be got out of it.

So we must work at our profession and not make anybody else's idleness an excuse for our own. There is no lack of readers and listeners; it is for us to produce something worth being written and heard.

A bronze plaque read: GAIUS PLINIUS CAECILIUS SECUNDUS Dan made a face. "Get a load of the guy with the funny name." "I think that's Pliny the younger, the famous Roman writer," Amy supplied. She bent down to read the English portion of the tablet. "Right. In A.D. 79, Pliny chronicled the destruction of Pompeii by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It's one of the earliest eyewitness accounts of a major disaster." Dan yawned. "Doesn't this remind you of the clue hunt? You know–you telling me a bunch of boring stuff, and me not listening?

In the darkness you could hear the crying of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men. Some prayed for help. Others wished for death. But still more imagined that there were no Gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness.

There were some so afraid of death that they prayed for death.

The smallest evil if neglected, will reach the greatest proportions.

Glory ought to be the consequence, not the motive, of our actions; and although it happen not to attend the worthy deed, yet it is by no means the less fair for having missed the applause it deserved.

The happier time, the quicker it passes

Let me into the secrets you would prefer no one to know.

nihil novum nihil varium nihil quod non semel spectasse sufficiat

Nullus est liber tam malus ut non aliqua parte prosit - There is no book so bad that it is not profitable on some part.

Deus est mortali iuvare mortalem.

You summon us, we follow. You order us to be free and so we will be.

that those supports may be shaken, and collapse, for the popularity of evil men is as fickle as the men themselves.

But, if I were given my choice, I prefer the speech like the winter snows.

So when you 3 go hunting you can adopt my advice, and carry your tablets as well as your food-basket and flask, for you will find that Minerva roams the mountains no less than Diana.

Peccant, qvia nihil peccant.

nulla dies sine linea.

У нещастните езикът е един, у щастливите-друг.

there may be greater glory in obedience where the desire to obey is less

It is not true that the world is too tired and exhausted to produce anything worth praising.

that it is better to have no work to do than to work at nothing.

I shall continue to be anxious about him until he can permit himself some distraction and allow his wound to heal; nothing can do this but acceptance of the inevitable, lapse of time, and surfeit of grief.

Being lately engaged to plead a cause before the Court of the Hundred, the crowd was so great that I could not get to my place without crossing the tribunal where the judges sat. And I have this pleasing circumstance to add further, that a young nobleman, having had his tunic torn, an ordinary occurrence in a crowd, stood with his gown thrown over him, to hear me, and that during the seven hours I was speaking, whilst my success more than counterbalanced the fatigue of so long a speech. So let us set to and not screen our own indolence under pretence of that of the public. Never, be very sure of that, will there be wanting hearers and readers, so long as we can only supply them with speakers and writers worth their attention.

Ashes were already falling, not as yet very thickly. I looked round: a dense black cloud was coming up behind us, spreading over the earth like a flood. 'Let us leave the road while we can still see,'I said,'or we shall be knocked down and trampled underfoot in the dark by the crowd behind.' We had scarcely sat down to rest when darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room. You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore. ~Pliny the Younger Trust me…history will record the battle at the Puerto Rico Trench the same way. ~High Commander Mustafa

The names of Seneca, of the elder and the younger Pliny, of Tacitus, of Plutarch, of Galen, of the slave Epictetus, and of the emperor Marcus Antoninus, adorn the age in which they flourished, and exalt the dignity of human nature. They filled with glory their respective stations, either in active or contemplative life; their excellent understandings were improved by study; philosophy had purified their minds from the prejudices of the popular superstition; and their days were spent in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue. Yet all these sages (it is no less an object of surprise than of concern) overlooked or rejected the perfection of the Christian system. Their language or their silence equally discover their contempt for the growing sect which in their time had diffused itself over the Roman empire. Those among them who condescend to mention the Christians consider them only as obstinate and perverse enthusiasts, who exacted an implicit submission to their mysterious doctrines, without being able to produce a single argument that could engage the attention of men of sense and learning.

Some very elegant dishes were served up to himself and a few more of us, whilst those placed before the rest of the company consisted simply of cheap dishes and scraps. There were, in small bottles, three different kinds of wine; not that the guest might take their choice, but that they might not have any option in their power; one kind being for himself, and for us; another sort for his lesser friends (for it seems he has degrees of friends), and the third for his own freedmen and ours. My neighbour . . . asked me if I approved the arrangement. Not at all, I told him. "Pray, then," he asked, "what is your method upon such occasions?" "Mine," I returned, "is to give all my visitors the same reception; for when I give an invitation, it is to entertain, not distinguish, my company: I place every man upon my own level whom I admit to my table." . . . He replied, "This must cost you a great deal." "Not in the least." "How can that be?" "Simply because, although my freedmen don't drink the same wine as myself, yet I drink the same as they do." And, no doubt about it, if a man is wise enough to moderate his appetite, he will not find it such a very expensive thing to share with all his visitors what he takes himself. Restrain it, keep it in, if you wish to be true economist. You will find temperance a far better way of saving than treating other people rudely can be. . . . Remember, then, nothing is more to be avoided than this modern alliance of luxury with meanness; odious enough when existing separate and distinct, but still more hateful where you meet with them together.

I have spent these several days past, in reading and writing, with the most pleasing tranquility imaginable. You will ask, "How that can possibly be in the midst of Rome?" It was the time of celebrating the Circensian games; an entertainment for which I have not the least taste. They have no novelty, no variety to recommend them, nothing, in short, one would wish to see twice. It does the more surprise me therefore that so many thousand people should be possessed with the childish passion of desiring so often to see a parcel of horses gallop, and men standing upright in their chariots. If, indeed, it were the swiftness of the horses, or the skill of the men that attracted them, there might be some pretence of reason for it. But it is the dress they like; it is the dress that takes their fancy. And if, in the midst of the course and contest, the different parties were to change colours, their different partisans would change sides, and instantly desert the very same men and horses whom just before they were eagerly following with their eyes, as far as they could see, and shouting out their names with all their might. Such mighty charms, such wondrous power reside in the colour of a paltry tunic! And this not only with the common crowd (more contemptible than the dress they espouse), but even with serious-thinking people. When I observe such men thus insatiably fond of so silly, so low, so uninteresting, so common an entertainment, I congratulate myself on my indifference to these pleasures: and am glad to employ the leisure of this season upon my books, which others throw away upon the most idle occupations.

If I were to list all the positive attributes about Ryan Lilly, I’d run out of superior adjectives to use. I mean seriously, how big do you think my vocabulary is? I only know about a hundred million words, and with that small of a sample size, how could I accurately describe someone as great as Ryan? Ryan is the most amazing guy I’ve ever met. Seriously, I’m insanely jealous and I just want to stab him. But I won’t, because everybody loves Ryan, including me. Ryan is a big inspiration in my life. Not only is Ryan fiercely intelligent—on the level of Newton, da Vinci, and Nietzsche’s mustache—but he is the most open, honest, and understanding guy I’ve ever met. He’s the kind of guy who’d give you the shirt off his back if you asked. I know, because I’m wearing his shirt now. If you don’t know who Ryan Lilly is, you soon will. He’ll probably be one of the most talked about people in history, and just the other day I came across this quote from Pliny (I don’t know how old Pliny is, so I don’t know if it was Pliny the Older or Pliny the Younger) which said, “Everything good I have written about can be summed up in two words: Ryan Lilly.” That’s a real quote I read in a real book. Trust me, I’m a writer.

We can start with approximately nine traditional authors of the New Testament. If we consider the critical thesis that other authors wrote the pastoral letters and such letters as Ephesians and 2 Thessalonians, we'd have an even larger number. Another twenty early Christian authors20 and four heretical writings mention Jesus within 150 years of his death on the cross.21 Moreover, nine secular, non-Christian sources mention Jesus within the 150 years: Josephus, the Jewish historian; Tacitus, the Roman historian; Pliny the Younger, a politician of Rome; Phlegon, a freed slave who wrote histories; Lucian, the Greek satirist; Celsus, a Roman philosopher; and probably the historians Suetonius and Thallus, as well as the prisoner Mara Bar-Serapion.22 In all, at least forty-two authors, nine of them secular, mention Jesus within 150 years of his death. In comparison, let's take a look at Julius Caesar, one of Rome's most prominent figures. Caesar is well known for his military conquests. After his Gallic Wars, he made the famous statement, "I came, I saw, I conquered." Only five sources report his military conquests: writings by Caesar himself, Cicero, Livy, the Salona Decree, and Appian.23 If Julius Caesar really made a profound impact on Roman society, why didn't more writers of antiquity mention his great military accomplishments? No one questions whether Julius did make a tremendous impact on the Roman Empire. It is evident that he did. Yet in those 150 years after his death, more non-Christian authors alone comment on Jesus than all of the sources who mentioned Julius Caesar's great military conquests within 150 years of his death. Let's look at an even better example, a contemporary of Jesus. Tiberius Caesar was the Roman emperor at the time of Jesus' ministry and execution. Tiberius is mentioned by ten sources within 150 years of his death: Tacitus, Suetonius, Velleius Paterculus, Plutarch, Pliny the Elder, Strabo, Seneca, Valerius Maximus, Josephus, and Luke.24 Compare that to Jesus' forty-two total sources in the same length of time. That's more than four times the number of total sources who mention the Roman emperor during roughly the same period. If we only considered the number of secular non-Christian sources who mention Jesus and Tiberius within 150 years of their lives, we arrive at a tie of nine each.25

Poetry, architecture, music, philosophy and mathematics all intrigued him and he was patron of them all, surrounding himself with men of genius: the poet and satirist Juvenal, the architect Apollodorus, the historians Tacitus, Suetonius and Arrian, the writers Pliny the Younger, Pausanias and Plutarch.

Military expediency aside, how did the new emperor appear to his subjects? Experience, inclination and natural intelligence had made him a polymath, though the demands of his role as emperor, and the infinite resources available to him, left him open to accusations of dilettantism. This charge was unfair; he was unusual in that he genuinely wanted to become adept in many areas himself, rather than simply be served or amused by the ability of others. Throughout his reign his understanding was gained either by direct observation or by the development of skills that he admired in others. Poetry, architecture, music, philosophy and mathematics all intrigued him and he was patron of them all, surrounding himself with men of genius: the poet and satirist Juvenal, the architect Apollodorus, the historians Tacitus, Suetonius and Arrian, the writers Pliny the Younger, Pausanias and Plutarch.

Chryseis was in another wing in the back of the house and would not be aware of our presence. I hadn’t taken much notice of the house on my previous visit, but I now realized it was quite large, and built on the Roman model.

Não ignoro que muitos outros não olham estas espécies de desgraças senão como uma simples perda de um bem, e que assim pensando eles se julgam grandes homens e homens sábios. De minha parte, não sei se são tão grandes e tão sábios como o imaginam, mas sei bem que não são homens.

Traditionally, in the system that Augustus inherited from the Republic, the Roman command structure was class-based. As mentioned earlier, the officer class came from the narrow aristocracy of senators and equestrians. The great armies of the Republic were commanded by senators who had attained the rank of consul, the pinnacle of their society. Their training in military science came mainly from experience: until the later second century B.C., aspiring senators were required to serve in ten campaigns before they could hold political office 49 Intellectual education was brought to Rome by the Greeks and began to take hold in the Roman aristocracy sometime in the second century B.C.; thus it is the Greek Polybius who advocates a formal training for generals in tactics, astronomy, geometry, and history.50 And in fact some basic education in astronomy and geometry-which Polybius suggests would be useful for calculating, for example, the lengths of days and nights or the height of a city wall-was normal for a Roman aristocrat of the late Republic or the Principate. Aratus' verse composition on astronomy, several times translated into Latin, was especially popular.51 But by the late Republic the law requiring military service for office was long defunct; and Roman education as described by Seneca the Elder or Quintilian was designed mainly to produce orators. The emphasis was overwhelmingly on literature and rhetoric;52 one did not take courses, for example, on "modern Parthia" or military theory. Details of grammar and rhetorical style were considered appropriate subjects for the attention of the empire's most responsible individuals; this is attested in the letters of Pliny the Younger, the musings ofAulus Gellius, and the correspondence of Fronto with Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius.53

And, as Herodotus said about the Persian king’s messengers, ‘Neither heat nor snow nor gloom of night’ could stop them.

What’s the matter?” I asked, grabbing his arm. “He’s dead!” the innkeeper gasped and pointed to the open door of Cornutus’ room, directly across from mine. “Lucius Cornutus is dead!” “Dead? By the gods! What are you saying?” “His heart!” He clutched his hands to his own heart. I couldn’t believe this fellow had the medical knowledge to recognize that Cornutus had some problem with his heart. I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “What about his heart?” After several false starts, he managed to sputter out, “He doesn’t… have one anymore.

What can I do for you gentlemen?” he asked when he had recovered himself. “Incidentally, do you know yet how long you’re going to be staying?” “We pray to the gods each day,” Carolus said, “that it will be our last here.” “Are we hurting your business?” I asked. “Oh, no! Quite the opposite. The excitement surrounding your stay has drawn good crowds to my dining room.” “Are you suggesting,” Tacitus said, “that if you had realized how well it paid, you might have murdered one of your guests long before now?” “What? I…? Whatever makes you think…?

He [his uncle, Pliny the Elder] used to say that there was no book so bad that it was not useful at some point. Pliny the Younger, Epistula III.5.10

Peter speaks of a church at Babylon; Paul proposed a journey to Spain, and it is generally believed he went there, and likewise came to France and Britain. Andrew preached to the Scythians, north of the Black Sea. John is said to have preached in India, and we know that he was at the Isle of Patmos, in the Archipelago. Philip is reported to have preached in upper Asia, Scythia, and Phrygia; Bartholomew in India, on this side the Ganges, Phrygia, and Armenia; Matthew in Arabia, or Asiatic Ethiopia, and Parthia; Thomas in India, as far as the coast of Coromandel, and some say in the island of Ceylon; Simon, the Canaanite, in Egypt, Cyrene, Mauritania, Lybia, and other parts of Africa, and from thence to have come to Britain; and Jude is said to have been principally engaged in the lesser Asia, and Greece. Their labours were evidently very extensive, and very successful; so that Pliny, the younger, who lived soon after the death of the apostles, in a letter to the emperor, Trajan, observed that Christianity had spread, not only through towns and cities, but also through whole countries.

The New Prophets began to preach by torchlight as though the latter days had come. It was the younger Pliny, those many centuries ago, who mentioned that in times of turmoil men with beards will appear instantly, when in all Rome there had not been bearded men before the moment of strife. The younger Pliny had lived in a shaved age; he believed that the bearded men who appear suddenly are wraiths or portents, and not men at all.

Tonight, according to her astronomy notebook (#4 of her notebooks, which were even rarer and harder to come by than actual books, according to Gothel), the moon would be new, meaning not there at all; the sky would be black but for the stars. And in a few days the floating lights would appear. They came at the same time every year. Even when it was cloudy, Rapunzel could see the telltale pinprick glows of their presence, gold and pink against the clouds. Which meant they were of the earth; below the moon and stars. How far up the lights floated she could never tell; they drifted into indifference when her eyes could no longer make them out against their sparkling stellar counterparts. Whether they were a natural phenomenon like rain (that went the wrong way) or some sort of magma or volcanic spew (Book #8: Naturalis Historia by Pliny the Elder, Complete with Letters and Notes by Pliny the Younger-- including, of course, the Elder's death by volcano), or something else entirely (pixies? Titans?), Rapunzel had no idea. She only knew that they came every year on what she had decided was her birthday. This year she would go see what they were. Herself.

It is a long time since I have had a letter from you. "There is nothing to write about," you say: well then write and let me know just this, that "there is nothing to write about," or tell me in the good old style, If you are well that's right, I am quite well. This will do for me, for it implies everything. You think I am joking? Let me assure you I am in sober earnest. Do let me know how you are; for I cannot remain ignorant any longer without growing exceedingly anxious about you. Farewell.

Lucky, I think, are those men with a god-given gift for doing what deserves to be written about or writing what deserves to be read – and very lucky are those who can do both. Through his own books and yours, my uncle will be one of these. Pliny the Younger to Tacitus, Letter 6.16

If the man’s claim was true, we owed him a degree of civility. Alexandrians guard their citizenship jealously. It’s difficult to obtain except by birth. We Romans, on the other hand, like whores, give ours to any man who will meet our price.

And now, let us sight-read the letter of Pliny the Younger, in which he witnesses the eruption of Vesuvius. It is not easy to translate, but it is fascinating.

For he never read without taking extracts, and used to say that there never was a book so bad that it was not good in some passage or another.

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.

Even more interesting perhaps is the gallery of Roman ladies, whose portraits are limned with so fine and discriminating a touch. Juvenal again is responsible for much misconception as to the part the women of Rome played in Roman society. The appalling Sixth Satire, in which he unhesitatingly declares that most women — if not all — are bad, and that virtue and chastity are so rare as to be almost unknown, in which he roundly accuses them of all the vices known to human depravity, reads like a monstrous and disgraceful libel on the sex when one turns to Pliny and makes the acquaintance of Arria, Fannia, Corellia, and Calpurnia. The characters of Arria and Fannia are well known; they are among the heroines of history. But in Pliny there are numerous references to women whose names are not even known to us, but the terms in which they are referred to prove what sweet, womanly lives they led. For example, he writes to Geminus: “Our friend Macrinus has suffered a grievous wound. He has lost his wife, who would have been regarded as a model of all the virtues even if she had lived in the good old days. He lived with her for thirty-nine years, without so much as a single quarrel or disagreement.” “Vixit cum hac triginta novem annis sine jurgio, sine offensa. One is reminded of the fine line of Propertius, in which Cornelia boasts of the blameless union of herself and her husband, Paullus — “Viximus insignes inter utramque facem.” This is no isolated example. One of the most pathetic letters is that in which Pliny writes of the death of the younger daughter of his friend Fundanus, a girl in her fifteenth year, who had already “the prudence of age, the gravity of a matron, and all the maidenly modesty and sweetness of a girl.” Pliny tells us how it cut him to the quick to hear her father give directions that the money he had meant to lay out on dresses and pearls and jewels for her betrothal should be spent on incense, unguents, and spices for her bier. What a different picture from anything we find in Juvenal, who would fain have us believe that Messalina was the type of the average Roman matron of his day! Such

Even a bathing place at Narnia!

Indeed, people who 15 dignify their good deeds by recounting them are thought not to announce them because they have performed them, but to have performed them in order to announce them. In this way, what would have been a fine action when recounted by another fades from view when the one who performed it himself recounts it.

Phineas took notes for us, using a portable scribe’s box that he has designed to hold papyrus, pens, ink, and a stone to smooth the papyrus. The top provides him with a firm writing surface and a strap around his neck holds it in place.

They still are snoops,” Tacitus put in. “The worst sort. They’ve even infected me, I’m afraid.” “Maybe you should try writing history,” Torquatus said. “Lots of unsolved mysteries in the past. For instance, did Claudius really just get some bad mushrooms by accident? Did Nero poison Britannicus or kill his mother?” He lowered his voice. “Did Domitian kill Titus?” “And there are lots of people who don’t want those mysteries solved.” Tacitus raised his wine cup. I was relieved that he changed the subject. “I’ll stick to writing speeches, thank you. They’re much safer.

A couple of miles down the road from Catulus’ villa we passed another large house that appeared to be abandoned. It looked as though someone had set fire to it and left the ruins. Most of the roof had fallen in. “What happened to that place?” Aurora asked, turning to one of Catulus’ men, a tall, gloomy fellow named Syrus. “Ghouls,” he said. “Did you say ghouls?” “Yes. Creatures that would eat humans or animals and take on the shape of whoever or whatever they ate.” He sounded utterly serious. Some people are able to make their jokes more believable that way. From the other side of Aurora I couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s preposterous.” “All I know is what I’m told, my lord. It happened some time ago, when I was a boy.” “What happened?” “The couple that lived there—Leander and Chloe was their names—they had no children. When they got old they hired some people to help them run the place. Turns out, though, the people they hired was a pack of these flesh-eating ghouls.” I shook my head in disbelief. “People around here actually believe this nonsense?” Syrus looked a bit offended. “Call it that if you will, my lord. When animals began disappearing and, finally, a couple of villagers disappeared, folks started suspecting something. They traced it all to that house.” “Traced what?” I asked. “Strange noises, glimpses of beasts, occasional bones. They attacked the place and set fire to it. We don’t know if they killed the ghouls. They could have changed their shapes and got away.” “What happened to Leander and Chloe?” Aurora asked. “Never seen again. Some around here think they was ghouls themselves. Or maybe eaten by the ghouls.

Did you ever see one of these ghouls?” I asked Syrus. “No, my lord, but I know lots of folks who did.” There was no conversation during the rest of that leg of the trip. My rational mind simply refuses to acknowledge the existence—even the possibility of the existence—of creatures such as Syrus described. My uncle, in his Natural History, gave accounts of fantastic creatures such as the Dog-headed people, the Cynocephali, who supposedly live in the mountains of India, but he had never seen them. He simply reported what he had found in his reading. I doubt that he had ever seen the Umbrella-foot tribe either. They supposedly lie on their backs in hot weather and shade themselves with their huge feet. He describes the Choromandae, a forest tribe with hairy bodies, gray eyes, and teeth like a dog’s. They don’t speak but give off a horrible scream. But, even amidst those monstrosities and others, he never mentions creatures that could change their form. Earlier writers pass on all sorts of improbable things. It’s a rule, I think, that the farther away—in distance or time—the writer is from what he’s describing, the more fantastic his descriptions become. Plato’s accounts of Atlantis come to mind. Stories get garbled as they are passed from place to place, or from one generation to the next, and translated. Herodotus claims there are ants as big as dogs in India. Like my uncle, he had never been that far east and likely had no idea what he was talking about. But, like Syrus, they “know lots of folks.” But “lots of folks” can be completely wrong.

Tacitus took a sip of his broth. “Whoever killed him must have stolen it when they sewed his lips together. Having a man’s signet would allow someone to falsify documents. You use your uncle’s ring. If you weren’t the upstanding person that you are, you could put that seal on letters that purport to come from him. Petronius went so far as to break his signet ring before he committed suicide to keep Nero from using it to incriminate people. We all worry about that.” I chuckled. “Leave it to you to bring in a historical example.” “You mentioned Cornelia and her children.” “Well, yes, I guess I did.” “That’s what history is for, isn’t it—to teach us what to do and what not to do?” “I thought it was to help us get to sleep at night by providing such boring reading.” Tacitus sat back, obviously offended by my jab at his favorite type of book. “Perhaps I should write some history, just to show you how interesting it can be.” “You’re an orator, not a historian, and a fine one.” He seemed mollified.