Pliny [Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus / Pliny the Younger] / Melmoth, William.

The Letters of Pliny the Consul : With Occasional Remarks. By William Melmoth, Esq.

The Third Edition, corected. Two Volumes (complete set). London, Printed for R.Dodsley at Tully’s Head in Pall-Mall and sold by W. Thurlbourn in Cambridge, 1748. Octavo. Volume I: Engraved title-page, [4], 368 pages / Volume II: continued pagination from Volume I: pages 371 – 692 plus 4 unnumbered pages of an “Alphabetical Index of the Persons Names to whom Pliny addresses the foregoing Letters”. Hardcover / Original full leather with gilt numbering on spine. Binding stronger rubbed. Tiny lesion to endpapers and title-page of Volume I. Otherwise in very good condition with only minor signs of wear. Spine of Volume I starting. From the library of Daniel Conner (Connerville / Manch House), with his Exlibris / Bookplate to pastedown.

Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo; 61 – c. 113), better known in English as Pliny the Younger, was a lawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome. Pliny’s uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate him.

Pliny the Younger wrote 369 letters, of which 247 survived, and which are of some historical value. These include 121 official letters addressed to Emperor Trajan (reigned 98–117). Some are addressed to reigning emperors or to notables such as the historian Tacitus. Pliny served as an imperial magistrate under Trajan, and his letters to Trajan provide one of the few surviving records of the relationship between the imperial office and provincial governors.

Pliny rose through a series of civil and military offices, the cursus honorum. He was a friend of the historian Tacitus and might have employed the biographer Suetonius on his staff. Pliny also came into contact with other well-known men of the period, including the philosophers Artemidorus and Euphrates the Stoic, during his time in Syria.

Pliny was by birth of equestrian rank, that is, a member of the aristocratic order of equites (knights), the lower (beneath the senatorial order) of the two Roman aristocratic orders that monopolised senior civil and military offices during the early Empire. His career began at the age of 18 and initially followed a normal equestrian route. But, unlike most equestrians, he achieved entry into the upper order by being elected Quaestor in his late twenties.

Pliny was active in the Roman legal system, especially in the sphere of the Roman centumviral court, which dealt with inheritance cases. Later, he was a well-known prosecutor and defender at the trials of a series of provincial governors, including Baebius Massa, governor of Baetica; Marius Priscus, governor of Africa; Gaius Caecilius Classicus, governor of Baetica; and most ironically in light of his later appointment to this province, Gaius Julius Bassus and Varenus Rufus, both governors of Bithynia and Pontus.

Pliny’s career is commonly considered as a summary of the main Roman public charges and is the best-documented example from this period, offering proof for many aspects of imperial culture. Effectively, Pliny crossed all the principal fields of the organization of the early Roman Empire. It is an achievement for a man to have not only survived the reigns of several disparate emperors, especially the much-detested Domitian, but also to have risen in rank throughout. (Wikipedia)

• Keywords: Altphilologie · Catalogue No.20 – Rome · Classical Literature · Classical Literature – Rare · Classical Philology · Classical Studies · Classical Studies – Rare · Classics · Philologie · Philology · Pliny the Younger · Roman Antiquities · Roman Emperors · Roman Empire · Roman History · Roman History – Rare · Trajan
• Language: English
• Inventory Number: 32450AB

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