The renowned Roman politician, Pliny the Younger, was a versatile and productive author, from whom 9 books of letters, an exchange of letters with Trajan and an extensive panegyric for the same emperor are extant. The individual letters of books 1-9 are artistically composed and for the most part deal with general matters, for example the decline of individual freedom and the situation of literature during the Principate. The humane attitude of the author towards women and slaves is new, as (...) is his active aesthetic interest in architecture and landscape. (shrink)

In C.Q. N.S. xv , 293 f., in a discussion of the popularity of theyounger Pliny's Letters in the late fourth century, I adduced three passages of St. Jerome which reveal acquaintance with the Letters. The list may be extended.

Whatever fond hopes their author may have entertained when he published them, the Letters of the younger Pliny did not meet with an appreciative public. The first, indeed almost the only, writer before modern times to have read them with care and to have signalled his admiration by imitation is Sidonius Apollinaris, bishop of Auvergne in the late fifth century.