No doubt, large segment of intermediate Latin students would endorse the following evaluation of Pliny’s character: “Pliny never grapples with hard problems, emotional and intellectual. He has neither trenchancy nor passion, and consequently he cannot move the reader… Pliny’s view of his times is tinged with complacency and humbug: only a few letters reveal that this is not the best of all possible worlds.” (F.R.D. Goodyear in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature. Vol. II. Part 4. The Early Principate, p. 163).
I would like to focus on the final point made by Goodyear in this critique of Pliny. Goodyear incidentally reveals an important philosophical aspect of Pliny’s letters. Indeed, Pliny does consistently envision contemporary Roman society as “the best of all possible worlds.” This notion, so readily shrugged off by Goodyear, provides an excellent starting point for stimulating students to critically evaluate Pliny’s writings. My paper contends that the most fruitful way to redeem Pliny’s reputation in the eyes of Latin students is to read Pliny as a moral and political thinker who fashions an ideal state in which the emperor, the senate, and the lower ranks share the same moral, and at times even the same aesthetic values. In this connection, I suggest that, in addition to integrating Pliny’s letters into self-contained thematic units, the letters should be arranged so as to introduce students to Pliny’s main political doctrine.
In his book The Anxieties of Pliny the Younger, Stanley Hoffer (p. 8) points out: “Pliny combines the three cardinal political roles all in one, the royal follower, the autonomous colleague, and the leading senior statesman, to constitute the ideal Roman imperial statesman.” Pliny perceives himself as an embodiment of the empire, its critical tool. His moral code approaches that of the princeps; Pliny, like Trajan in Pliny’s famous Panegyric, appears to possess the virtues of the ideal emperor: pietas (cf. Pan. 2), mansuetudo (cf. Pan. 2), humanitas (cf. Pan. 2), auctoritas (cf. Pan. 8) Like Trajan, who is praised by Pliny for living with his citizens as a father with his children, Pliny defines his relationship with municipal clientele as essentially paternal: As a good emperor is supposed to treat his state with filial or parental piety, so Pliny professes his attachment to his hometown in letter 4.13: “Now, as I am still childless, I am prepared to contribute on behalf of our commonwealth, as if it were my daughter or parent, a third of the sum you decide to collect” (4.13.5). Pliny’s affection for his hometown is fashioned according to the imperial ethical standards: just as Trajan is honored with the title the father of the fatherland (pater patriae), so Pliny views himself as the father of his native town. Indeed, benevolent treatment of municipal clients was widely recognized by their imperial patrons (cf. E. Leach, “The Politics of Self-Presentation: Pliny’s Letters and Roman Portrait Sculpture.” CA 9 (1990), p. 30).
