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HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY
The primary questions are easy to pose and hard to answer. What kind of
letters have we here and how were they chosen for publication? More particularly,
were they sent to the addressees, then published in their original form,
are they revised versions of authentic originals, are they literary exercises
which never passed through the post at all, or do some belong to one of these
categories, some to another? In his prefatory epistle (I.I) Pliny says: 'you
have often urged me to collect and publish such letters as I had written with
some special care. I have collected them, disregarding sequence in time (I was
not writing a history), but as each one came to hand.' He adds that, if he
finds or writes any more, he will not suppress them. At first sight this all seems
helpful: it seems less so on further examination. To begin with, writing a
letter is not for Pliny necessarily dependent on a call to send one: he explicitly
testifies in 7.9 that epistolography was a commendable literary pursuit, an aid
to versatility in style. Again, a rough chronological sequence has been established
between the nine books, and some sequence may be found even within
books. Thus 'disregarding sequence in time' is hard to credit. And the choice
of letters for each book cannot be so random as ' as each one came to hand'
suggests, for Pliny has plainly effected a balanced variety of themes within each
of Books 1—7 (in 8—9 he begins to run short of sufficiently diverse material)
and, to some extent, from book to book. There is then a conflict between
what Pliny professes and what he has in fact done.
With few exceptions, each letter treats of a single subject: this is usually
proposed or sketched at the outset, then developed, discussed, and illustrated.
That the letters are planned as organic wholes is further attested by recurrent
structural patterns, such as statement followed by three examples. Pliny
clearly recognizes certain rules of epistolography, and he senses a need for
apology if he breaks them: unity and brevity are especially important. He
rarely hurries, or rambles, or adds a postscript. This control and conscious
planning divorce Pliny's letters from real life and set them in marked contrast
to Cicero's. If we consider the relationship between many of the letters and
their addressees, we get a similar impression of unreality. Often, to be sure,
subject matter and addressee are related (e.g. family affairs and Fabatus, history
or rhetoric and Tacitus), but numerous letters might, as far as we can tell,
have been addressed to anyone whom Pliny chose to flatter by his notice.
And not infrequently, when he initially links theme and addressee, he proceeds
as if oblivious of the addressee's continued existence. Compliment and courtesy
are evident here, but it is a far cry from the lively dialogue of genuine correspondence.
One may wonder how many of Pliny's letters would have elicited
replies. When he has, as so often, not merely proposed a topic but handled
it at length, what was a correspondent to add? For instance, is not 4.30 more a
courteous acknowledgement of Sura's interest in natural science than a
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