A New Commentary on the Letters of Pliny

Abstract

THE LETTERS of the Younger Pliny are the chief contemporary source for the ill-documented reign of Trajan. They describe its society and institutions, they reflect its values and its judgements on history both recently past and in the making. Sherwin-White is therefore justified in confining this commentary' to historical and social matters. In a long general introduction he discusses the chronology of the Letters, their subject matter, the career of Pliny, and the sources for the constitution of the text. There follows the Commentary in about 440 pages on Books I to IX. In a separate introduction to Book X are discussed Bithynia, chronology, possible omissions from the collection, the drafting of Trajan's replies, and arguments for the necessity of Pliny's requests for guidance (the last two sections being substantially a reprint of the author's article in JRS 52). The Commentary on Book X occupies about 280 pages. Of five appendixes, three give respectively the text of the inscriptions relating to Pliny, the consular Fasti for 94-117, and a general list of contemporaries mentioned in the Letters; Appendixes IV and V are altered reprints of two of the author's articles, from JRS 47 on the date of Pliny's praetorship and from yTS 3 on the early persecutions of the Christians.