CHAPTER VII. THE REIGNS OF NERVA AND TRAJAN (96-117 A.D.).

The death of Domitian was the end of tyranny in Rome. Under Nerva a new regime was inaugurated. Liberty of speech and action was allowed, and authors were not slow to profit by it. The forced repression of so many years had matured, not quenched, the talent of the greatest writers. Virtuous men had pondered in gloomy silence over the wickedness of the time, and they now gave to the world the condensed result of their bitter reflections. Amid the numerous talents of the period three have sent down to us a large portion of their works. These three are all writers of the highest mark, and two of them of commanding genius. For grace, urbanity, and polish, Pliny yields only to Cicero; for realistic intensity directed to a satiric purpose, Juvenal yields to no writer whatever; for piercing insight into the human heart and an imagination which casts its characters as in a white-hot furnace, Tacitus well deserves the name of Rome's greatest historian. Chronologically speaking, Pliny is posterior to the other two. But he is so good a type of this comparatively happy age that he may well come before us first. The other two, occupied with past regrets, reflect in their tone of mind an earlier time.

C. PLINIUS CAECILIUS SECUNDUS, the nephew of Pliny the elder, was born at Novocomum [1] 62 A.D. When he was eight years old his father died, and two years after his uncle adopted him. In the interim he was assigned to the care of his guardian, that Virginius Rufus of whom Tacitus deigned to be the panegyrist. He was brought early to Rome, and placed under Quintilian and other celebrated teachers, among whom was Nicetes of Smyrna, one of the foremost rhetoricians of the day. He served his first campaign in Syria, but seems to have given his time to philosophy more than soldiering. He was even more emphatically a man of peace than Cicero, and it is not easy to fancy him wielding the sword, though we can well picture him to ourselves resplendent in full dress uniform, well satisfied with his appearance, and trying his best to assume the martial air. While in Asia he spent much time with the old philosopher Euphrates, of whose daily life he has given a pleasing description in the tenth letter of his first book.

On his return he studied for the bar, and pleaded with success. He passed through the several offices of state, and prided himself not a little on the fact that he attained the consulate and pontificate at an earlier age than Cicero. Somewhat later he was elected to the college of augurs, an honour which prompts him to remind the world that Cicero had been augur too! In 98 A.D., when Trajan had been two years emperor, Pliny was raised for the second time to the consulate, and was admitted to some share of his sovereign's confidence. The points, it is true, on which he was consulted were not of the most important, but he was extremely pleased, and has recorded his pleasure in more than one of his charming letters. In 103 he was sent to fill the office of proconsul in Pontus and Bithynia; and while there, he kept up the interesting correspondence with Trajan, to which the tenth book of his letters is devoted.

Though eloquence was not what it had been, it still remained the highest career that an ambitious man could adopt. Even under the tyrants it had served as the keenest weapon of attack, the surest buckler of defence. The public accusation, which had once been the stepping-stone to fame, had changed its name, and become delation. And he who hoped to parry its blows must needs have been able to defend himself by the same means. Pliny was ahead of all his rivals in both departments of eloquence. He was the most telling pleader before the centumviral tribunal, and he was the boldest orator in the revived debates of the senate. His best forensic speech, his De Corona, as he loved to style it, was that on behalf of Accia Variola, a lady unjustly disinherited by her father, whom Pliny's eloquence reinstated in her rights. In the senate Pliny rose to even higher efforts. He rejoiced to plead the cause of injured provinces against the extortion of rapacious governors, who (as Juvenal tells us) pillaged the already exhausted wealth of their helpless victims. On more than one occasion Pliny's boldness was crowned with success. Caecilius Classicus, who had ground down the Baeticenses, was so powerfully impeached by him that, to avoid conviction, he sought a voluntary death, and what was better, the confiscated property was returned to its owners. The still worse criminal, Marius Priscus, who in exile “enjoyed the anger of the gods,” [2] was compelled by Pliny and Tacitus to disgorge no small portion of his plunder. When carried away by his subject Pliny spoke with such vehemence as to endanger his delicate lungs, and he tells us with no small complacency that the emperor sent him a special message “to be careful of his health.” But his greatest triumph was the accusation of Publicius Certus, a senator, and expectant of the consulship. The fathers, long used to servitude, could not understand the freedom with which Pliny attacked one of their own body, and at first they tried to chill him into silence. But he was not to be daunted. He compelled them to listen, and at last so roused them by his fervour that he gained his point. It is true that he risked neither life nor fortune by his boldness; but none the less does he deserve honour for having recalled the senate to a tardy sense of its position and responsibilities.