The Decline and Fall of the Periodic Sentence (A Pliny Appreciation Guide, Part 1)

Introduction (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Pliny the Younger)

Starting in the 2025–26 school year, the Advanced Placement (AP) Latin curriculum switched its prose readings from Caesar’s Dē Bellō Gallicō to Pliny the Younger’s Epistulae. For my part, I was excited about this change: one of the reasons I had been a hard “no” on AP for many years was the enormous amounts of Caesar I would have to read and teach. I had taught Pliny in the past, and my students and I both found them to be enjoyable reading. So, when our school district did away with the International Baccalaureate (IB) program, I naturally saw an opportunity to test out the new AP curriculum with a handful of willing students, and was eager to dive in, read a lot of epistulae, and get to know Pliny as our new friend and correspondent.

Among veteran AP teachers, however, there were some who were not so happy that Caesar was replaced with Pliny. Reactions ranged from intimidation to frustration, and the word “hate” was thrown around more than once. As someone who always enjoyed Pliny, this came as a bit of a surprise to me. Sure, he's harder than Caesar, but I never found him to be prohibitively difficult. While some of these teachers' complaints were legitimate, others showed a profound lack of understanding of Pliny’s work: “a demoralizing read, real cure for insomnia,” “he has no real style as a writer,” “a slog.” (That last one, to me, was particularly rich coming from a group of teachers who were previously forced to read tons of Caesar!)

So as someone who has taught and enjoyed Pliny before, and who has some notes from previous research, I thought I would put together a Pliny appreciation guide, primarily aimed at teachers from whose cold, dead hands Caesar would have to be pried. It will be made up of several posts highlighting the major grammatical, stylistic, and thematic features of Pliny's letters. I’m no expert in Pliny at all, and I’m not even his biggest fan. But given the sheer amount of complaining, and even vitriol, from the veterānī legiōnum Caesaris, someone’s got to stick up for our Pliny. 

My main sources for this series are Christopher Whitton’s “green-and-yellow” commentary on Book 2 of the Epistulae (Cambridge, 2013)—even though none of the AP selections are from Book 2, his excellent introduction applies to all of Pliny’s letters. I also recommend the introduction to A. N. Sherwin-White’s Fifty Letters of Pliny (Oxford, 1969).

Part 1: The Decline and Fall of the Periodic Sentence

In Latin literature of the so-called “Golden Age,” readers often encounter periodic sentences, where phrases and subordinate clauses pile up to provide context or build tension before the main action of the sentence is finally revealed at the end. Such periodic sentences are common in Caesar, Cicero, and Livy. In the example below, rather than leading with the main action, Caesar’s periodic sentence uses a variety of subordinate clauses and ablatives absolute to frontload the context and circumstances surrounding the attack:

At hostēs, ubi prīmum nostrōs equitēs cōnspexērunt, quōrum erat quīnque mīlium numerus, cum ipsī nōn amplius octingentōs equitēs habērent, quod iī quī frūmentandī causā erant trāns Mosam profectī nōndum redierant, nihil timentibus nostrīs, quod lēgātī eōrum paulō ante ā Caesare discesserant atque is diēs indūtiīs erat ab hīs petītus, impetū factō celeriter nostrōs perturbāvērunt. (Caesar, DBG 4.12)
“But the enemies, when they first spotted our horsemen—which were 5,000 in number, while they had no more than 800 horsemen, because those who had left across the Meuse to forage had not yet returned, and our soldiers were not fearing at all, because their envoys had just left Caesar having sought a truce for that day—an attack having been made, quickly alarmed our soldiers.

In contrast with the periodic sentences of Caesar’s era, Pliny’s style could be described as “additive,” which is to say that Pliny “[presents] information in smaller units that often lead sequentially one to the next: explanations more commonly follow than precede, and information is frequently tacked on after the main clause, or Pliny modifies a statement as if thinking aloud”^[1]. Indeed, because of this “plain and logical” construction of sentences, readers might even find that Pliny “uses a syntactical system that seems more normal to the English reader than that of Cicero or Livy”—or even of Caesar ^[2]. 

Here is an example from the AP syllabus:

Properat illūc unde aliī fugiunt, rēctumque cursum rēcta gubernācula in perīculum tenet adeō solūtus metū, ut omnēs illīus malī mōtūs omnēs figūrās ut dēprēnderat oculīs dictāret ēnotāretque. (6.16.10)
“[My uncle] hurries to where the others are fleeing from and holds a straight course and a straight rudder into danger, so free from fear, that he dictated and noted all the movements and all the shapes of that bad thing as he saw them.”

Notice how, unlike Caesar, Pliny begins with the core of the sentence (Properat illūc). In fact, Pliny places the main verb near the start of his sentences frequently: note how in the nine letters on the AP syllabus written by Pliny, five of them begin with a main verb as either the first or second word of the letter.^[3] After establishing the primary action of the sentence, Pliny then builds details onto it in an “additive” style. He first gives more information on the place his uncle is going (unde aliī fugiunt), and then more details about the circumstances and his uncle’s actions (rēctumque cursum rēcta gubernācula in perīculum tenet). Finally, he describes his uncle’s state of mind (adeō solūtus metū), and then gives an example that justifies this description (ut omnēs illīus malī mōtūs…). In this sentence, and frequently throughout his letters, Pliny introduces ideas one after the other, producing a casual or off-the-cuff effect. If we picture Pliny writing his letter, we might imagine that he writes down the key event first, as a sort of sketch, and then adds details and descriptions to complete the picture.

Another example of this "additive" sentence structure:

Dēserta inde et damnāta sōlitūdine domus tōtaque illī mōnstrō relicta; prōscrībēbātur tamen, seu quis emere seu quis condūcere ignārus tantī malī vellet. (7.23.6)
“The house was then deserted and condemned to solitude, and the whole of it was left to that monster; it was nevertheless put up for sale, if someone wanted to buy or rent it, ignorant of such an evil.”

There are two key facts Pliny wishes to convey: the house was abandoned, and the house was put up for sale. Both of these verbs (dēserta and prōscrībēbātur) are at the beginning of their respective clauses. He then proceeds to add more details to each. For the first, he dresses it up with a tricolon crescens to intensify the desolation of the house; in the second, he explains to the reader why anyone would agree to live in such a place. (Recall that, as Whitton noted, "explanations more commonly follow than precede" in Pliny.)

In another feature of this “additive” style, Pliny writes with fewer subordinate clauses and participle phrases, preferring instead to use strings of independent clauses, often with asyndeton. This lack of subordination is called parataxis.^[4] Take this sentence (which is in fact the longest on the AP syllabus):

Audīrēs ululātūs fēminārum, īnfantum quirītātūs, clāmōrēs
virōrum; aliī parentēs aliī līberōs aliī coniugēs vōcibus requīrēbant, vōcibus nōscitābant; hī suum cāsum, illī suōrum miserābantur; erant quī metū mortis mortem precārentur; multī ad deōs manūs tollere, plūrēs nusquam iam deōs ūllōs aeternamque illam et novissimam noctem mundō interpretābantur. (6.20.14)
"You would hear the wails of women, the cries of children, the shouts of men; some were looking for their parents, some for their children, some for their spouses, and recognizing them by voice; some were lamenting their fate, and others the fate of their loved ones; there were those who, for fear of death, were praying for death; many were raising their hands to the gods; many more were understanding that there were no longer any gods anywhere, and that this was the last eternal night for the world."

Each element of this sentence is an independent clause (except for the relative clause introduced by erant quī, which is not so much a subordinator as a way of introducing the next item on the list). Notably, there are no participles, no ablatives absolute. Contrast this passage with a similar scene in Livy:

Clāmor omnia variīs terrentium ac paventium vōcibus mixtō mulierum ac puerōrum plōrātū complet. (AUC 5.21)
"Shouting filled everything with various voices of frightening and fearful people, with the wailing of women and children mixed in."

Livy interrupts the main action—Clāmor omnia complet—with two lengthy phrases, including an ablative absolute. Pliny, on the other hand, chooses not to enclose his details within each other; rather, he puts them side-by-side sequentially as independent clauses. These kinds of sentences—additive and sequential rather than periodic—were favored by Pliny for their casual, spontaneous effect; reading this sentence, we are meant to imagine that he is simply adding these little vignettes as he thinks of them. Pliny’s sentence structure, like everything else about his letters, is in service of the informality (or impression of informality) that is a key feature of the epistolary genre.

Notes

1. Whitton, p. 21. ↩
2. Sherwin-White, p. xvii, xix–xx. ↩
3. These are 6.4 (sum), 6.7 (scrībis), 6.16 (petis), 6.20 (ais), and 10.6 (ago). See also Whitton: “as in Cicero’s letters and dialogues, verbs are prone to fall early, though this is no absolute rule: they may be final, juxtaposed mid-sentence, framing a clause, or a combination of these” (p. 21). ↩
4. “Participles are used relatively lightly, and parataxis (lack of subordination) is common” (Whitton, p. 21). ↩