Fame is the Name of the Game: The opening of Pliny’s Epistula 6.16

A Pliny Appreciation Guide: Part 4

Unlike Pliny, I’ll start with what you want to hear and give you one of my best tips for teaching the Epistulae. When teaching the narrative letters such as 6.16 and 6.20, start with the narrative. Skip his musings in the introductions: you can come back to them later.

I was reminded of this advice when someone in the AP Latin teachers Facebook group said that their students often complained about Pliny’s “fluffy irrelevant words,” saying that “the judgy students find him wordy for no reason and they get frustrated about why he keeps going on about something and once in a while it is without substance. ‘We did all that work for that?!’” I suspect that the opening to 6.16 was one of those sentences: why, when Pliny actually has an interesting story to tell, does he spend so long musing away with “fluffy irrelevant words”?

I propose that teachers eliminate this high barrier to entry by diving right into “Erat Mīsēnī…” and saving the introduction for later. By that point, after all, students will not only have more effective skills to read his more intricate opening lines, but also the context to understand the preamble in relation to the letter as a whole.

That being said, it would be a mistake to skip these opening lines completely. Fluffy and irrelevant as they may seem, they’re never pointless. The introductions to these letters play the crucial role of situating the stories within Pliny’s philosophy and the overall project of the epistulae.

And in order to understand how, we need to get inside Pliny’s head a little bit.

The Psychology of Pliny: First-World Problems

In his monograph called The Anxieties of Pliny the Younger, Stanley E. Hoffer attempts to read into Pliny’s subconscious, to the extent that it’s possible to do this with a person who died 1,900 years ago. Even beyond the anxieties Pliny overtly expresses (which AP teachers will know from 6.4 and 6.7, the letters to his convalescing wife), there are deeper, unexpressed anxieties which Pliny often “seems to ignore or suppress” in his writings.^[1] Hoffer groups these into four domains: politics, friendship, literature, and material conditions.

Around literature in particular, there is a persistent thought which appears throughout his letters and—whether he would admit it or not—seems to profoundly worry Pliny. One of his greatest, most fundamental fears is that he will be forgotten after his death and all the writing he has done will be for nothing. Hoffer channels Pliny’s nagging thoughts in this way:

“His speeches may become lost in the river of oratory that is constantly pouring forth, his imperial pangyric may be made obsolete by another dynastic revolution, and his nugatory works, his letters and poems, may turn out to be nugatory indeed. Is literary achievement nothing but a house of cards, an unstable investment pyramid? Is it merely an empty collection of symbolic markers by which the ruling class perpetuates its political dominance through a display of cultural superiority, achieved through reading and imitating the ‘masters’? Is there a central core of worth for which the writings deserve to be remembered?”^[2]

It doesn’t take much reading between the lines to discover these anxieties in Pliny’s letters. He openly describes his diūturnitātis amor et cupīdō (love and desire for longevity) in 5.8, and in 2.10, he encourages Octavius to publish his poetry by explaining that literature—nothing else—is the only path to immortality:

Habē ante oculōs mortālitātem, ā quā asserere tē hōc ūnō monimentō potes; nam cētera fragilia et cadūca nōn minus quam ipsī hominēs occidunt dēsinuntque. (2.10)
“Keep your mortality before your eyes, from which you can only defend yourself with this one monument [i.e. your poetry], for all other things are fragile and fleeting, and they decline and cease to exist no sooner than the people themselves.”

Pliny even devotes an entire letter to the subject:

C. Plīnius Paulīnō suō s.
Alius aliud: ego beātissimum exīstimō, quī bonae mānsūraeque fāmae praesūmptiōne perfruitur, certusque posteritātis cum futūrā glōriā vīvit. Ac mihi nisi praemium aeternitātis ante oculōs, pingue illud altumque ōtium placeat. Etenim omnēs hominēs arbitror oportēre aut immortālitātem suam aut mortālitātem cōgitāre, et illōs quidem contendere ēnītī, hōs quiēscere remittī, nec brevem vītam cadūcīs labōribus fatīgāre, ut videō multōs miserā simul et ingrātā imāgine industriae ad vīlitātem suī pervenīre. Haec ego tēcum quae cotīdiē mēcum, ut dēsinam mēcum, sī dissentiēs tū; quamquam nōn dissentiēs, ut quī semper clārum aliquid et immortāle meditēre. Valē. (9.3)
“Gaius Pliny greets his Paulinus. Others may disagree, but I think that the most fortunate person is the one who enjoys the assurance of a good and lasting fame, and, certain of their posterity, lives with their future glory. As for me, if the reward of eternal fame were not before my eyes, lazy and deep leisure would please me. Indeed, I am of the opinion that it is incumbent upon all people to think either about their immortality or their mortality; those who think about immortality should strive and exert themselves, while those who think about mortality should rest and relax instead of wasting their short life with fleeting labors, just like I see many people, through the miserable and thankless appearance of hard work, amounting to nothing. I say these things to you just as I say them to myself every day, but I will stop saying them to myself if you disagree—though you won’t disagree, since you always have something distinguished and immortal on your mind. Goodbye.”

It’s also worth taking a look at how Pliny uses the exemplum of Demosthenes in a way that belies his preoccupation with everlasting fame. The famous Greek orator, it is said, was happy and proud to be recognized by a woman on the street who whispered to her companion, “This is Demosthenes!” In Tusculan Disputations 5.103, Cicero declares it to be foolish and superficial to take pleasure in this kind of fame—“Quid hōc lēvius?” (What could be more shallow than this?), he asks. On the other hand, Pliny states in 9.23 that Demosthenes was right to be pleased (iūre laetātus est), adding that he was thrilled to be recognized himself and not afraid to admit it. Clearly, Pliny’s fixation on the praemium aeternitātis was constantly on his mind—it was so pronounced that it even made him disagree with his idol Cicero!

To me, it’s this anxiety about future fame that led Pliny to focus on the epistolary genre in the first place. Why does Pliny write a letter on Vesuvius to his historian friend in a pseudo-historiographical style? Why not simply write a history of the eruption himself, given that (in spite of his objections to undertaking historical writing in 5.8) Pliny clearly relishes in it?^[3] My own take on this question is that Pliny’s whole project is to raise a literary monument not just to himself, but to his friends as well, so that they all will be remembered in perpetuity. This, he says in 5.8, is one of the merits of history writing: “aliorumque famam cum sua extendere” (to extend the fame of others along with one’s own). But with historiography, the subjects already have to be famous; with epistolography, the letters themselves can make subjects famous.

In 7.20, Pliny wishes for his own name to be mentioned alongside that of Tacitus by future generations, knowing the very act of writing the letter is actively constructing such a relationship for posterity. And Pliny expects Tacitus to do the same, openly asking him in 7.33 to name-drop him in the Histories. Pliny is so certain that Tacitus’s work will achieve immortality that he sees it as a certain way into the history books, thus contributing to his own immortality. By publishing their letters, Pliny hopes to return the favor for Tacitus and all his other correspondents.

Epistula 6.16: Pliny’s Big Moment

Let’s turn our attention now to letter 6.16, in which Pliny strives to extend the fame of not only himself and his correspondent, but also his subject, the “Elder” to his “Younger,” whose posthumous reputation was sure to be inextricably tied to his own. So the stakes are already high. It’s also worth mentioning that Pliny endured this catastrophic experience at the age of seventeen, the point in anyone’s young adulthood when their ideas on life are starting to form. The eruption of Vesuvius was a formative experience for Pliny; when he thinks about those few days, he naturally thinks about the philosophies that came out of them. It makes perfect sense that he should begin his narrative about this event by expounding his views on mortality and immortality—the same ones that emerged from the trauma of his uncle’s death.

In sum, this letter is a big one, and Pliny knows it. How to begin it? Sherwin-White observes that many of Pliny’s opening sentences “at first sight promise simplicity, but artifice is soon apparent in the construction.” Often, the vocabulary is mundane and the diction unadorned, but “the cunning of the artist’s hand appears in the order and arrangement.” To be sure, “Pliny is plain when there is no special reason to be otherwise,” especially in the Trajan letters.^[4] But for an important sentence, a deeply personal sentence, a sentence which exemplifies the whole crux of his letters, how could Pliny not make his writing artful and intricate?

Accordingly, it starts with a rhetorical bang of Vesuvian proportions. Just to hit home the prevalence of these themes, I’ll underline all the words having to do with posterity:

Petis ut tibi avunculī meī exitum scrībam, quō vērius trādere posterīs possīs. Grātiās agō; nam videō mortī eius, sī celebrētur ā tē, immortālem glōriam esse prōpositam. Quamvīs enim pulcherrimārum clāde terrārum, ut populī ut urbēs memorābilī cāsū, quasi semper vīctūrus occiderit, quamvīs ipse plūrima opera et mānsūra condiderit, multum tamen perpetuitātī eius scrīptōrum tuōrum aeternitās addet. Equidem beātōs putō, quibus deōrum mūnere datum est aut facere scrībenda aut scrībere legenda, beātissimōs vērō quibus utrumque. Hōrum in numerō avunculus meus et suīs librīs et tuīs erit. Quō libentius suscipiō, dēposcō etiam quod iniungis. (6.16.1–3)
“You ask that I write to you about the death of my uncle, so that you may pass it down to future generations more accurately. I thank you, for I see that, if it is written about by you, immortal glory is intended for his death. For although he will, in a sense, live forever—since he he died in the destruction of the most beautiful lands, just as peoples and cities died in a memorable disaster—and although he himself wrote many lasting works, the immortality of your writings will add much to his perpetuity. Indeed, I think that people are blessed if they have been given by the gods the chance to either do things worth writing about or write things worth reading, and the most blessed are those who have been given both. My uncle will be in their number, thanks to his own books and yours. I begin all the more willingly what you've urged me to do, and I even demand it.”

First, the opening sentence. Sherwin-White proposed a useful classification of Pliny’s openings, some of which he views as more “stylized” than others. The most common “stylized openings” were those that began with a verb such as rogās, quaeris, requīris, or (as we see in 6.16) petis. While these openings may seem authentically epistolary, Sherwin-White views them as imitations, calling them “stylistic devices” that “demonstrate the extent to which the letters are literary compositions.”^[5] Indeed, Guillemin likens this technique to Martial’s epigrams, where a verb like quaeris is often used to tee up a joke (2.38, for example).^[6] In a similar way, Pliny is using petis to set up a an epistolary framework for telling his story—and as with Martial’s epigrams, what presents itself as an artifact of casual socialization is in fact a carefully crafted set piece.

I’m not the first person to blog about letter 6.16. There are some very good close readings of both Vesuvius letters on Quem Dixere Chaos, the blog run by Depauw University professor Pedar W. Foss. (Much of the material from the blog was published in book form by Routledge in 2022 as Pliny and the Eruption of Vesuvius, which has a lot of useful insights—I highly recommend checking it out.) There’s quite a lot to say about this opening, so I won’t fully rehash his interpretations here, but here are some of points of note:

• The tension between life and death (exitum/posterīs, mortī/immortālem) gives way into a similar tension between finality and eternity (occiderit/condiderit and a number of other words having to do with one or the other) resulting in “epically intertwined themes of living and remembering in the face of colossal destruction”^[7]
• The framing of the preamble with two comparative adverb phrases (quō vērius/quō libentius) and bookending it with 2nd-person singular verbs (petis/iniungis)
• The filial duty Pliny shows to his adoptive father by more truthfully (vērius) telling the character of his uncle: “1) as an avid scholar; 2) helpful and courageous humanitarian; and 3) wise philosopher who faced death with equanimity and without fear.”^[8] (Part of this goal, of course, was to dispel the rumor that Pliny the Elder ordered an enslaved person to kill him, which was found in Suetonius.)

To Foss’s observations, I would add that the use of the word beātissimum is telling. This is a superlative that Pliny reserves almost exclusively for people who have achieved the sort of everlasting fame that he yearns for: Isaeus in 2.3, Quintilian in 6.32, the “most fortunate person” in 9.3 above. Fame, constantly at the forefront of Pliny’s mind, is the singular goal, and he can’t imagine anything more fortunate than to live forever.

Circling back to where we began, we see that Pliny’s introductions are not idle musings, nor rhetorical flair for its own sake, nor “fluffy irrelevant words.” In the case of 6.16, the opening sentences lay out not only his purposes for writing this letter, but his goals for his entire epistolary project and his philosophy on life, death, and eternity. I want to stress that I don’t particularly like this aspect of Pliny as a person—I actually find it a bit insufferable. So it seems like karma that Pliny got his wish of still being read, discussed, and blogged about in 2026, but with the catch that high schoolers are exasperated by his pretentiousness!

Notes

1. Hoffer, Stanley E. The Anxieties of Pliny, the Younger. Scholars Press, 1999, p. 2. ↩
2. Hoffer, p. 30. ↩
3. For more on Pliny’s “disingenuous” rejection of historiography, see Augoustakis, Antony. “Nequaquam Historia Digna? Plinian Style in Ep. 6.20.” The Classical Journal, vol. 100, no. 3, 2005, pp. 265–73. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4133021. ↩
4. Sherwin-White, A. N. The Letters of Pliny. Clarendon Press, 1966, p. 6. https://archive.org/details/lettersofpliny0000ansh/page/6/mode/2up ↩
5. Sherwin-White, p. 6. ↩
6. Guillemin, A.-M. Pline et la vie littéraire de son temps Les Belles Lettres, 1929, p. 145. https://archive.org/details/lettersofpliny0000ansh/page/6/mode/2up. ↩
7. Foss, Pedar W. Pliny and the Eruption of Vesuvius. Routledge, 2022, p. 175. ↩
8. Foss, p. 174. ↩