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THE MOST PERFECT WORKS OF NATURE

Peroration to the Natural History>

AVING now treated of all the works of Nature, it will be as well to take a sort of comparative view of her several productions, as well as of the countries which supply them. Throughout the whole earth, then, and wherever the vault of heaven extends, there is no country so beautiful, or which for the productions of nature merits so high a rank, as Italy, that ruler and second parent of the world; recommended as she is by her men, her women, her generals, her soldiers, her slaves, her superiority in the arts, and the illustrious examples of genius which she has produced. Her situation, too, is equally in her favor: the salubrity and mildness of her climate; the easy access which she offers to all nations; her coasts indented with so many harbors; the propitious breezes, too, that always prevail on her shores; advantages, all of them due to her situation, lying as she does midway between the East and the West, and extended in the most favorable of all positions. Add to this the abundant supply of her waters, the salubrity of her groves, the repeated intersections of her mountain ranges, the comparative innocuousness of her wild animals, the fertility of her soil, and the singular richness of her pastures.

Whatever there is that the life of man ought not to feel in want of, is nowhere to be found in greater perfection than here; the cereals, for example, wine, oil, wool, flax, tissues, and oxen. As to horses, there are none I find preferred to those of Italy for the course; while for mines of gold, silver, copper, and iron, so long as it was deemed lawful to work them, Italy was held inferior to no country whatsoever. At the present day, teeming as she is with these treasures, she contents herself with lavishing upon us, as the whole of her bounties, her various liquids, and the numerous flavors yielded by her cereals and her fruits.

Next to Italy, if we except the fabulous regions of India, I would rank Spain, for my own part; those districts at least that lie in the vicinity of the sea. She is parched and sterile in one part, it is true; but where she is at all productive, she yields the cereals in abundance, oil, wine, horses, and metals of every kind. In all these respects, Gaul is her equal, no doubt; but Spain, on the other hand, outdoes the Gallic provinces in her spartium and

her specular stone, in the products of her desert tracts, in her pigments that minister to our luxuries, in the ardor displayed by her people in laborious employments, in the perfect training of her slaves, in the robustness of body of her men, and in their general resoluteness of character.

As to the productions themselves, the greatest value of all, among the products of the sea, is attached to pearls; of objects that lie upon the surface of the earth, it is crystals that are most highly esteemed; and of those derived from the interior, adamas, smaragdus, precious stones, and murrhine, are the things upon which the highest value is placed. The most costly things that

are matured by the earth are the kermes-berry and laser; that are gathered from trees,—nard and Seric tissues; that are derived from the trunks of trees,-logs of citrus-wood; that are produced by shrubs, cinnamon, cassia, and amomum; that are yielded by the juices of trees or of shrubs,-amber, opobalsamum, myrrh, and frankincense; that are found in the roots of trees,the perfumes derived from costus. The most valuable products furnished by living animals on land are the teeth of elephants; by animals in the sea, tortoise-shell; by the coverings of animals, the skins which the Seres dye, and the substance gathered from the hair of the she-goats of Arabia, which we have spoken of under the name of "ladanum "; by creatures that are common to both land and sea, the purple of the murex. With reference to the birds, beyond plumes for warriors' helmets, and the grease that is derived from the geese of Commagene, I find no remarkable product mentioned. We must not omit, too, to observe that gold, for which there is such a mania with all mankind, hardly holds the tenth rank as an object of value, and silver, with which we purchase gold, hardly the twentieth!

Hail to thee, Nature, thou parent of all things! and do thou deign to show thy favor unto me, who, alone of all the citizens of Rome, have in thy every department thus made known thy

praise.

PLINY THE YOUNGER

(CAIUS PLINIUS CECILIUS SECUNDUS)

(61-113? A. D.)

SUBLIUS CECILIUS SECUNDUS, as he was at first named, was in his eighteenth year when his uncle and guardian, the elder Pliny, perished in the eruption of Vesuvius, 79 A. D., leaving his fortune and his name to his ward. The boy had been carefully educated by his mother, and his other guardian, the noble Verginius Rufus, whose virtues he afterwards commemorated in one of his epistles. Rich, well born, well educated, Pliny rapidly rose to eminence in his profession as advocate,

pleading not only in the courts, but also having a part in important cases before the Senate. Not content with professional success, however, he revised and published his speeches, and aspired to be equally eminent as a man of letters; in this and other matters (as he was not ashamed to admit) following the example of Cicero. More than once his letters record the anxious care which he and his friends bestowed upon the elaboration of his orations; but nothing of them has survived save one show-piece, the so-called 'Panegyricus,' in praise of his friend and patron the Emperor Trajan. This is an ornate and labored production, which scarcely excites regret that the rest have perished. There were not wanting friends to tell him that his style was too daring, and Macrobius is probably quite correct in assigning him to the luxuriant and florid type of oratory.

PLINY THE YOUNGER

Pliny's advancement in office was equally rapid,- too rapid, perhaps, since he owed much of his early success to the hated Domitian. He was quæstor in 89, tribune 91, prætor 93, and subsequently filled important posts connected with the Treasury. It seems, indeed, to have been his unusual ability as a financier which commended him; but he is careful to inform us that after Domitian's 'death, papers were

found showing how narrowly Pliny had escaped the fate that overtook all virtue under that odious tyranny. In the year 100 his official career was crowned by an appointment as consul suffectus for the months of September and October; a consulship which he can hardly have enjoyed comparing with Cicero's. Some eleven years later he was sent as proconsul to the province of Pontus and Bithynia; and there, or shortly after his return to Rome, he seems to have died.

The nine books of Letters' on which his fame now rests were composed after the death of Domitian, and published at intervals from 97 to 109. A tenth book was subsequently added, containing his correspondence with Trajan while in his province, together with the Emperor's very business-like answers. In this last book occurs the famous letter concerning the Christians, probably the best-known passage in the entire collection. There can be little doubt that Pliny composed the vast majority of his epistles expressly for publication. It has been pointed out, for example, that only twice is any one of whom an unfavorable opinion is expressed, mentioned by name. Pliny, according to his own account, is the most gallant of husbands, the most amiable of friends; affectionate to all his relatives, generous to all his dependents, on the best of terms with all the world save Regulus;- and Regulus dies betimes. It is not hard for some readers of Pliny to vote him a prig, and to believe that his likeness to Cicero resides chiefly in his vanity and his weakness. And it is not easy for any one familiar with that period as depicted in the pages of Tacitus, Juvenal, and Suetonius, to recognize it when viewed from Pliny's standpoint. So much amiability in the writer, so much virtue in his friends, seem a trifle suspicious. But it would be unjust to consider Pliny a mere poseur,- a deliberate flatterer of himself or of his age. Amiable, clever, cultured, successful, he was disposed to look upon the bright side of men and things. He too had lived through the Reign of Terror, and can tell gloomy tales of men's baseness. But it is much to his credit that he prefers to record the good that survived to a happier epoch. Virtuous men and women, loyal friends, domestic happiness, were still to be found in Rome; and the many charming pictures drawn by Pliny are doubtless as free from exaggeration as the gloomy scenes painted by the more skillful brushes of his greater contemporaries.

While there is some attempt to observe chronological order in the arrangement of the letters, it is evident that the author has tried to heighten their attractiveness by varying his topics. With few exceptions each letter discusses but one subject, and the diction bears every mark of labored simplicity. The correspondence thus lacks that spontaneity and unconscious ease which are universally felt to

be the highest charm of letter-writing,-those qualities which make so much of Cicero's correspondence a delight, and the lack of which makes Pope's letters a perpetual challenge to the reader's criticism. But though Pliny has not "snatched a grace beyond the reach of art," he is nevertheless very good reading. The style may smack of artifice; but with the utmost good taste, good sense, and good humor, he tells us (apparently) all about himself, and very much about the age in which he lived. Literary gossip, anecdotes of famous or infamous characters, ghost stories; descriptions of his villas, his poems, his suppers, his uncle's library; the death of Martial, the eruption of Vesuvius, an invitation to dinner; the deterioration of the law courts, and the abuse of the ballot in the Senate; a plan to purchase an estate, to write an epic, to build a temple, -on these and a hundred other topics he affords us invaluable glimpses into the life of his day. He is sufficiently piquant, without being spiteful; sympathetic, without being sentimental; and while he can no longer be esteemed a genius, he is better loved and more widely known as a singularly pure man and a most entertaining companion.

It was as a genius, however, that he had hoped to live in the memory of posterity. The world of literature filled a large part of his thoughts; and there is no reason to suppose him insincere when he laments that his engagements, social and professional, prevent him from devoting all his strength to the "pursuit of immortality." His uncle had been an indefatigable reader, writer, and collector of books. Among Pliny's teachers was Quintilian, the great rhetorician of the age. Tacitus was his intimate friend. He patronized Martial, and knew well Suetonius, Silius Italicus, and many other writers less important in our eyes, because their works have perished. We may agree with Juvenal that authors' readings must have been a deadly bore, but we need not conclude that Pliny was a hypocrite because he was untiring in his attendance upon them. His poems (as good, no doubt, as his model Cicero's), his orations, his narrative pieces, are repeatedly mentioned, and were evidently the subject of his most anxious thought. So generous a patron, so appreciative a friend, could hardly have lacked favorable critics; and he very cordially welcomes from his contemporaries any forestallment of the verdict which he hoped from posterity. Yet it must be admitted that his critical insight was quite good enough to rate his friends much as later ages have ranked them. The vast merits of Tactitus he fully recognized, and was unfeignedly glad to have his name coupled with the great historian's as an eminent literary character. Of Silius Italicus, on the other hand, he remarks that "he used to write verses with more diligence than force," a criticism which very few have been found to dispute. On other topics than literature, moreover,