The Letters of Pliny the Younger

By: John B. Firth - translator, Pliny

Narrated by: Leighton Pugh

Pliny the Younger (61 CE-c. 113 CE) was a well-connected official in the Rome of the first century, and it is through his ten Books of Letters that we have one of the liveliest and most informal pictures of the period.

As a lawyer and magistrate, he rose through the senate to become consul in AD 100 and therefore corresponded with leading figures including the historian Tacitus, the biographer Suetonius, the philosophers Artemidorus and Euphrates the Stoic and, most notably, Emperor Trajan. The letters which flowed between Trajan and Pliny in the last decade of his life form Book X and are a remarkable glimpse into the relationship an emperor would have with an ‘imperial magistrate’. The letters are particularly well known because they touch upon key topics of the time. These include the eruption of Mount Vesuvius (in which Pliny’s uncle, Pliny the Elder, died) and his interaction with the early Christians, but Pliny also gives accounts of or comments on political events, trials, and social and domestic issues. These letters effectively allow us to meet and listen to a significant Roman of the time.

Public Domain (P)2016 Ukemi Productions Ltd

Everything from the fascinating to the mundane

A few of the letters are a back and forth between Pliny and the Emperor Trajan. Two of the letters to Tacitus contain the description of the eruption of Vesuvius.

Very well done...

I took a long time listening to pliny's letters precisely because i think letters should be enjoyed a few at a time...like poems,epigrams...

The narrator is excellent, high praises for his performance. I wish he was contracted to do Cicero's letters...