Letters of Pliny

Providing a series of fascinating views of Imperial Rome The Letters of the Younger Pliny also offer one of the fullest self-portraits to survive from classical times. This Penguin Classics edition is translated with an introduction by Betty Radice.A prominent lawyer and administrator Pliny was also a prolific letter-writer who numbered among his correspondents such eminent figures as Tacitus Suetonius and the Emperor Trajan as well as a wide circle of friends and family. His lively and very personal letters address an astonishing range of topics from a deeply moving account of his uncle's death in the eruption that engulfed Pompeii to observations on the early Christians - 'a desperate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths' - from descriptions of everyday life in Rome with its scandals and court cases to Pliny's life in the country.