Pliny the Younger

Roman lawyer, author and magistrate (61 – c.113)

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Lived 61–113, aged 52Italy

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Wikipedia
73 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
61–113
Aged 52

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

A Roman lawyer whose private correspondence survived two millennia intact. The 247 letters that remain — including 121 sent directly to Emperor Trajan — are now the clearest window into how Rome's provinces were actually governed.

Biography

About

Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus was born in 61 and raised partly by his uncle, Pliny the Elder. He climbed the cursus honorum, the ladder of Roman civil and military posts, and served as an imperial magistrate under Trajan, who reigned from 98 to 117. Of the 369 letters he wrote, 247 survived — some addressed to Trajan, others to the historian Tacitus and other notables of the period. During his time in Syria he moved among philosophers including Artemidorus and Euphrates the Stoic, and may have employed the biographer Suetonius on his staff. He died around 113, leaving behind one of the few…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Pliny the Younger

Pliny the Younger

saidundated

Modestus said of Regulus that he was "the biggest rascal that walks upon two legs.

— Letter 5, 14.

Pliny the Younger

saidundated

There is nothing to write about, you say. Well, then, write and let me know just this,—that there is nothing to write about; or tell me in the good old style if you are well.

— Letter 11, 1.

Pliny the Younger

saidundated

I contemplate the sort of friend, the sort of man I am now without. He completed his sixty-seventh year, a reasonable age for the sturdiest of us; I acknowledge that.

— Letter 12, 11–13; on the death of his friend Cornelius Rufus.

Pliny the Younger

saidundated