Who was Pliny the Younger? Why his account was the only to survive Pompeii
This Roman senator wrote some of the greatest letters in history. Here’s how Pliny the Younger’s words have kept ancient Rome alive.
Eyewitness to the tragic fate of Pompeii. Nephew of a great naturalist. Trusted public servant. Friend of emperors. Famed chronicler of the culture and politics of ancient Rome.
Pliny the Younger was all of the above—and his accounts of what life was really like in his era have withstood the test of time. The statesman and keen witness of daily life wrote careful collections of letters that offer a rare, detailed, glimpse into a bygone world. Still relied on by modern readers, Pliny the Younger’s observations of historic events and daily life give a precious look into Roman life. Here’s what to know about the Roman administrator and letter-writer—and why his words are still studied today.
Pliny the Younger’s early life
Born around A.D. 61, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus was the son of a wealthy family in what is now Como, Italy. His father, Lucius Caecilius Cilo, and mother, Plinia Marcella, were members of Rome’s equite or “knight” class, second only to Roman senators in rank.
Pliny’s father, Caecilius, died when he was around eight years old. So, the young boy was adopted by his famous uncle, Pliny the Elder, who was a member of the Roman Senate. Pliny is thought to have briefly lived with both his uncle and mother after Caecilius’ death.
Best known for his lengthy book on natural history, Pliny the Elder was one of the most revered men in ancient Rome. The senator was well-connected and famous for his intellectual accomplishments, and ensured his nephew had a good education.
In a letter, Pliny the Younger recalled that Pliny the Elder preferred being transported by chair rather than walking himself because it saved time for study. “He thought every hour gone that was not given to study,” the nephew wrote.
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Pliny the Younger benefitted from his uncle’s connections, putting him close to influential figures in Roman society. His first tutor, Lucius Verginius Rufus, was famous for stopping an uprising against Emperor Nero and had turned down opportunities to become emperor himself. His second tutor, Quintilian, was one of the most revered orators in the empire, teaching him the art of rhetoric and logic.
Pliny’s rise in politics
Pliny the Younger lived in a society dictated by a strict social hierarchy and a political path known as the cursus honorum, or “course of honors,” that every young man in his class must climb. But his career is one of the best-known of any Roman of his class thanks to his writings. They reveal that after about a year of military service, Pliny graduated from soldier to administrator, then became a judge and prosecutor and was elected to a variety of public administration roles.
Along the way he gained the ear of multiple emperors, rising from an equite to a senator around A.D. 80 and becoming known for his prosecutions of both murderers and corrupt governors. Pliny’s political aspirations eventually took him upward through the ranks of Rome’s complex hierarchy. He eventually rose from quaestor (the lowest rank for higher-class Romans to legatus, or governor, of Bithynia et Pontus, a Roman province on the Black Sea in what is now Turkey.
During his life, Pliny the Younger gained significant political power, serving as a senator and consul and forming relationships with multiple Roman emperors. One of the most noteworthy was Trajan, who became emperor in A.D. 98. Known for his rhetoric, Pliny composed a long panegyric: a formal speech designed to praise and appease the new ruler of Rome. The long oration stroked Trajan’s ego and laid out Pliny’s ideal of a Roman ruler as someone who “can show humanity but remain a sovereign power.”
Though it is unclear if the emperor ever knew of the speech, it survived into modernity as an example of one statesman’s shrewd, and eloquent, political move.
Writing Rome’s living history
Pliny’s large social circle, and administrative duties, were the drivers behind his famed letters. His detailed correspondence with family, friends, and other political figures offer an unmatched view of what daily life was really like for an upper-class citizen of ancient Rome. Over 240 of his letters to friends still survived alongside 71 official ones written to Emperor Trajan.
Among the most famous are a two-part account of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and the tragic death of his uncle, which Pliny wrote about 30 years after the eruption occurred on August 24, A.D. 79 at the prompting of the historian Tacitus. His recollections are the first eyewitness account that survived into modernity.
At the time of the eruption, the teenaged Pliny was in Misenum, approximately 30 kilometers across the Bay of Naples from Pompeii, with his mother and his uncle, who was commanding the Roman fleet. The port offered him a clear vantage point when his mother noticed a large cloud coming from Mt. Vesuvius—a sighting that sparked Pliny the Elder’s interest in the natural world.
“My uncle saw at once that it deserved closer study and ordered the boat to be prepared,” Pliny wrote. “He said that I could go with him, but I chose to continue my studies.”
That decision saved the younger Pliny’s life. As Pliny the Elder and his men steered straight toward the volcano, the elder statesman remarked that “fortune favors the brave.” He even managed to take a nap once his ship arrived across the bay in Stabiae. But the next day, the volcano erupted again, spewing ash and pumice. As his men fled, Pliny the Elder stayed, dying of suffocation. Meanwhile, the younger man stayed on the opposite shore among a “panic-stricken crowd” that prayed, sobbed, and screamed in response to the violence of the volcanic eruption and the earthquake that followed. Days after the ordeal, Pliny the Elder’s slaves returned to the family and reported on the tragedy. His father’s body was preserved, Pliny the Younger remarked, “still fully clothed and looking more like a man asleep than dead.”
Letters that outlived the Roman Empire
Today, Pliny’s vivid recollection of the chaos that broke out along with the fires and ash cloud are cherished by both historians and modern scientists, who have relied on his eyewitness account in research on everything from archaeology to volcanology. His letters also contain accounts of Roman cities and the duties of public servants. His thoughts on slavery (he feared his own servants), love (he married three times), and Christians (he punished them) all survive.
Pliny never claimed to be a historian, and his letters are full of inaccuracies and frustrating omissions. He himself prepared most of his own works, smoothing over details that might cast a bad light on himself, his family, or a tyrannical emperor like Domitian. And he was known to blend facts with opinions and gossip.
The accuracy of his letters may be a matter of longstanding historical debate. But “Pliny’s letters have not lost their currency partly because the social topics are still timely,” writes historian David Lahti. And they ended up outliving the empire in which he lived.
Pliny died soon after taking control of Bythinia et Pontus in A.D. 113. He was 52 years old. Though most of his orations have been lost, some of his correspondence survived thanks to careful work by ancient and modern scholars, who have passed down copies of his letters over the centuries. Pliny’s legacy as a Roman citizen—and his colorful descriptions of ancient life—are still very much alive.
