Man of High Empire

The Life of Pliny the Younger

Roy K. Gibson

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Paperback

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
06 February 2023

General & world history; Ancient history: to c 500 CE; Roman law

Pliny the Younger (c. 60-112 C.E.)--senator and consul in the Rome of emperors Domitian and Trajan, eyewitness to the eruption of Vesuvius in 79, and early 'persecutor' of Christians on the Black Sea--remains Rome's best documented private individual between Cicero and Augustine. No Roman writer, not even Vergil, ties his identity to the regions of Italy more successfully than Pliny. His individuality can be captured by focusing on the range of locales in which he lived: from his hometown of Comum (Como) at the foot of the Italian Alps, down through the villa and farms he owned in Umbria, to the senate and courtrooms of Rome and the magnificent residence he owned on the coast near the capital.

Organized geographically, Man of High Empire is the first full-scale biography devoted solely to the Younger Pliny. Reserved, punctilious, occasionally patronizing, and perhaps inclined to overvalue his achievements, Pliny has seemed to some the ancient equivalent of Mr. Collins, the unctuous vicar of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Roy K. Gibson reveals a man more complex than this unfair comparison suggests. An innovating landowner in Umbria and a deeply generous benefactor in Comum, Pliny is also a consul who plays with words in Rome and dispenses summary justice in the provinces. A solicitous, if rather traditional, husband in northern Italy, Pliny is also a literary modernist in Rome, and--more surprisingly--a secret pessimist about Trajan, the 'best' of emperors. Pliny's life is a window on to the Empire at its zenith. The book concludes with an archaeological tour guide of the sites associated with Pliny.

By: Roy K. Gibson
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 155mm, Width: 237mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 506g
ISBN: 9780197654835
ISBN 10: 0197654835
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 06 February 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

List of Maps and Figures References and Abbreviations Introduction Chapter 1: Pliny the Younger: Life and Letters Chapter 2: Writing a Modern Biography of an Ancient Roman Chapter 3: Comum Chapter 4: Campania Chapter 5: Rome Chapter 6: Umbria and the Laurentine Shore Chapter 7: Return to Comum Chapter 8: Pontus-Bithynia Envoi Appendix 1: Timeline Appendix 2: Guide to Pliny's Italy and Bithynia Bibliography Indexes

Roy K. Gibson is Professor of Classics at Durham University. His publications include Reading the Letters of Pliny the Younger: An Introduction, with Ruth Morello, and, as editor with Tristan Power, Suetonius the Biographer: Studies in Roman Lives.

Reviews for Man of High Empire: The Life of Pliny the Younger

Mr. Gibson is a subtle reader of Latin and a master of using landscape to bring Pliny's pomposities and insecurities alive.... Few recent books on ancient Rome better communicate the joy of studying a society so connected to our own and yet so different from it. * Peter Stothard, Wall Street Journal *