the Younger Pliny

Born in 61 or 62 CE and raised in northern Italy, Pliny the Younger was educated in rhetoric and law and went on to build a successful public career in Rome. He served under several emperors, became a senator and consul, and was known both as an advocate in the courts and as a man deeply invested in literature and public life.

He is best remembered for his Letters, which were carefully arranged for publication and reveal friendships, legal cases, villa life, patronage, and the everyday pressures of Roman elite society. Two of those letters, addressed to Tacitus, describe the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE and the death of his uncle, Pliny the Elder; they are among the most famous eyewitness accounts to survive from antiquity.

Later in life he served as imperial governor of Bithynia-Pontus, where his official correspondence with Emperor Trajan was preserved. That exchange, along with the rest of his writings, has made him one of the most accessible Latin authors for modern readers: observant, humane, ambitious, and unusually revealing about the world he lived in.