By Henry Maravilla

 

In Book 2 of his letters, Pliny the Younger writes a laudatio dedicated to his Laurentine villa in Latium. Although Pliny addresses these letters to friends, he arguably seeks to convey something profound — to show off his lifestyle as one that should be emulated by other Roman elites.¹ Pliny is particularly interested in displaying his moral qualities and his inclination toward leisure (otium) instead of extravagance (luxuria) to configure himself as a good Roman elite within the politically limiting — and often dangerous — imperial landscape of Rome.² As Gibson-Morello explains, “In Pliny[,] a villa description may be anything but neutral or objective. Rather[,] villas may be … deployed as ciphers in a literary game which is also designed to tell us something about the character of the owner.”³ In other words, Pliny’s description of his Laurentine villa serves as a lens for the reader to examine the character of Pliny himself. In doing this, Pliny invites a close reading of the text. 

Taking my cue, we should pay particular attention to the way Pliny introduces his Laurentine villa and how he chooses to characterize the physical spaces in and around his villa in a way that not only describes the villa, but also Pliny himself. In framing his letter, Pliny must overcome a paradoxical challenge: on the one hand, luxuria, the wasting of money and resources on superficial material, was considered excessive and a moral vice.⁴ On the other hand, a Roman elite had to live in a house that was appropriate to his social status (dignitas).⁵ 

Given these tensions, Pliny must introduce and describe his villa in a way that makes the space seem modest but suitable for a Roman elite, as well as justify his extended description of his Laurentine villa. If he describes his villa without a framework, he risks appearing boastful, which would also diminish the villa’s value in the eyes of the reader. This anxiety is apparent in another letter, 5.6, where Pliny describes his villa in Tuscany; here, he defends his literary undertaking by comparing his account to the ekphrastic undertakings in the Iliad and the Aeneid.⁶ Pliny also introduces the description of his villa in Tuscany under the pretense of reassuring a friend. Pliny’s friend expresses concern that the Tuscany villa is located in a climate detrimental to one’s health. In reply, Pliny remarks, “I am touched by your kind concern when you try to dissuade me from my intention of staying in Tuscany in summer.”⁷ Pliny is careful to justify writing a letter describing his villa in Tuscany. However, Pliny’s tactful justification then raises the question: how does he justify his extended description and praise of his Laurentine villa? 

In the opening of his letter, Pliny invites the reader to call the villa “Laurens,” a woman’s name, saying, “or my Laurentian (Laurens), if you like that better.”⁸ Pliny also ends the letter characterizing the features of his villa as a dowry: “But I hope you will, for then the many attractions (dotibus) of my treasured house will have another strong recommendation in your company.”⁹ Pliny’s characterization of his villa as a woman and a wife has two functions: it justifies the detailed description that he is about to give of his villa to the reader without looking boastful, and it draws the reader’s attention to the relationship between the villa and its owner. 

To explain the former, it is first necessary to look at some of the social conventions surrounding the praise of Roman women. Funerary inscriptions can provide good insight on this subject, particularly the Laudatio Murdiae,¹⁰ found in Rome on a marble slab dated between 27 BCE and 14 CE. The inscription was written by Murdia’s son, in which he honored his deceased mother. The inscription shows a peculiar emphasis on Murdia’s will, but more relevant to our purposes is the remark the son makes at the end of the inscription.¹¹ The son says, “… it is necessary to commemorate [women’s] common values so that nothing may be lost from just precepts and besmirch the remainder.”¹² 

The inscription raises an interesting feature about the laudatio of a woman: praise is categorized. For this reason, even if someone provides a great deal of praise about a woman, if that person does not praise every feature that is commonly praised, it must be assumed that the unpraised feature was not present in the woman. In other words, when undertaking a laudatio of a woman, one must praise each and every praiseworthy feature of hers. 

Thus, by inviting the reader to look at his laudatio of his Laurentine villa as though it were a laudatio of a woman, Pliny justifies his extended description of his villa; the reader should expect that Pliny will describe all the rooms in his villa since, if Pliny did not, then one would assume that the part(s) of the villa he left out must be quite bad, diminishing particularly praiseworthy features of his Laurentine villa. 

As for the second function, Pliny’s characterization of his villa as a woman also draws the reader’s attention to the inherent conflation of a wife’s praise and her husband’s implied praise. Hemelrijk writes, “A particular set of virtues or extraordinary traits ascribed to the deceased may throw light on an individual relationship — or rather on how the dedicator or dedicators, wanted to present their relationship.”¹³ The question Hemelrijk raises here is why the dedicator cares about fashioning an ideal depiction of their spouse and the spouse’s relationship with the dedicator. The praise of a wife also comments (implicitly) on the qualities of her husband. If a husband had an extraordinarily dutiful and virtuous wife, he would also look like a dutiful Roman man. A laudatio, whether of a wife or of a villa, is a form of self-representation. Likewise, if a Roman lives in a home that fits within the moralistic rubric of traditional Roman values outlined by figures such as Cato the Elder and Pliny the Elder, those traditional values are then also conferred upon the man who owns and lives in that villa.¹⁴ 

Pliny expands on this conflation between praising a villa and its owner by describing the features of his home using “dual-serving” adjectives. These adjectives can both describe physical spaces and moral qualities of people. After referring to his villa as “Laurens,” he assures the reader that they will understand why he likes his home so much once they “…realize the attractions (gratiam) of the house itself.”¹⁵ Gratiam here is often translated as charm or grace, which would make sense given that he describes a villa. However, since he has invited the reader to think about his villa as a person, his use of gratia here becomes more striking. Pliny invites the reader to think about his villa as an entity that gives back despite the receiver not having the expectation that they will receive gratia in return. 

Since a villa expectedly ought to be capable of receiving guests hospitably,¹⁶ Pliny invites the reader to understand that his villa is part of a social contract between the guest and the villa, and by extension, the guest and Pliny. Furthermore, since a description about the villa directly reflects the qualities of the owner, Pliny also characterizes himself as someone who reciprocates a kindness (beneficium) with a thanksgiving (gratia). Perhaps Pliny even intends to imply that his repayment of gratia would take the form of an invitation to his villa. In portraying himself like this, Pliny can circumnavigate the troubling similarity between gratia and an economic transaction. As Griffin notes, the distinction lies in the fact that gratia in return for beneficium is “unspecified; indefinite as to time, quantity, and quality.”¹⁷ Pliny personifies his Laurentine villa as a person that returns beneficium. This personification in turn characterizes Pliny as someone who will also repay beneficium with gratia. This indirect characterization allows Pliny to portray himself as someone who does not treat beneficium and gratia as economic phenomena, a similarity between which, as Griffin notes, the Romans wanted to distinguish.¹⁸ He himself would not repay beneficium with gratia because he owes the person — rather he would repay this “debt” indirectly by allowing someone to visit his Laurentine villa. In other words, he is not the agent to make the repayment, his villa is.

Pliny also makes use of these dual-serving adjectives to ensure that his readers do not criticize him as indulging in luxuria. This anxiety is particularly noticeable in that Pliny’s description lacks any mention of commodities or luxury materials in the rooms of the villa, but it instead focuses on general descriptions of the rooms and where they are positioned in relation to the rest of the house; the absence of any mention of luxury materials is particularly striking since in other works of praise, such as those by Statius, those sorts of descriptions are ubiquitous.¹⁹ Pliny describes his atrium as “unpretentious (frugi) but not without dignity (sordidum).”²⁰ These adjectives, frugi and sordidum, tell the reader very little about what the Atrium actually looks like, and this lack of detail invites the reader to imagine an ideal Atrium, according to traditional Roman values. Pliny likely does not follow this description of the Atrium with any more detail because even though he may consider some decoration in the Atrium to still be frugi and in accordance with what would be considered “traditional Roman values,” he would leave himself open to readers criticizing him for not being frugi enough. Additionally, since, as mentioned before, the nature of the space also reflects on the nature of the man, by characterizing the Atrium as frugi, Pliny also discretely characterizes himself in this way as well. 

After describing his Atrium, he moves on to describing more private areas of his villa, particularly the triclinia (dining rooms) and cubicula (bedrooms).²¹ Since private spaces in the Roman villa were not accessible to the public, there would presumably have been concerns about what was happening in these spaces. Since the spaces were private, Pliny needs to be careful to characterize these spaces by specifying their use. Given this anxiety, Pliny uses dual-serving adjectives when describing these private spaces to give the impression to the readers that nothing problematic occurs within these rooms. These dual-serving adjectives more so illuminate the use of the space than the decorations inside. For instance, Pliny describes one of the cubicula as politissimum, or most refined: “On the other side of the dining-room is an elegantly decorated bedroom (cubiculum est politissimum).”²² Pliny does not explain what about this cubiculum is exceptionally refined, leading the reader to imagine the use of the cubiculum itself as politissimum. Although omitting a description of the interior decoration of the cubiculum, Pliny does orient the reader as to where this cubiculum is relative to other parts of the house — how the space is used and where that space is situated are more critical than what is actually in that space. This politissimum cubiculum is across from the triclinium. By describing this cubiculum and its location, he also comments on the triclinium and its use. If the triclinium was used immoderately, since this cubiculum is so close to the triclinium, the cubiculum could not possibly be described as “refined” given its proximity. Since the cubiculum is characterized as “refined,” however, the triclinium must therefore also be used in a moderate manner. In this way, Pliny comments on the moderate use of both the cubiculum and the triclinium.

Pliny again uses the description of space to characterize the use of the space rather than what is inside when he says, “In the angle of this room and the dining-room is a corner which retains and intensifies the concentrated warmth of the sun (purissimum solem).”²³ Pliny’s description of his winter-quarters and gymnasium as capturing purissimum solem is significant for a couple reasons. First, since Pliny uses this villa as a winter home, it is pertinent that he explains how naturally comfortable his private spaces are (i.e., sun provides warmth, so it is a nice place to spend time in). Additionally, purissimum can be used to describe a person as “chaste” or “faultless.”²⁴ Pliny is not only describing the nature of the space itself, but also the way he uses the space — in this case, he is characterizing the space around where the purissimum solem shines, i.e., his winter-quarters and where he works out. He is again careful about how he describes these private places; he cannot omit the discussion of these spaces since, like in the case of the laudatio of a woman, to omit a description of these places would imply that he behaves intemperately there. Therefore, since he has to describe these places, he uses these dual-serving adjectives to reassure the reader that he uses these private spaces in a way befitting of traditional Roman values.

The way Pliny uses these private spaces, or, in other words, where he spends his otium is particularly salient since, as Leach states, “Pliny positions otium, or luxury time, as an alternative to material luxury: a sign of status whose valuation is wholly dependent upon its modes of employment and display.”²⁵ Instead of describing his wealth and status in terms of the material goods he has in his villa, he describes how the spaces are used. The room conforms itself to how he spends his otium. When describing his library, Pliny says, “Round the corner is a room built round in an apse… and with one wall fitted with shelves like a library (in bibliothecae speciem) to hold the books which I read and read again.”²⁶ Interestingly, Pliny does not say he has a room that is a library but rather one that is in bibliothecae speciem. He then goes on to describe the place by the way he uses it — as a place where he takes books to read. He does not include any mention of how many books he has or what the subjects of the books are. He also omits any mention of decoration. A library is not a library because he has decorated the room to look like one. Rather, he uses a room as a library and, by doing this, the room is a library. Making this distinction, Pliny comments more on his own character and the way he uses his otium than the place itself. 

Apart from describing the layout of his villa to comment on the way he uses the building, Pliny also uses the description of the space where his Laurentine villa is situated to comment on the way he lives. He does so by commenting on the characteristics and use of the agricultural and terrestrial spaces surrounding his villa. 

Pliny draws the reader’s attention to the agricultural landscape surrounding his villa. He says, “then [the road] broadens and opens out through wide meadows where there are many flocks of sheep and herds of horses and cattle driven down from the mountains in winter to grow sleek (nitescunt) on the pastures in the springlike climate.”²⁷ Pliny characterizes the environment where his villa is located as one where flocks and cattle can grow sleek during the winter. Since his villa is in the same environment, Pliny invites the reader to look at this description of cattle as an analogy to Pliny’s own use of his Laurentine villa, especially since he uses the villa during the winter at the same time the cattle use the pastures nearby. In other words, by describing how herd animals benefit from the regional climate of the land, Pliny also characterizes the location as the perfect place for him to spend the winter growing sleek.

Pliny’s description of his Laurentine villa at first glance looks like simply that — a description of one of his properties. Upon closer inspection, however, he uses what I have referred to as “dual-serving adjectives” in his ekphrasis to comment on his own character. Pliny imagines himself as a traditional member of the Roman elite, pursuing his intellectual studies as opposed to living out an indulgent life. His letter provides another set of guidelines for not only how Romans should live, but also how they should portray their lives in a tasteful way.

 

Henry Maravilla, enrolled in the BA/MA program, is a senior studying Classics at Yale University. His areas of research are focused on questions regarding Hippocratic authorship and the ways in which the Roman elite constructed what it meant to be a “good Roman.”

 

Photo Caption Credits: A painting of Pliny the Younger’s Tuscan villa by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, 1842.

 

Endnotes

1. Harriet I. Flower, “Elite Self-Representation in Rome,” in The Oxford Handbook of Social Relations in the Roman World, ed. Michael Peachin (Oxford University Press, 2014), 7.
2. Eleanor W. Leach, “‘Otium as Luxuria’: Economy of Status in the Younger Pliny’s ‘Letters,’” Arethusa 36, no. 2 (2003): 148, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44578904.
3. Roy K. Gibson and Ruth Morello, Reading the ‘Letters’ of Pliny the Younger: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2012), 211, 216.
4. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton University Press, 1996), 4.
5. Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society, 4.
6. Gibson and Morello, Reading the ‘Letters’ of Pliny the Younger, 214–5.
7. Pliny the Younger, Letters, trans. Betty Radice (Harvard University Press, 1969), 5.6.1.
8. Pliny the Younger, Letters, 2.17.1.
9. Pliny the Younger, Letters, 2.17.29.
10. ILS 8394.
11. Hugh Lindsay, “The ‘Laudatio Murdiae’: Its Content and Significance,” Latomus 63, no. 1 (2004): 94, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41540404.
12. Lindsay, “The ‘Laudatio Murdiae,’” 93. The translation provided here is Lindsay’s.
13. Emily A. Hemelrijk, Women and Society in the Roman World: A Sourcebook of Inscriptions from the Roman West (Cambridge University Press, 2020), 15–6.
14. Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society, 4.
15. Pliny the Younger, Letters, 2.17.1.
16. Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society, 4.
17. Miriam Griffin, “De Beneficiis and Roman Society,” The Journal of Roman Studies 93, no. 1 (2003): 100, https://doi.org/10.2307/3184640.
18. Griffin, “De Beneficiis and Roman Society,” 100.
19. Gibson and Morello, Read the ‘Letters’ of Pliny the Younger, 212.
20. Pliny the Younger, Letters, 2.17.4.
21. Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society, 17.
22. Pliny the Younger, Letters, 2.17.10.
23. Pliny the Younger, Letters, 2.17.7.
24. Note here that again Pliny invites the reader to think of his villa as a wife.
25. Leach, “Otium as Luxuria,” 148.
26. Pliny the Younger, Letters, 2.17.8.
27. Pliny the Younger, Letters, 2.17.3.

 

Bibliography

Flower, Harriet I. “Elite Self-Representation in Rome.” In The Oxford Handbook of Social Relations in the Roman World, edited by Michael Peachin. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Gibson, Roy K., and Ruth Morello. Reading the ‘Letters’ of Pliny the Younger: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Griffin, Miriam. “De Beneficiis and Roman Society.” The Journal of Roman Studies 93, no. 1 (2003): 92-113. https://doi.org/10.2307/3184640.

Hemelrijk, Emily A. Women and Society in the Roman World: A Sourcebook of Inscriptions from the Roman West. Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Leach, Eleanor W.  “‘Otium as Luxuria’: Economy of Status in the Younger Pliny’s ‘Letters.’” Arethusa 36, no. 2 (2003): 147-165, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44578904.

Lindsay, Hugh. “The ‘Laudatio Murdiae’: Its Content and Significance.” Latomus 63, no. 1 (2004): 88-97. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41540404.

Pliny the Younger. Letters, Volume I: Books 1-7. Translated by Betty Radice. Loeb Classical Library 55. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.

Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew. Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Princeton University Press, 1996.