This commentary aims to provoke and assist readers to engage with a book of Pliny's Epistles in Latin. It was written in the conviction that so rich a work can only be appreciated in its original language, that slow reading is essential to an understanding of Pliny's art, and that approaching the Epistles through anthologies is to miss fundamental levels of meaning. Pliny's stock is on the rise: a series of articles and monographs in the last two decades has affirmed the value of engaging with his prose not just as document but (also) as literature. Yet literary readers are scarcely served by modern commentaries in any language, and Epistles 2 has so far escaped sustained attention in any form – two reasons to hope that the volume in your hands is timely. It has the aspiration to help readers construe Pliny's Latin, to situate his work in a historical (and scholarly) context and to offer a literary interpretation which opens rather than closes discussion. Atque haec ego sic accipi uolo, non tamquam assecutum esse me credam…(2.5.9).

I have been spoiled over three years with excellent libraries and good company in Cambridge, Munich and Berlin, and with generous help from many people. Anna Anguissola, David Butterfield, Emily Gowers, Harry Hine, Richard Hunter, Myles Lavan, Lucia Prauscello and David Sedley gave advice, and Amanda Claridge, James Diggle, Catharine Edwards, Peter Garnsey and Ingo Gildenhard commented on parts of the book in draft. Neil Hopkinson, Michael Reeve and Tony Woodman offered valuable criticisms of the whole, as did series editors Philip Hardie and Stephen Oakley, generous in their encouragement, and John Henderson, supervisor and mentor of unstinting kindness over many years. With Roy Gibson, exemplary reader, correspondent and host, I have enjoyed uices pulchrae iucundae: it is a pleasure to advertise here his forthcoming commentary on Epistles 6 in this series. Moreed Arbabzadah and James McNamara cheerfully undertook long hours of reference-checking, and it was a great luxury to have Andrew Dyck as copy-editor. To all these my sincere thanks.

Comedy at Rome

In 240 bce, following their victory over Carthage in the First Punic War, the Romans expanded a traditional autumn celebration honouring Jupiter, the ludi Romani, into an international festival in the Greek style. Since that meant, among other things, adding formal dramatic productions to the scheduled entertainments, the Senate commissioned a Greek from Tarentum named Andronicus to produce a tragedy and a comedy in Latin for the occasion. The experiment proved so successful that by the early second century plays of various kinds had become regular features at three additional festivals, the ludi plebeii (November), Apollinares (July), and Megalenses (April), and also began appearing on the bill at votive games, triumphs, and the more elaborate aristocratic funerals. Plays were created on Greek topics and Roman ones, ranging from the serious to the comic, from myth to history to the foibles of daily life, and whether by accident or design, their growing popularity made them a significant medium for popularizing Roman traditions and fostering Roman civic identity. Yet of the many different types of play performed on these occasions, only Latin comedies performed in Greek dress, the so-called comoedia palliata, survive in more than fragments, and of the two hundred or so plays written for the palliata stage in the third and second centuries by a dozen or more different playwrights, only the six of Terence and twenty by Plautus survive intact. The history of this palliata comedy is well treated elsewhere and requires no repetition here, but three overarching factors in our understanding of Roman comedy do merit special attention because of their particular bearing on the study of Hecyra.

1

C. PLINIVS ROMANO SVO S.

Post aliquot annos insigne atque etiam memorabile populi Romani oculis spectaculum exhibuit publicum funus Vergini Rufi, maximi et clarissimi ciuis, perinde felicis. triginta annis gloriae suae superuixit, legit scripta de se carmina, legit historias, et posteritati suae interfuit. perfunctus est tertio consulatu, ut summum fastigium priuati hominis impleret, cum principis noluisset. Caesares quibus suspectus atque etiam inuisus uirtutibus fuerat euasit, reliquit incolumem optimum atque amicissimum, tamquam ad hunc ipsum honorem publici funeris reseruatus. annum tertium et octo-gensimum excessit in altissima tranquillitate, pari ueneratione. usus est firma ualetudine, nisi quod solebant ei manus tremere, citra dolorem tamen. aditus tantum mortis durior longiorque, sed hic ipse laudabilis. nam cum uocem praepararet acturus in consulatu principi gratias, liber quem forte acceperat grandioremet seni et stanti ipso pondere elapsus est. hunc dum sequitur colligitque per leue et lubricum pauimentum fallente uestigio cecidit coxamque fregit, quae parum apte collocata reluctante aetate male coˆıt. huius uiri exsequiae magnum ornamentum principi, magnum saeculo, magnum etiam foro et rostris attulerunt: laudatus est a consule, Cornelio Tacito: nam hic supremus felicitati eius cumulus accessit, laudator eloquentissimus.

Hecyra's focus on a young couple after their marriage, though unusual in the comic tradition, is not unique. T.'s immediate model, the Hekyra of Apollodorus of Carystos, does not survive, but a fragmentary, possibly Menandrean play preserved on papyrus also appears to involve a troubled marriage, and so certainly did Menander's Epitrepontes (The Arbitrants), sometimes thought to have influenced Apollodorus. Epitrepontes was among the first of Menander's plays to be rediscovered in the twentieth century and remains one of his most appealing works, remarkable both for the skilful pacing of its revelations and the sensitivity of its characterizations. Its situation, in a nutshell, is this:

The play was quite popular in the Greek world, as is clear from the number of different papyri that preserve it, but whether anyone in T.'s Roman audience would have known it or, if they did, thought of it in the context of Hecyra is not at all certain. Modern readers of T., who do often know it, readily note two points for comparison and contrast.

DIDASCALIA I (secvndvm A)

INCIPIT TERENTI HECYRA : ACTA LVDIS MEGALENSIBVS SEXTO IVLIO CAESARE CN. CORNELIO DOLABELLA AEDILIBVS CVRVLIBVS : MODOS FECIT FLACCVS CLAVDI TIBIIS PARIBVS TOTA : GRAECA MENANDRV : FACTA EST V : ACTA PRIMO SINE PROLOGO DATA : SECVNDO CN. OCTAVIO TITO MANLIO COS : RELATA EST LVCIO AEMILIO PAVLO LVDIS FVNERALIBVS : NON EST PLACITA : TERTIO RELATA EST Q. FVLVIO LVC. MARCIO AEDILIBVS CVRVLIBVS : EGIT LVC AMBIVIVS LVC SERGIVS TVRPIO : PLACVIT

DIDASCALIA II (secvndvm Σ)

INCIPIT <TERENTI> HECYRA : ACTA LVDIS ROMANIS SEX IVL CAES CN CORNELIO AEDILIBVS CVRVLIBVS : NON EST PERACTA : MODOS FECIT FLACCVS CLAUDI TIBIIS PARILIBVS TOTA : CN OCTAVIO T MANLIO COS RELATA EST ITERUM L AEMILIO PAVLO LVDIS FVNEBRIS : RELATA EST TERTIO Q FVLVIO L MARTIO AEDIL CVRVL

1

Verginius Rufus has received a state funeral. He was not only great but fortunate, living thirty years beyond his moment of glory, dying under a good emperor, and receiving a funeral oration from Tacitus. He had a good life, but we shall miss him, I myself especially: as my guardian he showed me the love of a parent and more. Hence my grief – but I am consoled by his undying glory.

Book 2 opens in grand style and with a grand subject. As governor of Germania Superior in ad 68, Verginius Rufus had crushed Julius Vindex's revolt against Nero, then pledged loyalty to Galba rather than pursue the throne himself; he returned to prominence as an octogenarian consul in Nerva's new principate (Jan. 97). His death and funeral, and the dramatic date of this letter, can be fixed to the last two months of that year (§6n. laudatus). P. revisits his great deeds in 6.10 and 9.19, quoting Verginius’ self-composed epitaph (hic situs est Rufus, pulso qui Vindice quondam | imperium asseruit non sibi sed patriae); he begins here with his death.

Epistles in brief

The early second century ad saw publication of the Epistles, a nine-book collection of 247 letters. Together with the Panegyricus (an address to Trajan) and 124 letters to and from Trajan known as Epistles 10, this collection comprises the surviving literary legacy of Pliny the Younger.

The second book is a typical medley of twenty pieces addressed to a range of elite personal acquaintances. Their status as letters is self-evident from the formulaic trappings of heading (e.g. C. Plinivs Romano svo s.) and sign-off (vale) and from the invocation of epistolary topoi – brevity, intimacy, humility – marking them as specific, personal and occasional. Yet these conventions are not uniformly invoked: nothing about 2.7, for instance, beyond heading and sign-off marks it as a letter, while explicit signs of epistolarity are confined to the opening and close of the long, elaborate 2.11 (Priscus) and 2.17 (villa). Editing is obvious: details, dates and names have been smoothed away, the particular is turned to the general, and the sheer complexity of structure and literary texture strains against ephemerality. As a scripted collection (this commentary will argue), Epistles 1–9 constitutes an open, public and monumental work of very grand design.

Parmeno must have been telling the truth when he said that Pamphilus, while still obsessed with Bacchis, did not immediately consummate his marriage (135–47, 409–13) because Pamphilus, on discovering the pregnancy, at once assumes that the child about to be born is not his (376–7). Since that deduction might not be obvious, T. makes the chronology explicit in Pamphilus’ report of Myrrina's appeal to him.