Statue-Group Of Laocoon And His Sons (c. A.D. 10-30), one of the few works of art described in Pliny the Elders Natural History to have survived. It was discovered in
1506 near the Golden House of Nero where Pliny appears to have seen it. He describes it as 'a work superior to all paintings and sculptures.'
Pliny's nephew, 'the Younger Pliny', could never have written this. A studious youth, who wrote a Greek tragedy at fourteen, he describes himself, at the age of about
eighteen, quietly reading Livy during the great eruption that killed his uncle. The boy was a pupil of Quintilian and of a noted Greek rhetor Nicetes Sacerdos. He went on to
have a distinguished senatorial career, culminating in a consulship under Trajan in A.D. 100, the honorific and important cura of the Tiber river-works and urban drainage
system, and finally the governorship of Bithynia. His most famous work, his Letters, to some extent reflects his public life, especially his and others' advocacy in the courts.
But it is more a demonstration of what should be a cultured man's interests and values than an image of an individual achievement or personality. The letters have great
elegance and finish. There are certain links with Greek rhetoric. In the formal descriptions (ecphrases), the reports of wonders of nature, and the technique of anecdote, we
recognize the skills of Greek sophists such as Lucian. The general effect however is essentially Roman. Pliny depicts, no doubt in an idealized form, the style of public duty
and literary taste that his generation felt to be its own. Literary prestige is important to him. He writes to Tacitus (7.20) that he has read and commented on his book-it is
probably a part of the Histories, just possibly the Dialogue-and hopes for the like service in return, such being the traditional function of Roman 'friendship' (amicitia) when
the parties are men of letters. He is pleased with the thought:
How it delights me that, if posterity cares at all, it will always be told in what harmony, sincerity and loyalty you and I lived! It will be a rare and notable thing that two men,
near equals in age and position, and of some repute in letters-for I must needs speak sparingly of you when I am also speaking of myself! - encouraged each other's studies.
Plutarch
Among Pliny's contemporaries, and sharing some of his acquaintance, was the most important Greek writer of the age. L. Mestrius Plutarchus-to give him his names as a
Roman citizen (he was in fact of equestrian status)-was from mainland Greece. His was the leading family of the historic, but decayed, town of Chaeronea in Boeotia. The
past of his native district was particularly real to him: he defends the ancient Thebans against Herodotus' innuendos and accusations, and he sets up Epaminondas as an ideal
of the philosopher statesman. But it was not enough to record the past, for there was a present revival to be fostered.
Plutarch chose to teach his pupils philosophy at Chaeronea, he served the city whenever he could, and he worked hard for the restoration of the oracle and shrine at
neighbouring Delphi, which enjoyed imperial patronage under Domitian and his successors. But for books and learned conversation-other than what he could gather around
him at home-Plutarch had to visit Athens, where he learned his Platonist philosophy and enjoyed the company of the wise and the rich. Towards the end of his life, under
Trajan and Hadrian, a happy age for many literary men, he received signal honours, notably the insignia of a consul (ornamenta consularia, a great distinction for an eques)
and a post as procurator of Greece, nominally in charge of all imperial properties in the province. In later times it was well if a philosopher or scholar could claim descent
from him; some did so even in the fourth century. This reputation was built on two foundations: personal charm and wisdom, and an immense activity of writing. Plutarch
was not the man to command audiences like the great histrionic sophists of the age, nor did he wield any real political influence. His massive but superficial learning and his
generous and unpedantic style served to project a conspicuously-some would say self-righteously-humane personality. We possess about half of what he wrote. He was
popular in Byzantine times, but this was all that the thirteenth-century scholars managed to collect. All the same, it fills a dozen volumes. It falls into two parts: the great
unified effort of the Parallel Lives and the seventy or so surviving miscellaneous works-mainly 'essays' and dialogues- which are usually called the Moralia.