Carlos F. NORENA Public and Private in Pliny Ep. 10.1-14

Scholars have long recognized the importance of Pliny's correspondence with the emperor Trajan from his legatio in Bithynia (Ep. 10.15-121), but the pre-Bithynian correspondence with Trajan (Ep. 10.1-14), which Sherwin-White in his standard commentary (Oxford 1966) labeled "private," has not attracted much attention as a set of letters in its own right. The primary purpose of this paper is to examine these so-called "private" letters and to show that in them Pliny engaged in a type of epistolary discourse which enabled him to construct his relationship with the emperor in both public and private terms.

The paper begins with a brief survey of the content of the letters, which shows that the label "private" is unsatisfactory. Of the twelve letters which Pliny sends to Trajan, eight contain requests for various types of imperial beneficia (10.4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13). These epistulae, in other words, were vehicles in the larger network of imperial and senatorial patronage. And far from being in any sense "private," it was precisely this type of personal patronage through which emperors governed their empire - something less than "public" in our eyes, perhaps, but a fundamental aspect of Roman government in the imperial period.

The paper then treats the form of the letters. Close attention is paid to Pliny's modes of addressing the emperor. I argue that Pliny's consistent use of the title dominus (10.2, 3A, 5, 6, 8, 10-13) - striking in light of his public comments contrasting the popular princeps Trajan with the hated dominus Domitian (Pan. 2.3, 7.6, 45.3, 55.7) - marks the correspondence as private. Other passages, e.g. Fortem te et hilarem, imperator optime, et privatim et publice opto (10.1.2) and ut iure sacerdotii precari deos pro te publice possim, quos nunc precor pietate privata (10.13), are adduced to demonstrate the fluidity of public and private in Pliny's letters. Finally, lexical analysis and comparison to Fronto's correspondence with Marcus Aurelius show that despite a certain degree of familiarity in the pre-Bithynian correspondence, Pliny was still closely bound by the conventions of official discourse.

The paper concludes with an examination of Pliny's strategies of self-presentation, expanding on recent work by Leach (ClAnt 9 [1990], 14-39) and Riggsby (Arethusa 31 [1998], 75-97). In these conclusions I will argue that the pre-Bithynian correspondence could serve as a material demonstration of Pliny's capacity to correspond with the emperor and his privileged status within the Roman elite.