Letters, Book 8

Book 8 of Pliny's letters dates from about AD 107 to 108. It is notable for several descriptive letters on natural wonders in Italy, alongside letters of grief and public business.

Pliny worries over a favourite reader who has fallen ill and explains how he gave the merchants who bought his grapes a fair rebate after a poor vintage. He advises a friend writing an epic on Trajan's Dacian war and expands his attack on Pallas by reporting the senate's servile decree in the freedman's honour. He describes the source of the river Clitumnus in Umbria, with its clear spring, temple and shrines, and Lake Vadimon, whose floating islands drift with the wind. He tells Calpurnia's grandfather and aunt that she has suffered a miscarriage through her inexperience, and comforts them. He discusses senate procedure, the deaths of slaves in his household, a severe flood of the Tiber and the Anio, and the surprising will of Domitius Tullus, and mourns the young senator Junius Avitus. The book ends with a long letter of advice to Maximus on governing the free cities of Achaia, urging respect for Greek history and dignity.

The letters on Clitumnus and Vadimon are fine pieces of description, and the letter on his slaves shows Pliny's humanity within the limits of his age. The Latin is graceful and not hard.