SOURCE: Bodel, John. “Minicia Marcella: Taken before Her Time.” American Journal of Philology 116, no. 3 (fall 1995): 453-60.

In the following essay, Bodel discusses discrepancies in an obituary composed by Pliny, theorizing that Pliny's account is not so concerned with factual details regarding the death as it is about the rhetorical, literary, and philosophical implications of the young woman's passing.

Writing to his friend Aefulanus Marcellinus sometime in a.d. 105 or 106, the younger Pliny lamented the untimely death of the daughter of a mutual friend, Minicius Fundanus: destined for an advantageous marriage, the girl had been deprived of her appointed wedding day and cut down in the bloom of youth, before she had completed her fourteenth year: nondum annos quattuordecim impleverat.¹ Until 1881 Pliny's tribute provided all that was known about the unfortunate girl, but in that year the unearthing of a familial tomb on Monte Mario just outside Rome disclosed...