SOURCE: Spalding Dobson, Elizabeth. “Pliny the Younger's Depiction of Women.” The Classical Bulletin 58, no. 6 (April 1982): 81-85.

In the following essay, Spalding Dobson examines Pliny's letters, focusing specifically on his portraits of intelligent, virtuous, and heroic upper-class Roman women, noting the uniqueness of these characterizations in comparison with female characterizations by Pliny's contemporaries.

A study of Pliny the Younger's letters to and about women provides some interesting cultural insights into the position of the aristocratic woman of Rome and its environs in the early second century A.D. At the same time, the reader gains insight into Pliny's own attitude toward these women. In view of the generally optimistic tone of Pliny's correspondence, it is not very surprising to find that the letters present a flattering and quite sympathetic view of women as his spiritual and moral equals.

Too frequently, portraits of the upper-class Roman woman of the first...