hands were protected by mittens, so that not even the sharpness of the weather should rob him of a moment.  For the same reason even at Rome he used to ride in a sedan-chair (and not in a litter).  I remember how he once took me to task for walking.  Said he, ‘You need not have wasted these hours;’ for he considered as wasted all hours not spent upon study.  It was by application like this that he completed all those volumes and also left to me a hundred and sixty note-books full of selections, written in very small hand on both sides of the paper.  He used himself to say that, when he was the emperor’s financial agent in Spain, he could have sold these note-books to Largius Licinus for L3000, and at that time they were considerably less numerous.” ...  “And so,” writes the nephew, “I always laugh when certain people call me studious, for, compared to him, I am a most indolent person.”

And yet what does this “most indolent person” himself do in the course of a lifetime?  After a complete oratorical education of the typical Roman kind he enters upon a full public career.  He undergoes his minimum military service with the legions in Syria.  He returns to Rome and passes right up to the consulship, acquiring particular ability in connection with the Treasury.  Often he acts as adviser to other officers.  Apart from his public position he is a pleader before the courts.  He takes a prominent part in the debates of the senate.  He belongs to one of the priestly bodies.  He does his share in providing the public games.  He is appointed “Minister for the regulation of the Tiber and of the Sewerage.”  He is afterwards made governor of Bithynia, which has fallen into financial disorder and requires reorganisation.  He possesses numerous estates and has many tenants to deal with.  He writes speeches, occasional poems, and a large number of letters carefully phrased with a view to publication.  His social or complimentary duties are numerous and exacting.  One day he goes out hunting wild boar on one of his estates, and kills three of them.  How, think you, does he pass the time while the beaters are driving the animals towards the net?  He is thinking up a subject and making notes, and actually finds the silence and solitude helpful.  He concludes his short letter on the subject by advising his friend “when you go hunting, take my advice and carry your writing-tablets as well as your luncheon-basket and flask:  you will find that Minerva roams the hills no less than Diana.”  Pliny the Younger is writing, it is true, a generation after Nero, but there had been no appreciable change in Roman intellectual tastes during that short interval.