DISCOVERY 



175 



the mobile mirror. In the middle at the back is the 

 box containing the luminous source — a box which fits 

 on to the preceding one. In front of it is the support 

 for the passing of illustrations, etc., under the shaft 

 of light, with its two rollers. And on the right is the 

 support for the apparatus when it is necessary to raise 

 it from the tabic to a sufficient height to enable a book 

 to be slipped underneath. 



These four elements may be put together and 

 arranged in different ways for particular purposes. 



For example, the elements of the " dussaud " may be 

 combined in such a manner as to project any object or 

 any action which can only be shown in the vertical 

 plane, such as the action of pouring a hquid from a 

 drop-bottle, the burning of a match, etc. 



The elements of the lantern may also be combined to 

 project any transparent object, such as ordinary lantern 

 slides and coloured photographic plates. 



It should be mentioned that by using two daj-light 

 micro-projectors and two resistances (to vary the 

 electric current and therefore the intensity of the 

 light), dissolving views of the greatest beauty (flowers, 

 insects, precious stones, etc.) can be obtained, as with 

 glass slides. 



A Roman Gentleman 



By W. R. Halliday, B.A., B.Litt. 



Professor o/ Ancient History in tlie University of Liverpool 



The private correspondence of a prominent personage 

 of a past era is never without interest, shedding, as it 

 must do, an intimate light upon the society in which the 

 writer moved. If the man of affairs be also a man of 

 letters, if he be a Horace Walpole or a Pliny, there 

 is an added pleasure in its study. 



The Younger Pliny, as he is generally called, was 

 born at Como in a.d. 6i or 62. Though belonging to 

 the Italian rather than to the Roman aristocrac}', his 

 family was well-to-do and had been of local importance 

 for several generations. His guardian, for his father 

 died when Plin}' was a boy, was Verginius Rufus, the 

 most distinguished general of his daj', a man who had 

 twice refused the wishes of his troops to make him a 

 candidate for the imperial throne. He was adopted 

 as his heir by his uncle Plinj- the Elder, the scholar 

 and antiquary who met his death, a martyr to his 

 scientific interest, in the great eruption of Vesuvius 

 which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in a.d. 79. 

 After studying under the great professor of rhetoric, 

 Ouintilian, Pliny was called to the Bar and rose to 

 distinction upon what we should call the Chancery side. 

 He was clearly an indefatigable worker, careful, even 



meticulous, in his attention to detail. In several im- 

 portant cases arising from charges of provincial mis- 

 government, Pliny was retained for the prosecution, and 

 when in a.d. hi the Emperor Trajan found it necessary 

 to send out a special commissioner to reform the 

 administration of Bithj-nia, which had fallen into grave 

 disorder, Pliny, whose conduct of these cases had given 

 him considerable knowledgeof provincial administration 

 in general, and, as it happened, of Bithynian conditions 

 in particular, was wiseh" selected for the task. 



The correspondence, then, consists of the letters of a 

 leading barrister and a distinguished public servant 

 who was born in the middle of the reign of Nero and 

 died shortly before a.d. 125. Except for those which 

 as special commissioner he exchanged with the emperor, 

 and which throw an invaluable light upon the pro- 

 vincial administration of the period and incidentally 

 upon the attitude of the Roman Government towards 

 the rising sect of Christians, the main interest of these 

 letters is not political. It lies rather in the characters 

 of the writer and his friends ; and the qualities which 

 they display are not the less remarkable because Pliny 

 is self-revealed as in no sense an exceptional personality 

 but as one man whose character reflects the virtues of 

 his type and class. For the impression of society which 

 Pliny gives us is very different from that popularly 

 derived from novels like Quo Vadis or cinematograph 

 representations of Christians in the arena. It is 

 different, again, from that conveyed by the satirist 

 Juvenal, whose material was the same society, but who 

 saw it from the different angle of Grub Street or from 

 that presented in the gloomy masterpiece of Pliny's 

 friend Tacitus. Now, it may be true that Pliny does 

 not give us the whole picture, but neither do satirist 

 or historian, and it is pleasant to be reminded by these 

 letters that Rome possessed an upper class many of 

 whose members were cultured, humane, upright, kindly, 

 and generous. 



Pliny, of course, has his weaknesses. He is patently 

 vain about his literary compositions and his eloquence 

 in the courts. But he is so frank about it that he 

 disarms criticism, and if he thoroughly appreciates the 

 merits of his own compositions, he is equally generous 

 towards the literary efforts of his friends. He expects 

 them to sit through and applaud the interminable 

 recitations of his speeches or verses, but he is himself 

 punctilious to form part of a friendly audience for them 

 in turn. He is at times a bit of a prig, but he recovers 

 himself with a fine tolerance. " Let us, then, make 

 allowances for what pleases other people, so that 

 we may induce others to make allowance for us ! " 



Of his upright character he gives us more than one 

 illustration. Although a lawyer by profession, he is 

 never anxious to press the strict letter of the law to the 

 detriment of equity. For instance, a friend, half of 



