Xii LIFE AND .WEITIl^GS OF PLINY. 



details connected with his death. I shall therefore draw to 

 a conclusion. The only thing that I shall add is the assu- 

 rance that I have truthfully related all these facts, of which 

 I was either an eye-witness myself, or heard them at the 

 time of their occurrence, a period when they were most 

 likely to be correctly related. You of course will select 

 such points as you may think the most important. For it 

 is one thing to write a letter, another to write history ; — one 

 thing to write for a friend, another to write for the public. 

 Farewell." 



Of the mode of life pursued by Pliny, and of the rest of 

 his works, an equally interesting account has been pre- 

 served by his nephew, in an Epistle addressed to Macer^ 

 We cannot more appropriately conclude than by present- 

 ing this Epistle to the reader : — " I am highly gratified to 

 find that you read the works of my uncle with such a 

 degree of attention as to feel a desire to possess them 

 all, and that with this view you inquire. What are their 

 names ? I will perform the duties of an index then : and 

 not content with that, will state in what order they were 

 written : for even that is a kind of information which is by no 

 means undesirable to those who are devoted to literary pur- 

 suits. His first composition was a treatise ' on the use of 

 the Javelin by Cavalry,' in one Book. This he composed, 

 with equal diligence and ingenuity, while he was in com- 

 mand of a troop of horse. His second work was the ' Life 

 of Q. Pomponius Secundus,' in two Books, a person by whom 

 he had been particularly beloved. — These books he composed 

 as a tribute which was justly due to the memory of his de- 

 ceased friend. His next work was twenty Books on ' the 

 Wars in Grermany,' in which he has compiled an account of 

 all the wars in which we have been engaged with the people 

 of that country This he had begun while serving in 

 Q-ermany, having been recommended to do so in a dream. 

 For in his sleep he thought that the figure of Drusua 

 Nero"^ stood by him — the same Drusus, who after the 

 most extensive conquests in that country, there met his 



1 B.iii. Ep. 5. 



2 Nero Claudius Drusus, the son of Livia, afterwards the wife of Au- 

 gustus. H(j was the father of the Emperor Claudius, and died in Ger- 

 many of the effects of an accident. 



