Macrinus

Macrinus is known as one of the recurring addressees in the letters of Pliny the Younger, written in the early second century AD. He is generally identified with Caecilius Macrinus, an equestrian friend and correspondent of Pliny, though the name may conceal more than one man: Pliny elsewhere praises a Minicius Macrinus of Brixia, a respected eques whom Vespasian adlected to praetorian rank but who declined further public honors. Beyond what the letters themselves reveal, Macrinus is otherwise little attested, and the surviving evidence does not allow his career or dates to be fixed with confidence; he is significant chiefly as a member of Pliny's literary and social circle, the kind of cultivated provincial-Italian friend to whom Pliny addressed news, reflections, and reports of public events.