Letter 6006: If ever I wished you to be in Rome it is now, and I do hope you may come.
Pliny the Younger→Minucius Fundanus|c. 104 AD|Pliny the Younger
education booksfriendshipimperial politics
To Fundanus.
If ever I wished you to be in Rome it is now, and I do hope you may come. I want a friend to second my desires and share my labours and anxieties. Julius Naso is seeking office, and there are a number of excellent candidates. It will be a splendid thing for him to beat them, but he will find it a very difficult matter. So I am all on tenterhooks of hope and fear, and I can hardly realise that I have been consul, for it seems to me that I am a candidate again for all the offices which I have held in turn. Naso's long attachment to me justifies the worry I am going through. I can hardly say that I am bound to him as a friend of his father - for I was too young to enjoy such friendship - yet, when I was quite a young man, people used to point his father out to my notice, and speak of him in the highest terms. He was not only a scholar himself, but was devoted to other scholars, and almost every day he used to go to hear the discourses of Quintilian * and Nicetes Sacerdos, ** which I at that time regularly attended. He was, moreover, a distinguished and honourable man, and his reputation ought to stand his son in good stead.
However, there are now many members of the senate to whom he was unknown, and many again who knew him yet pay no honour to any except those who are alive. Consequently the son will have to struggle and work all the harder now that the high position gained by his father is lost to him. It will, doubtless, be a great ornament to him, but its practical value, as influencing votes, is nearly nil. Naso has always been sensible of this, and with an eye to a time like the present, he has made friends and cultivated their acquaintance. Myself in particular he chose as a person to be loved and imitated as soon as he allowed himself to trust his own judgment. Whenever I am pleading he is careful to stand at my side ; when I give a recital he always sits near me; whenever I am planning and beginning a new work he always takes the greatest interest in it. Of late he has done so alone, but previously his brother used to join him, and now that the brother is dead I must take his place and fill the part he played. For I grieve to think of his untimely death, and of Naso being deprived of the assistance of such an excellent brother, and dependent solely upon the good offices of friends.
This is why I beg you to come and join your solicitations to mine. It will be of the utmost value to me to take you round with me and show you as my backer. Your influence is such that I think I will be more sure of being successful, even with my own friends, if you are with me. If any engagements detain you, break them: the position I am placed in, my loyalty, and even my official status demand that you should. I have undertaken to run a candidate, and everybody is aware of the fact. It is I who am seeking to win, and I who run the risk of failure; in short, if Naso succeeds, the honour is his, but if he loses, the defeat will be mine. Farewell.
[Note: The famous Quintilian, teacher and author of the 'Institutio Oratoria'.
]
[Note: A teacher of rhetoric from Smyrna.]
L To Fundanus.
If ever I wished you to be in Rome it is now, and I do hope you may come. I want a friend to second my desires and share my labours and anxieties. Julius Naso is seeking office, and there are a number of excellent candidates. It will be a splendid thing for him to beat them, but he will find it a very difficult matter. So I am all on tenterhooks of hope and fear, and I can hardly realise that I have been consul, for it seems to me that I am a candidate again for all the offices which I have held in turn. Naso's long attachment to me justifies the worry I am going through. I can hardly say that I am bound to him as a friend of his father - for I was too young to enjoy such friendship - yet, when I was quite a young man, people used to point his father out to my notice, and speak of him in the highest terms. He was not only a scholar himself, but was devoted to other scholars, and almost every day he used to go to hear the discourses of Quintilian * and Nicetes Sacerdos, ** which I at that time regularly attended. He was, moreover, a distinguished and honourable man, and his reputation ought to stand his son in good stead.
However, there are now many members of the senate to whom he was unknown, and many again who knew him yet pay no honour to any except those who are alive. Consequently the son will have to struggle and work all the harder now that the high position gained by his father is lost to him. It will, doubtless, be a great ornament to him, but its practical value, as influencing votes, is nearly nil. Naso has always been sensible of this, and with an eye to a time like the present, he has made friends and cultivated their acquaintance. Myself in particular he chose as a person to be loved and imitated as soon as he allowed himself to trust his own judgment. Whenever I am pleading he is careful to stand at my side ; when I give a recital he always sits near me; whenever I am planning and beginning a new work he always takes the greatest interest therein. Of late he has done so alone, but previously his brother used to join him, and now that the brother is dead I must take his place and fill the part he played. For I grieve to think of his untimely death, and of Naso being deprived of the assistance of such an excellent brother, and dependent solely upon the good offices of friends.
This is why I beg you to come and join your solicitations to mine. It will be of the utmost value to me to take you round with me and show you as my backer. Your influence is such that I think I shall be more sure of being successful, even with my own friends, if you are with me. If any engagements detain you, break them: the position I am placed in, my loyalty, and even my official status demand that you should. I have undertaken to run a candidate, and everybody is aware of the fact. It is I who am seeking to win, and I who run the risk of failure; in short, if Naso succeeds, the honour is his, but if he loses, the defeat will be mine. Farewell.
(*) The famous Quintilian, teacher and author of the 'Institutio Oratoria'.
(**) A teacher of rhetoric from Smyrna.
◆
To Fundanus.
If ever I wished you to be in Rome it is now, and I do hope you may come. I want a friend to second my desires and share my labours and anxieties. Julius Naso is seeking office, and there are a number of excellent candidates. It will be a splendid thing for him to beat them, but he will find it a very difficult matter. So I am all on tenterhooks of hope and fear, and I can hardly realise that I have been consul, for it seems to me that I am a candidate again for all the offices which I have held in turn. Naso's long attachment to me justifies the worry I am going through. I can hardly say that I am bound to him as a friend of his father - for I was too young to enjoy such friendship - yet, when I was quite a young man, people used to point his father out to my notice, and speak of him in the highest terms. He was not only a scholar himself, but was devoted to other scholars, and almost every day he used to go to hear the discourses of Quintilian * and Nicetes Sacerdos, ** which I at that time regularly attended. He was, moreover, a distinguished and honourable man, and his reputation ought to stand his son in good stead.
However, there are now many members of the senate to whom he was unknown, and many again who knew him yet pay no honour to any except those who are alive. Consequently the son will have to struggle and work all the harder now that the high position gained by his father is lost to him. It will, doubtless, be a great ornament to him, but its practical value, as influencing votes, is nearly nil. Naso has always been sensible of this, and with an eye to a time like the present, he has made friends and cultivated their acquaintance. Myself in particular he chose as a person to be loved and imitated as soon as he allowed himself to trust his own judgment. Whenever I am pleading he is careful to stand at my side ; when I give a recital he always sits near me; whenever I am planning and beginning a new work he always takes the greatest interest in it. Of late he has done so alone, but previously his brother used to join him, and now that the brother is dead I must take his place and fill the part he played. For I grieve to think of his untimely death, and of Naso being deprived of the assistance of such an excellent brother, and dependent solely upon the good offices of friends.
This is why I beg you to come and join your solicitations to mine. It will be of the utmost value to me to take you round with me and show you as my backer. Your influence is such that I think I will be more sure of being successful, even with my own friends, if you are with me. If any engagements detain you, break them: the position I am placed in, my loyalty, and even my official status demand that you should. I have undertaken to run a candidate, and everybody is aware of the fact. It is I who am seeking to win, and I who run the risk of failure; in short, if Naso succeeds, the honour is his, but if he loses, the defeat will be mine. Farewell.
[Note: The famous Quintilian, teacher and author of the 'Institutio Oratoria'.
]
[Note: A teacher of rhetoric from Smyrna.]
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.