Letter 7030: I am much concerned at your loss of a pupil who, as you say, showed the greatest promise.
Pliny the Younger→Julius Genitor|c. 107 AD|Pliny the Younger
education booksfriendshipgrief death
To Genitor.
I am much concerned at your loss of a pupil who, as you say, showed the greatest promise. I am sure that his illness and death must have interfered with your studies, for do I not know that you never lose a chance of looking after a friend, and that those whom you esteem you love with heart and soul? As for myself, I cannot escape even here from being as busy as though I were in town, for someone is always nominating me to act as judge or arbitrator. Besides, there are the country people and their squabbles, and they keep pouring into my ears their rights and wrongs, after my long absence, as they think they have a right to do. Again, I am never free from the exceedingly troublesome task of letting my farms, so difficult is it to meet with suitable tenants. Hence my studies are precarious, but yet I do study, for I write a little as well as read. It is when I read that I feel by comparison how badly I write, although you put fresh heart into me by comparing my treatise in vindication of Helvidius * with the speech of Demosthenes against Meidias. To tell you the truth, when I was composing my own work, I kept turning over the pages of that oration, not in the hope of rivalling it - for only a wretch or a fool would do that - but to imitate it and follow in the same strain as far as the differences in our genius - the infinitely great and the infinitely little - and the dissimilarity of the subject-matter would allow. Farewell.
[Note: See letter ix. 13.]
L To Genitor.
I am much concerned at your loss of a pupil who, as you say, showed the greatest promise. I am sure that his illness and death must have interfered with your studies, for do I not know that you never lose a chance of looking after a friend, and that those whom you esteem you love with heart and soul? As for myself, I cannot escape even here from being as busy as though I were in town, for someone is always nominating me to act as judge or arbitrator. Besides, there are the country people and their squabbles, and they keep pouring into my ears their rights and wrongs, after my long absence, as they think they have a right to do. Again, I am never free from the exceedingly troublesome task of letting my farms, so difficult is it to meet with suitable tenants. Hence my studies are precarious, but yet I do study, for I write a little as well as read. It is when I read that I feel by comparison how badly I write, although you put fresh heart into me by comparing my treatise in vindication of Helvidius * with the speech of Demosthenes against Meidias. To tell you the truth, when I was composing my own work, I kept turning over the pages of that oration, not in the hope of rivalling it - for only a wretch or a fool would do that - but to imitate it and follow in the same strain as far as the differences in our genius - the infinitely great and the infinitely little - and the dissimilarity of the subject-matter would allow. Farewell.
(*) See letter ix. 13.
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To Genitor.
I am much concerned at your loss of a pupil who, as you say, showed the greatest promise. I am sure that his illness and death must have interfered with your studies, for do I not know that you never lose a chance of looking after a friend, and that those whom you esteem you love with heart and soul? As for myself, I cannot escape even here from being as busy as though I were in town, for someone is always nominating me to act as judge or arbitrator. Besides, there are the country people and their squabbles, and they keep pouring into my ears their rights and wrongs, after my long absence, as they think they have a right to do. Again, I am never free from the exceedingly troublesome task of letting my farms, so difficult is it to meet with suitable tenants. Hence my studies are precarious, but yet I do study, for I write a little as well as read. It is when I read that I feel by comparison how badly I write, although you put fresh heart into me by comparing my treatise in vindication of Helvidius * with the speech of Demosthenes against Meidias. To tell you the truth, when I was composing my own work, I kept turning over the pages of that oration, not in the hope of rivalling it - for only a wretch or a fool would do that - but to imitate it and follow in the same strain as far as the differences in our genius - the infinitely great and the infinitely little - and the dissimilarity of the subject-matter would allow. Farewell.
[Note: See letter ix. 13.]
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.