Roy Gibson

• The University of Manchester

Pliny the Younger (c. 60–112 CE)—senator and consul in the Rome of Domitian and Trajan, eyewitness to the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, early ‘persecutor’ of Christians on the Black Sea—remains the best documented Roman individual, other than emperors, between Cicero and Augustine. Standard biographical approaches rarely suit him. But no Roman wri...

Wrigley (A.) , Harrison (S.J.) (edd.) Louis MacNeice: the Classical Radio Plays. Pp. xiv + 436, ills. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Cased, £94, US$145. ISBN: 978-0-19-969523-2. - Roy Gibson

PLINY'S WOMEN - Shelton ( J.-A.)The Women of Pliny's Letters. Pp. xiv + 436, ills. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. Cased, £90, US$150. ISBN: 978-0-415-37428-6. - Volume 65 Issue 2 - Roy Gibson

There exists a strong link in modern thinking between letter collections and biographical or historical narration. Many ancient letter collections have been rearranged by modern editors along chronological lines, apparently with the aim of realizing the biographical and historiographical potential of these ancient collections. In their original for...

This is the first general introduction to Pliny's Letters published in any language, combining close readings with broader context and adopting a fresh and innovative approach to reading the letters as an artistically structured collection. Chapter 1 traces Pliny's autobiographical narrative throughout the Letters; Chapter 2 undertakes detailed stu...

The careers of Cicero and Pliny the Younger go well together. Or at least so Pliny, who explicitly modelled himself on Cicero, would have hoped. Both were men of equestrian and non-Roman origins, noui homines who rose to the consulship (although Pliny notes at Epist. 4.8.5 that he attained both consulship and augurate while younger than Cicero), ma...

IntroductionThe Elegists and the Shape of ElegyKey Features of Elegy: the ‘Alienation’ of the ElegistThe Elegiac WomanOrigins and DevelopmentIndividual Characteristics and Contributions of the ElegistsOvid and after

This introduction ponders the question of what defines a letter as used by some authors over other types of document. One way of deciding where the boundary between letters and other forms of text lies, and whether this is a worthwhile question to pose, is to consider borderline cases. Two such cases - the history of the classification as letters o...

This chapter focuses on Ars 3, assessing the political implications of the praeceptor's advice of moderation in several aspects of women's lives. Instead of observing the traditional stereotypes that linked hairstyle, clothing, and use of cosmetics to either sexual purity or sexual promiscuity, Ovid advocates a principle of individual decorum; this...