HKB
CIX -- To PAULINUS
As you are not of a disposition to expect from your friends the ordinary ceremonial observances of society when they cannot observe them without inconvenience to themselves, so I love you too steadfastly to be apprehensive of your taking otherwise than I wish you should my not waiting upon you on the first day of your entrance upon the consular office, especially as I am detained here by the necessity of letting my farms upon long leases. I am obliged to enter upon an entirely new plan with my tenants: for under the former leases, though I made them very considerable abatements, they have run greatly in arrear. For this reason several of them have not only taken no sort of care to lessen a debt which they found themselves incapable of wholly discharging, but have even seized and consumed all the produce of the land, in the belief that it would now be of no advantage to themselves to spare it. I must therefore obviate this increasing evil, and endeavour to find out some remedy against it. The only one I can think of is, not to reserve my rent in money, but in kind, and so place some of my servants to overlook the tillage, and guard the stock; as indeed there is no sort of revenue more agreeable to reason than what arises from the bounty of the soil, the seasons, and the climate. It is true, this method will require great honesty, sharp eyes, and many hands. However, I must risk the experiment, and, as in an inveterate complaint, try every change of remedy. You see, it is not any pleasurable indulgence that prevents my attending you on the first day of your consulship. I shall celebrate it nevertheless, as much as if I were present, and pay my vows for you here, with all the warmest tokens of joy and congratulation. Farewell.
CX -- To FUSCUS
You are much pleased, I find, with the account I gave you in my former letter of how I spend the summer season at Tuscum, and desire to know what alteration I make in my method when I am at Laurentum in the winter. None at all, except abridging myself of my sleep at noon, and borrowing a good piece of the night before daybreak and after sunset for study: and if business is very urgent (which in winter very frequently happens), instead of having interludes or music after supper, I reconsider whatever I have previously dictated, and improve my memory at the same time by this frequent mental revision. Thus I have given you a general sketch of my mode of life in summer and winter; to which you may add the intermediate seasons of spring and autumn, in which, while losing nothing out of the day, I gain but little from the night. Farewell.
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FOOTNOTES TO THE LETTERS OF PLINY] 1 (return) [ A pupil and intimate friend of Paetus Thrasea, the distinguished Stoic philosopher. Arulenus was put to death by Domitian for writing a panegyric upon Thrasea.]
2 (return) [ The impropriety of this expression, in the original, seems to be in the word stigmosum, which Regulus, probably either coined through affectation or used through ignorance. It is a word, at least, which does not occur in any author of authority: the translator has endeavoured, therefore, to preserve the same sort of impropriety, by using an expression of like unwarranted stamp in his own tongue. M.]
3 (return) [ An allusion to a wound he had received in the war between Vitellius and Vespasian.]
4 (return) [ A brother of Piso Galba's adopted son. He was put to death by Nero.]
5 (return) [ Sulpicius Camerinus, put to death by the same emperor, upon some frivolous charge.]