Treatment of slaves

The Letters of the Younger Pliny, First Series — Volume 1 primary

It continues praising Pliny’s friends, emphasizing his wealth and generosity, his role supporting younger writers and officials, and his household ethics—especially his treatment of slaves and his concept of the home as a kind of polity.

"Viximus insignes inter utramque facem." This is no isolated example. One of the most pathetic letters is that in which Pliny writes of the death of the younger daughter of his friend Fundanus, a girl in her fifteenth year, who had already "the prudence of age, the gravity of a matron, and all the maidenly modesty and sweetness of a girl." Pliny tells us how it cut him to the quick to hear her father give directio…