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Letters
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General SummaryPLINY (about 61–113 A. D.), called the Younger, to distinguish him from his famous uncle, the Elder Pliny, was a Roman gentleman fitted by birth and education for a brilliant public career. He filled many offices of state, traveled extensively, knew everybody worth knowing, and lived a happy, useful life, surrounded by his books and his friends. Of his letters more than three hundred have been preserved. They do not rise to a very high level as literature; Pliny’s letters seem stilted and artificial when compared with the animated correspondence of Cicero. But there are few works by ancient authors which make pleasanter reading. Moreover, they afford us an attractive picture of Roman society during the most interesting period of the Early Empire.
107. Treatment of Children1
A friend of mine was thrashing his son for spending money too lavishly in buying horses and dogs. When the youth had gone, I said to the father, "Come now, did you never commit a fault, for which your father might have reproved you? Why, of course you have. Do you not now and then still commit actions for which your son would also severely reprimand you, if your positions were suddenly changed, and he became the father and you the son? Are not all men liable to make mistakes? Does not one man indulge himself in one way and another in another?" I was so struck with this man’s undue severity that I have written and told you about it, out of the affection we bear one another, so that you may never act with undue bitterness and harshness toward your son. Remember that he is a boy and that you have been a boy yourself. And in
exercising your parental authority, do not forget that you are a man and the father of a man.
1 Pliny, , ix, 12.
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Chicago: "Treatment of Children," Letters in Readings in Early European History, ed. Webster, Hutton (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1926), 245. Original Sources, accessed May 11, 2025, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=DBMJFX5KQZ9YF67.
MLA: . "Treatment of Children." Letters, Vol. ix, in Readings in Early European History, edited by Webster, Hutton, Boston, Ginn and Company, 1926, page 245. Original Sources. 11 May. 2025. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=DBMJFX5KQZ9YF67.
Harvard: , 'Treatment of Children' in Letters. cited in 1926, Readings in Early European History, ed. , Ginn and Company, Boston, pp.245. Original Sources, retrieved 11 May 2025, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=DBMJFX5KQZ9YF67.
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