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Pliny's birthday too he had long known that; now here were the trio. Three young men launched upon life in the same day of time! How very different must have been the circumstances of each! He glanced about the pleasant room; he could imagine with what lavish love and tender care this young man's early years had been surrounded he knew something of the high hopes which had centered in him.
Take a swallow of wine; it will strengthen you, and we all need to keep up our strength for this fearful day. Just try it, dear I know it will help you!" Then, indeed, had Pliny's courage failed him; he took the glass from his mother's offering hand, and drained its contents.
The Consul was sent for. He called on the people to follow him out of the theatre to the Temple of Bellona, and there addressed to them that wonderful oration by which they were sent away not only pacified but in good-humor with Otho himself. "Iste regit dictis animos et pectora mulcet." I have spoken of Pliny's eulogy as to the great Consul's doings of the year.
His best forensic speech, his De Corona, as he loved to style it, was that on behalf of Accia Variola, a lady unjustly disinherited by her father, whom Pliny's eloquence reinstated in her rights. In the senate Pliny rose to even higher efforts. On more than one occasion Pliny's boldness was crowned with success.
Their artists worked on the same principle; and from Pliny's account of the ancient sculptors, we may infer that with them the true glory of genius consisted in carrying to perfection a single species of their art. They did not exercise themselves indifferently on all subjects, but cultivated the favourite ones which they had chosen from the impulse of their own imagination.
In strict scientific value, it is inferior to the works of modern research; but there are few minds, even in these times, who have directed inquiries to such a variety of subjects as are treated in Pliny's masterpiece. If we would compare the geographical knowledge of the ancients with that of the moderns, we confess to the immeasurable inferiority of the ancients.
The new era which was inaugurated loosened his tongue and made him breathe more freely. He exulted that at last an honest man could venture to hold his head high without drawing down upon himself the vengeance of the vile informers who throve upon the misfortunes of the State. Two of Pliny's correspondents and friends were Cornelius Tacitus and Suetonius Tranquillus.
What a fearful night it was! Pliny's shattered nervous system was not strong enough to endure the shock. Mrs. Hastings went from one fainting fit to another, with wild shrieks of anguish between but all sound that escaped Dora, when Theodore gently and tenderly told her "the truth," was, "Oh, God, have mercy!" and the rest of that night she spent at her father's bedside, on her knees.
Sunt metis metae! There came with it the odd fancy that he himself would like to have been dead and gone as long ago, with a kind of envy of those whose deceasing was so long since over. On more peaceful days he would ponder Pliny's account of those primeval forefathers, but without Pliny's contempt for them.
Pliny's jottings on natural history very soon resolved themselves into the most ambitious plan, which up to that time had not been attempted by man he would write out and sum up all human knowledge. The next man to try the same thing was Alexander von Humboldt. We now have Pliny's "Natural History" in thirty-seven volumes. His other forty volumes are lost.
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