Excerpt from Select Letter of Pliny the Younger: Latin Text, With English Notes We have here made a Selection, amounting to about two-fifths of the whole, from the Epistles of the Younger Pliny. This selection will, we hope, be found useful as a class-book for the upper forms of schools. Pliny, indeed, has been strangely neglected by teachers and students of classical literature. His letters, though somewhat formal, having probably been written with some view to publication, are models in their way. They are in a very elegant style; they are the expression of a highly cultivated mind, and of a singularly refined and affectionate disposition, and their subject-matter is often of the highest interest, especially as showing to us that better side of Roman life under the Empire which indeed it would not be easy to find pourtrayed elsewhere. Difficulties, sometimes considerable, are to be found in them, but they have the advantage of being free from the recondite allusions and the obscurities, often intentional, with which the letters of Cicero are crowded. The only objection that may fairly be made to them - namely, that their Latinity is not always of the purest type, we have endeavoured to obviate by pointing out such words and phrases as seem to differ from the usage of the Augustan writers. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.