The Naturalist's Nephew
Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus was born around 61 at Comum, the modern Como, in northern Italy, to a wealthy family. After his father's early death he grew up with his mother in the household of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, an admiral and the author of the vast Natural History. In 79 the uncle sailed across the Bay of Naples toward the erupting Vesuvius to rescue friends and died on the shore. The nephew, then seventeen, watched the eruption from Misenum and later described it in two famous letters to the historian Tacitus. By his uncle's will he was adopted and took his name.
He studied rhetoric at Rome under Quintilian and made his name as an advocate, especially in the court that heard inheritance cases. He climbed the offices of a senator's career and served as consul in 100, when he delivered a speech of thanks to the emperor Trajan, the Panegyricus, which still survives. He was a friend of Tacitus and of the biographer Suetonius, and he published nine books of carefully polished letters on law, literature, friendship, and the life of a Roman gentleman.
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