Excerpt from Selected Letters of Pliny It remains to say something of Pliny's family life. Apparently 5. Family he was three times married. Of the first two wives we know hfe' nothing, but the third, Calpurnia, is charmingly described in iv. 19, a letter written soon after the marriage, to his wife's maiden aunt, Hispulla, who, had had the charge of her upbringing. Calpurnia was the daughter of an influential citizen of Comum, and must have been very young at the time of her marriage, though Pliny himself was well advanced in middle life. Their happiness, however, was complete, in Spite of disappointed hopes of children. Calpurnia accompanied her husband to his province, and presumably survived him. Pliny writes throughout from the point of view of the rich man. He was born to wealth on both sides tis family. His father and mother both had estates near the lake of Como, and his adoption as his uncle's heir in a.d. 79 brought him further accessions. He himself had two favourite villas on the lake, which he called playfully 'tragedy' and 'comedy', besides his winter place at Laurentum (ii. His summer retreat in Etruria (ix. His town-house on the Esquiline hill at Rome (iii. 21. And his places at Tusculum (iv. 13. I), Tibur, and Praeneste (v. 6. But though rich he was no millionaire; his wealth came mainly from land, and was therefore liable to the embarrassments of bad harvests and insolvent tenants. He was a careful landlord (ix. 36. 6) and a good master (viii. I6). 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.