assisted his friends with money and influence, as well as advice, and he gave to his native town, Comum, a public library, besides an endowment of three hundred thousand sesterces ($12,000) yearly for ever to maintain children born of free parents.  How long this endowment lasted we cannot say, but it must, at any rate, have disappeared in the dilapidations caused three hundred and fifty years afterward by the Gothic invaders of Italy.  Then he had two villas at least, besides his town-house, with slaves, attendants and following to match.  This will suffice to show that he had the wherewithal.  But could he enjoy it?  He was a literary man:  his uncle had settled that for him.  He was an oratorical light in the Senate.  His letters show that he was a gentleman, whose delicacy of feeling was as fine as the lauded courtesies of modern times.  As proof that he was a gentleman, and that he knew how to distinguish a good from a poor dinner, and as proof, too, of the good advice he was wont to give away as freely as good money, we will put in his letter to Avitus upon occasion of a dinner he had just attended: 

“Cains Pliny to his own Avitus, greeting:  It would take too long, and do no good, to tell you how, though not on familiar terms, I came to dine with a man who piques himself upon his elegant and correct, though sordid and profuse, entertainments.  They are so in this:  he placed before the select few some rare delicacies—­before the rest he put indifferent or little food.  Even of the wine there were but three sorts, and these, besides, in little flagons—­evidently not that you should choose” but to prevent your choosing—­one sort for himself and us, another for his poorer friends, a third for his and our freedmen.  A neighbor on the same couch asked me what I thought of it:  Did I approve?  ‘No.’  ‘Then what is your rule?’ ’I put the same things before all my guests, for I ask them to sup, not to grade them in my esteem:  I equalize in all things those I invite to my table.’  ’Even the freedmen?’ ‘Yes, for then they are my guests, and not freedmen.’  He replied,’ It must cost you a good deal.’  ‘Very little.’  ‘How so?’ ‘Thus:  I drink then what my freedmen drink, not they my wines.’  And truly, if you will but restrain your taste a little, it is not hard to join in drinking with the many at your table.  To be sure, fastidious taste must be repressed, and, as it were, brought under control, if you spare that expense in which one consults rather his own gratification than the feelings of others.  But why all this?  I write, so that the luxury of some under the specious guise of economy may not impose upon you as a well-disposed youth.  And so, out of pure good-will to you, I draw instances from my experience to advise or warn you.  There is nothing to be more carefully avoided than that upstart society compounded of meanness and luxury, for these twain, bad enough apart, are abominable when joined together.  Vale!”