Circa 61-112 C.E.
Politician And Author

Domestic Architecture. Pliny the Younger was a native of Comum in the Tuscan countryside to the north of Rome. He held the consulship in 100 C.E. and was active in forensic work his entire life. His nine books of literary letters recount political, social, domestic, and other events of his era. Many of these letters are truly essays about contemporary life, and were probably written as such rather than as strictly personal correspondences. In some of his autobiographical letters Pliny writes of his various villas, their situation, construction, and decoration, and thus he attests to the importance of domestic architecture to a Roman of his status and economic resources. Pliny was also a patron of his native Comum. When he discovered that local children were going elsewhere for school, Pliny helped to endow local...