Pliny: Natural History, Vol. I (Loeb)

PLINY: NATURAL HISTORY

PREFACE, 2-6

—that it may result in something getting done, and everyone may know on what equal terms the empire lives with you. With a triumph to your name and censorial rank, six times consul, colleague in tribune’s authority, and—a service that you have made more illustrious than these in rendering it equally to your father and to the equestrian order—commander of his bodyguard; and all this in your public life. And then, what a good comrade to us in the companionship of the camp! Nor has fortune’s grandeur made any change in you, save in enabling you to bestow all the benefit you desire.

Consequently, as all those methods of paying you reverence are open to everybody else, to me is left only the presumption of treating you with more intimate respect. For that presumption, therefore, you will hold yourself responsible, and will grant yourself pardon for my offense. I have tried to put on a bold face, and yet have not succeeded, as your grandeur meets me by another route, and the rods of office that your genius bears make me move on yet further: in no other person ever radiate more genuinely the dictatorial power of oratory and the tribunician authority of wit! How eloquently you thunder forth your father’s praises and your brother’s fame! How great you are in the poet’s art! O mighty fertility of genius—you have contrived a way to imitate your brother also!

But who could judge the value of these compositions with confidence when about to submit to the verdict of your talent, especially when that verdict has been invited? For formal dedication of the work to you puts one in a different position from mere publication.