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Bertha,' in spite of the fact that the Germans evidently singled out London as a special victim of their savagery.

As an integral part of German strategy in the war the air-raids on London must be pronounced a failure. The defeat of the Zeppelins by our aeroplanes was complete. But as against their great raiding aeroplanes, although our airmen did well, it is not easy for a non-military man to say whether we could claim a superiority. Our military authorities are very reticent. It would be an interesting story to learn just how, from a few small guns on the roofs of public buildings, the defence was improved with heavier guns and more powerful searchlights in our public parks, until these ultimately formed rings of light and steel for the inner and outer defences of the capital. The work of our gallant young airmen should also be told. How many of them sacrificed their lives? A question on which no light has yet been thrown is the extent to which damage and death were inflicted by the shells and shrapnel of our own guns in the fighting over London. The work of the 30,000 special constables has been recorded in two little books by Col W. T. Reay and Mr J. E. Preston Muddock. Who will tell us of the splendid efforts of the Fire Brigade? The records of the police must contain much information of value, though the police are almost as reticent as the military authorities. And the good offices of the hospitals, the St John Ambulance Association, the British Red Cross Society, the Boy Scouts, and other agencies are worthy of being recorded.

And what of the future? The bombs and airships of the present day, immensely superior as they are to those launched against London at the outset of the war, are mere toys in comparison with those which will be employed if-which God forbid !-a similar conflict should break out twenty or thirty years hence.

FREDERICK A. EDWARDS.

Art. 5.-ROMAN LIFE IN THE TIME OF PLINY THE YOUNGER.

In two articles I propose to ask the reader to accompany me in thought to two different scenes in two different ages-to Rome in the time of Pliny the Younger, and to London in the time of Addison. To-day I will attempt to give him some pictures of life at Rome and in Italy drawn chiefly from the letters of Pliny.

These letters exhibit on the whole what was best in contemporary society; for Pliny was a happy and prosperous man, rich in hereditary wealth, rich in friends, amiable, affectionate, generous, always disposed to look on the bright rather than on the gloomy side of things. For the reverse of the medal, for the misery and cruelty, the vice and corruption which were rampant in his time, we must turn to other writers -to the tragic gloom of Tacitus, to the wanton wit of Martial, to the fierce invectives of Juvenal. Not but that the sunny pages of Pliny are here and there chequered by dark memories of the reign of terror under the bad emperors Nero and Domitian, both of whom he had outlived. In one of his letters he asks a correspondent, Does it not seem to you only the other day that Nero was on the throne? Happily he survived to see the reign and to enjoy the friendship of Trajan, one of the best and ablest of the Roman emperors. Most of his letters were written in that fortunate time, at the end of the first and the beginning of the second century of our era, when the Roman Empire was at the very zenith of its power and glory, and when Roman literature was still both splendid and prolific. Who could have imagined in that mellow autumn of the ancient world that the winter was so near at hand? that as the authors of Pliny's time were among the most brilliant, so they were destined to be the last great masters of the Latin tongue, unless we except Claudian, that poet born out of due time as if on purpose to sing the swan-song of expiring Rome?

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Pliny was born under Nero in the year 61 or 62 A.D.; for he mentions that he was in his eighteenth year at the time of the great eruption of Vesuvius, which happened in the year 79 A.D. His birthplace was Como,

on the lake of Como, where he inherited estates both from his father and from his mother. He owned several villas on the shore of the lake, and he has described the situation of two of them.

'They are both situated,' he says, 'like the villas at Baiæ; one of them stands upon a rock and overlooks the lake; the other touches it. Each has its peculiar beauties and recommends itself more to their owner by mere force of contrast. The one follows the gentle curve of a single bay; the lofty ridge on which the other is perched divides two bays. Here you have a straight alley running along the shore; there you have a spacious terrace curving in a gentle sweep. The one does not feel the force of the waves, which break on the other. From the one you can look down on the fisherman at work below; from the other you may fish yourself and cast your hook from your chamber and almost from your bed, as from a boat.'

But Pliny lived mostly at Rome, and visited his native place and his ancestral estates only occasionally in order to see his relations and look after his tenants. He was a practising lawyer, and the court in which he pleaded stood in the very heart of the great city. It was known as the Court of the Hundred Men and occupied the Basilica Julia, a vast structure on the south side of the forum. Its ruins are still among the most conspicuous and the most familiar of all the remains of ancient Rome. How assiduously Pliny prepared for these displays, we know from his letters. He bestowed endless labour on the composition and correction of his speeches, and he looked for an eternity of fame from their publication. His friends recognised his ambition and shared, or politely professed to share, his sanguine hopes. In sending him a book of light verse, the poet Martial addresses his Muse, bidding her to go to Pliny's house on the Esquiline, but warning her not to break in on the orator in his study while he was inditing his speech for the law-court.

Yet his practice at the bar was far from bringing Pliny unmixed happiness. In one of his letters he complains that his pleadings in court, while they engrossed his time, were the source of more weariness than pleasure; that the cases in which he was engaged were for the most part tedious and trivial; and that

there were very few members of the bar with whom he had any satisfaction in appearing.

'I remember the time,' he says, 'when even gentlemen of the best family durst not plead without an introduction from a man of consular rank; but nowadays all the ancient barriers and safeguards of the profession are broken down, all distinctions are levelled, and anybody may burst into court and harangue the jury without so much as saying, "By your leave."'

To add to Pliny's disgust, a practice had grown up of hiring persons to applaud the speeches of barristers in court. These mercenary admirers ran from court to court as they were paid for it; and led by a sort of fugleman, who gave the signal, they broke at intervals into uproarious applause, without understanding, and often without even hearing, a syllable of what was said. To such an extent was this practice carried, that Pliny observes bitterly that if you happened to be passing the Basilica Julia when the court was sitting, and wished to judge of the comparative merits of the pleaders, you need not take a seat on the bench or attend to the speeches; all you had to do was to listen to the applause, for you might be quite sure that the barrister who got the loudest claps was the worst speaker.

But Pliny sometimes spoke in more important cases before a more dignified assembly. He was a member of the Senate, and more than once addressed that august body in defence of distant provinces which appealed to Rome for justice on governors who had cruelly wronged and oppressed them. It was thus that he pleaded the cause of Africa against Marius Priscus, and the cause of Andalusia (Bætica) against Cæcilius Classicus. The first of these trials lasted three days. The Senate-house was crowded: the Emperor Trajan himself presided ; and Pliny was supported in the impeachment by his friend, the illustrious historian Tacitus. He spoke for nearly five hours with great applause; and the emperor testified his friendly interest in the orator by more than once sending word to him to spare his voice and his breath, when he thought, or Pliny fancied that he thought, that the passionate vehemence of the speaker imposed too great a strain on his feeble frame. Perhaps the emperor's

solicitude was not so purely disinterested as the gratified orator imagined. The sensible Trajan may have been of opinion that a shorter speech would have served the purposes of justice equally well. But apparently there was no stopping the impetuous flow of Pliny's rhetoric when once he got under way. It was this trial which Macaulay had in his mind when, describing the brilliant audience which witnessed the impeachment of Warren Hastings in Westminster Hall, he wrote that

'there the historian of the Roman empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Verres, and when, before a senate which still retained some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa.'

Pliny lived in a literary age when authors abounded, and when it was the fashion for them to recite their works to a select circle of friends before they gave them to the public. These recitations are often mentioned by Pliny and his contemporaries. To judge by their references, the feelings of the reader and of his hearers on these occasions were often very different. Juvenal tells us that he was goaded into writing poetry in order to have his revenge on the poets whose long-winded epics he had so often been compelled to endure in silence. Among the terrors of Rome he enumerates fires, the collapse of houses, and poets spouting in August.

Being a very good-natured and obliging man, Pliny made a point of attending the recitations of his friends and of applauding their productions, whatever he may have thought of them privately. But many of the listeners were not so polite. In one of his letters he says that the month of April had been very prolific of poets, hardly a day having passed in which one of them had not been reciting; but, though he himself rejoiced at this display of taste and talent, the audiences at the recitations showed an unaccountable reluctance to appear when the fatal moment arrived for entering the lectureroom. Instead of taking the plunge, most of them preferred to dawdle in the lobby, passing the time of day to each other and sending in somebody now and then to report whether the author was come in, whether he had got through his exordium, and whether he seemed to be nearing the end of his manuscript. When that welcome

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